Level (music)

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A level, [1] also "tonality level", Gerhard Kubik's "tonal step, [2] " "tonal block," [3] and John Blacking's "root progression, [4] " is an important melodic and harmonic progression where melodic material shifts between a whole tone above and a whole tone below the tonal center. [4] This shift can occur to both neighboring notes, in either direction, and from any point of departure. [5] The steps above and below the tonic are often called contrasting steps. [6] A new harmonic segment is created which then changes the tonality but not necessarily the key. [6]

Each level is based on one pitch, a foundation note. A melodic or harmonic-melodic third, triad (fifth) (such as in the song "Shallow Brown"), or seventh (such as in the song "Donald MacGillavry") may be built off this foundation. [1] A "change" in levels is called a shift. We see this in double-tonic tunes such as "Donald MacGillavry" (notes: A to G in bar 4 below). [1] Shifting is more emphatic than chord changes (chords: Am-G), but not as emphatic as modulations (keys: A minor to G major): [1]

"Donald MacGillavry" Play (help*info) , last measure each line Donald MacGillavry.PNG
"Donald MacGillavry" Loudspeaker.svg Play  (help·info), last measure each line

The foundation (root) is the most important note and accompanying chords are almost always built in root position. The fifth is next in importance, and consecutive fifths are most often emphasized. [1] The third is less important and often blue, neutral, or changing from major to minor. [1] This characteristic is common in the English virginalists music such as William Byrd's "The Woods so Wild" theme, which is an example of levels (F and G) being elaborated through cadence, melodic divergence from the accompaniment, and subsidiary chords, reaching a complete cadential phrase. [1]

Levels are commonly found in African folk music. It is believed that they originally arose out of this culture. [7] They are often combined with unresolved harmonic progression that gives music a feeling of perpetual motion without any noticeable cadence. [4] Runs and sequences often link new harmonic segments of the music to the previous ones. [2] Each new harmonic sequence is often related to the previous through the melodic line. [2] The music often ends suddenly without any musical preparation, even in the middle of a phrase. Sometimes the music descends to a "point of rest" in which the note below the tonal center gets extended to allow an ending. [4] Tonal variety and melodic unification is often achieved by repeating similar phrases on different steps of a pentatonic mode. [7] Semitonal and hemitonal root progressions can also be found. [8] Tonality levels or "root progression" are the most important structural feature found in African folk music. [4] The internal organization of this music demands occasional shifts between levels unless the music is based on a consistent drone. [9] The tonality level often shifts several times making it very hard to find a piece of African folk music without tonality levels. [6] Most often between three and five tonality levels can be found within a composition. [2] Levels can also be found in Asian, Celtic folk musics, Arab, and in European Renaissance music. [1]

Eventually, levels and other musical traits found their way into American jazz harmony and blues tonality through spirituals. [10] Levels can be compared to a traditional root progression in western music with a tonic - subdominant - dominant relationship. Levels give way to familiar classical chords and chord changes in Baroque music. [1] The harmonic practices between these cultures are so similar that urban African composers often incorporate western root progression into their local harmonic practices. As this combination traveled to America, it helped create new genres such as jazz, big band, and blues. [11] In the twentieth century, chords give way to levels in the blues, completed with the V-IV-I progression, which spread to all popular music. [12] For instance, In the blues - influenced style, the boogie-woogie bass, levels occur in shifts from primary triads rather than neighboring tones. [1] This can be directly tied to the tonality levels found in African folk music discussed earlier. [1]

A level, or "tonal step," often coincides with cross-rhythms in the melody and entries in vocal melody. [7] A new tonality level and harmonic shift is often very vague and hard to identify in a vocal texture. However, it is much easier to identify in thick instrumentation. [13]

See also

Related Research Articles

Harmony Aspect of music

In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches, or chords. However, harmony is generally understood to involve both vertical harmony (chords) and horizontal harmony (melody).

In music, the tonic is the first scale degree of the diatonic scale and the tonal center or final resolution tone that is commonly used in the final cadence in tonal classical music, popular music, and traditional music. In the movable do solfège system, the tonic note is sung as do. More generally, the tonic is the note upon which all other notes of a piece are hierarchically referenced. Scales are named after their tonics: for instance, the tonic of the C major scale is the note C.

Bebop Subgenre of jazz music originated in the United States in mid-1940s

Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early-to-mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumental virtuosity, and improvisation based on a combination of harmonic structure, the use of scales and occasional references to the melody.

In music theory, a leading-tone is a note or pitch which resolves or "leads" to a note one semitone higher or lower, being a lower and upper leading-tone, respectively. Typically, the leading tone refers to the seventh scale degree of a major scale, a major seventh above the tonic. In the movable do solfège system, the leading-tone is sung as ti.

In jazz and blues, a blue note is a note that—for expressive purposes—is sung or played at a slightly different pitch from standard. Typically the alteration is between a quartertone and a semitone, but this varies depending on the musical context.

In a musical composition, a chord progression or harmonic progression is a succession of chords. Chord progressions are the foundation of harmony in Western musical tradition from the common practice era of Classical music to the 21st century. Chord progressions are the foundation of Western popular music styles, traditional music, as well as genres such as blues and jazz. In these genres, chord progressions are the defining feature on which melody and rhythm are built.

Modulation (music) Change from one tonality (tonic, or tonal center) to another

In music, modulation is the change from one tonality to another. This may or may not be accompanied by a change in key signature. Modulations articulate or create the structure or form of many pieces, as well as add interest. Treatment of a chord as the tonic for less than a phrase is considered tonicization.

Modulation is the essential part of the art. Without it there is little music, for a piece derives its true beauty not from the large number of fixed modes which it embraces but rather from the subtle fabric of its modulation.

Tonality Musical system

Tonality is the arrangement of pitches and/or chords of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, attractions and directionality. In this hierarchy, the single pitch or triadic chord with the greatest stability is called the tonic. The root of the tonic chord forms the name given to the key; so in the key of C major, the note C is both the tonic of the scale and the root of the tonic chord. Simple folk music songs often start and end with the tonic note. The most common use of the term "is to designate the arrangement of musical phenomena around a referential tonic in European music from about 1600 to about 1910". Contemporary classical music from 1910 to the 2000s may practice or avoid any sort of tonality—but harmony in almost all Western popular music remains tonal. Harmony in jazz includes many but not all tonal characteristics of the European common practice period, usually known as "classical music".

Bassline Low-pitched instrumental part

A bassline is the term used in many styles of music, such as jazz, blues, funk, dub and electronic, traditional music, or classical music for the low-pitched instrumental part or line played by a rhythm section instrument such as the electric bass, double bass, cello, tuba or keyboard.

In Western musical theory, a cadence is the end of a phrase in which the melody or harmony creates a sense of resolution. A harmonic cadence is a progression of two or more chords that concludes a phrase, section, or piece of music. A rhythmic cadence is a characteristic rhythmic pattern that indicates the end of a phrase. A cadence is labeled more or less "weak" or "strong" depending on the impression of finality it gives. While cadences are usually classified by specific chord or melodic progressions, the use of such progressions does not necessarily constitute a cadence—there must be a sense of closure, as at the end of a phrase. Harmonic rhythm plays an important part in determining where a cadence occurs.

In the history of European art music, the common practice period is the era of the tonal system. Though it has no exact dates, most features of the common-practice period persisted from the mid- to late baroque period, through the Classical, Romantic and Impressionist periods, from around 1650 to 1900. The period saw considerable stylistic evolution, with some patterns and conventions flourishing and then declining, for example the sonata form. Thus, the dates 1650–1900 are necessarily nebulous and arbitrary borders that depend on context. The most important unifying feature throughout the period is a harmonic language to which modern music theorists can apply Roman numeral chord analysis.

Coltrane changes are a harmonic progression variation using substitute chords over common jazz chord progressions. These substitution patterns were first demonstrated by jazz musician John Coltrane on the albums Bags & Trane and Cannonball Adderley Quintet in Chicago. Coltrane continued his explorations on the 1959 album Giant Steps and expanded on the substitution cycle in his compositions "Giant Steps" and "Countdown", the latter of which is a reharmonized version of Eddie Vinson's "Tune Up". The Coltrane changes are a standard advanced harmonic substitution used in jazz improvisation.

A modal frame in music is "a number of types permeating and unifying African, European, and American song" and melody. It may also be called a melodic mode. "Mode" and "frame" are used interchangeably in this context without reference to scalar or rhythmic modes. Melodic modes define and generate melodies that are not determined by harmony, but purely by melody. A note frame, is a melodic mode that is atonic, or has an unstable tonic.

Andalusian cadence

The Andalusian cadence is a term adopted from flamenco music for a chord progression comprising four chords descending stepwise – a iv–III–II–I progression with respect to the Phrygian mode or i–VII–VI–V progression with respect to the minor mode. It is otherwise known as the minor descending tetrachord. Traceable back to the Renaissance, its effective sonorities made it one of the most popular progressions in classical music.

In music, a sequence is the restatement of a motif or longer melodic passage at a higher or lower pitch in the same voice. It is one of the most common and simple methods of elaborating a melody in eighteenth and nineteenth century classical music. Characteristics of sequences:

In music, harmonization is the chordal accompaniment to a line or melody: "Using chords and melodies together, making harmony by stacking scale tones as triads".

Excursions, Op. 20, is the first published solo piano piece by Samuel Barber. Barber himself explains:

These are ‘Excursions’ in small classical forms into regional American idioms. Their rhythmic characteristics, as well as their source in folk material and their scoring, reminiscent of local instruments are easily recognized.

In music, the dominant is the fifth scale degree of the diatonic scale. It is called the dominant because it is second in importance to the first scale degree, the tonic. In the movable do solfège system, the dominant note is sung as "So(l)".

Traditional sub-Saharan African harmony is a music theory of harmony in Sub-Saharan Africa music based on the principles of homophonic parallelism, homophonic polyphony, counter melody and ostinato-variation. Polyphony is common in African music and heterophony is a common technique as well. Although these principles of traditional African music are of Pan-African validity, the degree to which they are used in one area over another varies. Specific techniques that used to generate harmony in Africa are the "span process", "pedal notes", "Rhythmic harmony", "harmony by imitation", and "scalar clusters".

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 van der Merwe, Peter (1989). Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN   0-19-316121-4.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Kubik, Gerhard (1969). "Composition Techniques in Kiganda Xylophone Music: With an Introduction into Some Kiganda Musical Concepts". African Music. 4 (3): 22–72. doi: 10.21504/amj.v4i3.1437 – via JSTOR.
  3. ↑ Kubik, Gerhard. "LIKEMBE TUNINGS OF KUFUNA KANDONGA (ANGOLA)". African Music: 70–88.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Blacking, John (1959). "Problems of Pitch, Pattern, and Harmony in the Ocarina Music of the Venda". African Music. 2 (2): 15–23. doi: 10.21504/amj.v2i2.583 – via JSTOR.
  5. ↑ Kubik, Gerhard (1992). "Embaire Xylophone Music of Samusiri Babalanda (Uganda 1968)". The World of Music. 34: 57–84 – via JSTOR.
  6. 1 2 3 Kubik, Gerhard (1964). "Harp Music of the Azande and Related Peoples in the Central African Republic: (Part 1 - Horizontal Harp Playing)". African Music. 3 (3): 37–76. doi: 10.21504/amj.v3i3.1034 – via JSTOR.
  7. 1 2 3 Blacking, John (1970). "Tonal Organization in the Music of Two Venda Initiation Schools". Ethnomusicology. 14: 1–56. doi:10.2307/850292. JSTOR   850292.
  8. ↑ Rycroft, David (1967). "Nguni Vocal Polyphony". Journal of the International Folk Music Council. 19: 88–103. doi:10.2307/942193. JSTOR   942193.
  9. ↑ "Africa".{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
  10. ↑ Kubik, Gerhard (Spring–Fall 2005). "The African Matrix in Jazz Harmonic Practices". Black Music Research Journal. 25: 167–222 – via JSTOR.
  11. ↑ Kubik, Gerhard (1999). Africa and the Blues. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
  12. ↑ van der Merwe (1989), pp. 209–11.
  13. ↑ Kruger, Jaco (Fall 1989). "Rediscovering the Venda Ground-Bow". Ethnomusicology. 33: 391–404. doi:10.2307/851766. JSTOR   851766.
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