/comp/ - Composition General

>>>/classical/
faggots

I've gotten a lot more done on my string trio once I stopped writing the cello part for myself and started writing it for a hypothetical other cellist that will play it for me.

is it true that you use just intonation for chords and pythagorian for scales?

gnight bump.

Ear training stream is up
youtube.com/watch?v=idxIUqFURBA

Well I'm at a community college (albeit one with an excellent music program) and the players here use 12TET (playing it on the piano and tuning it to that) more than anything else. So I haven't gotten any official training on this, but I have gone through and mathematically derived at least the major scale myself, and tried to apply it.

Anyways, that's kind of like asking if you use the ingredients of cake for the outside of a cake, and cake mix for the inside. The Pythagorean scale is the simplest type of just intonation scale, but it's not the best one. It takes the 3:2 ratio (that gives you the perfect fifth) and goes around the circle of fifths to derive the 12-tone scale. But only perfect fifths and fourths, and major seconds, sound good with that. Major thirds sound dissonant.

The system I'm using is apparently called five-limit tuning. Essentially, you take that 3:2 ratio that sounds so pure and perfect, but you also take another important ratio, 5:4, which gives you the major third. From that you get the major triad:
>CMaj: C, (5/4)C, (3/2)C
>CMaj: C, E, G
You then do this to G
>GMaj: G, (5/4)G, (3/2)G
>GMaj: (3/2)C, (15/8)C, (9/4)C
>GMaj: G, B, D (this D is a major ninth above C)
To find FMaj, we set (3/2)F equal to 2C (an octave above C), and solve mathematically, which I won't bother with lest I run out of characters
>FMaj: F, (5/4)F, (3/2)F
>FMaj: (4/3)C, (5/3)C, 2C
So now, we have the entire major scale.
>C Major scale: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, 2C
>C Major scale: C, (9/8)C, (5/4)C, (4/3)C, (3/2)C, (5/3)C, (15/8)C, 2C

You can apply a variety of techniques to find other notes (for example, now that we have all the notes of GDom7, we can figure out CDom7, and get Bb), but once you do, you start to realize they're all really contextual, and change based on the current harmony. (A, for example, is (5/3)C if it's the third of IV, but it's (27/16)C if it's the fifth of ii.)

This is the point where I realize you didn't ask for any of this info.

TL;DR: Pythagorean tuning is a type of just intonation which uses only the 3:2 ratio to derive the entire scale. What I use, five-limit tuning, uses the 3:2 ratio, but also the 5:4 ratio for major thirds.

In short, not quite.

Afaik, Pythagorian system only uses 1:2 and 2:3 to derive all pitches, and just intonation uses 5:4 in addition, but with least preference.

I've seen a YouTube video where some instructor explains that string instruments need to use just intonation on double stops and Pythagorian on scales when soloing. Was wondering if that's common practice, being the ignorant piano person I am.
youtu.be/QaYOwIIvgHg

Nvm, about Pythagorian vs 5 limit, I messed up my terminology there. Of course both are forms of just intonation.

So eh, how many movements are there in a Sonata usually? They are all usually the same style right?

This is a really cool video actually. I really have no idea what is common practice, since, well, community college and all. I dream of the day I can play in both systems intuitively like that, just one system is causing me enough problems already (ever since I learned about just intonation everything I play sounds out of tune the first time no matter what).

I've spent way too long typing paragraphs and then deleting them when I've realized I'm rambling. So suffice to say it probably is common practice, and there are times the note that sounds most consonant with my strings (that causes my strings to sympathetically resonate with the fewest beats, in other words) doesn't sound consonant with the melody at all. If you're playing some dramatic scale-based run in Bb Major for example, and the leading tone resonates well with your A string, you're probably doing something weird. The leading tone isn't supposed to resonate (at least not in the middle of a scale), it's supposed to resolve.

Its a shit ton of fugues and canons all based on variations of one theme.

The science is the "art of fugue" its all in the title :^)

Have a look at this site, it analyses AoF a bit, with visual score aides:
teoria.com/en/articles/kdf/
Click on Contrapunctus I to get started

Bumping the thread with this.
youtube.com/watch?v=AyDCwngc8KQ

Any other string trios in this style? It's probably best if I have multiple references in the same style.

>Martinů
Good taste m8
I guess check out other Czech guys, Janacek, dvorak. Not sure what their trios are like though. Martinů has a somewhat unique voice though.

>Not sure what their trios are like though
I assume they'd be nothing like Martinu's, given the time periods.

I'll check it out though, I've only been listening to Martinu's, Schoenberg's (so, well, you know), and of course Beethoven/Haydn.

bump

...