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"(All U Have to Do is) Snake"
Oct 2007 || Score
This is a tune I wrote in 2007. I thought I'd create something that links with the club music from 20 years ago, and I made this after listening to lots of Acid House music from the late '80s.Acid House is a sub-genre of House music. House music emerged from the club scene in Chicago in the mid '80s, and the name's origin disputedly comes from The Warehouse, a club venue, or the fact that the producers of the genre mostly work in their houses. Characteristically, it inherites much from Disco of the '70s, for instance the kick drum beating every 4 beats.
The instruments frequently used for making House include Roland TR-808, TR-909, both of which are drum machines, and TB-303 bass synthesizer. TB-303 had a feature that enabled producers to alter the sound in a psychedellic way just by turning knobs, and it became a quite popular gear. Soon followed a large number of tunes fully utiliing its characters. That's Acid House, and it typically has refraining themes with wild wiggling sounds. By the way, it's called Acid because the TB-303 sound is a reminder of the trippy feeling one experiences when using LSD.
In this tune, I used a technique called Bitonality. Tonality means keys, so when we say a tune uses Bitonality, we mean the tune takes two keys at the same time.
This image is from measure 25. The lower part, Sawtooth Low (the reptile-like sound) repeats the Em rif, while Synth Pad overlays an F#m chord. (hear)
(Continued from the left column)
This is from measure 29. The Em rif is combined with the Ebm chord of the Pad part.(hear)
Key of Em and Key of F#m are used simulteneously in the left-below example. Likewise, Key of Em and Ebm are taken together in the above example. These are instances of Bitonality.
If you only look at the left-below example, you might say it's more like E Dorian Mode than Bitonality, but when the music enters the 29th bar to meet the above example, that possibility disappears.
This is an example of pararell harmonization for timbre enforcement.(hear) From measure 41. This is a technique also used in Ravel's Bolero, and it adds a harmonizing melody to the source melody, keeping the exactly same interval between them as they go on.
The lower part is Sawtooth wave of synthesizer and the higher one is Violin part. They go on keeping the minor 3rd interval, and this pararell harmony continues for some bars.
Usually, when harmonizing a melody, you don't continue with the same interval. You'd rather change according to the key (for example changing the minor 3rd to the major 3rd) or write a line which moves against the source melody in a contrapuntal way. We may say the pararell harmonization is like emulation of timber-altering method of organs using their stops. And controlling organ-stops has evolved into turning synthesizer-knobs, as we know. I think the concept of the pararell technique indeed comes from our wanting to perform that sort of alteration in composition.
Read in Japanese
This is from measure 29. The Em rif is combined with the Ebm chord of the Pad part.(hear)
Key of Em and Key of F#m are used simulteneously in the left-below example. Likewise, Key of Em and Ebm are taken together in the above example. These are instances of Bitonality.
If you only look at the left-below example, you might say it's more like E Dorian Mode than Bitonality, but when the music enters the 29th bar to meet the above example, that possibility disappears.
This is an example of pararell harmonization for timbre enforcement.(hear) From measure 41. This is a technique also used in Ravel's Bolero, and it adds a harmonizing melody to the source melody, keeping the exactly same interval between them as they go on.
The lower part is Sawtooth wave of synthesizer and the higher one is Violin part. They go on keeping the minor 3rd interval, and this pararell harmony continues for some bars.
Usually, when harmonizing a melody, you don't continue with the same interval. You'd rather change according to the key (for example changing the minor 3rd to the major 3rd) or write a line which moves against the source melody in a contrapuntal way. We may say the pararell harmonization is like emulation of timber-altering method of organs using their stops. And controlling organ-stops has evolved into turning synthesizer-knobs, as we know. I think the concept of the pararell technique indeed comes from our wanting to perform that sort of alteration in composition.
Read in Japanese