How to Compose Music using Multi-Tonic Modulation
Interesting question about Major and Minor chords
Last week I stumbled upon an interesting question on quora.com. Although the inquiry doesn’t seem to make sense, it helps illustrate the music theory misconceptions and misunderstandings surrounding the mysteries of harmony, music composition, and counterpoint. In the lesson on this video, we will try to clarify some of these concepts.
“When making a song, will it sound good if you mix minor and major positions or should you only use one of the two over and over again?”
The problem that most musicians encounter is that music has so many rules that can be paralyzing, but there is always a way around it. We cannot break the rules, but we can bend them. To explore how major and minor chords blend and the effect produced by mixing one or the other, we have to try them ourselves.
Modal Music
On modal music, say in the major or minor mode (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian), which we know as the greek or the church modes, when we compose music using them, the species of the chords are going to be determined by their scales. For example, in the Major Mode (Ionian), the chords of the mode will be as follows:
Major Mode Triads
I – Im – IIIm – IV – V – VIm – VIIdim
Major Mode Seventh Chords
IMaj7 – IIm7 – IIIm7 – IVMaj7 – V7 – VIm7 – VIIm7(b5)
So if we wanted to use only Major Chords to compose music in the Major Mode, those chords would be (I, IV, V).
I: Tonic
IV: Subdominant
V: Dominant
And if we play II-V-I. It would be:
IIm7 – V7 – IMaj7
But other composition techniques do not follow the same rules as modal harmony does, such as:
Pedal (In which the bass plays the same sequence of notes while the chords change)
Ostinato (In which a melody pattern plays the same while the harmony changes)
Multi-Tonic (In which the chords descend by minor or major 3rd intervals)
Dodecaphonic (or Twelve-Tone Technique)
Constant Structures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant_structure
To answer the above question regarding mixing chords of the same or different quality (minor/major), we use the Multi-Tonic music composition technique to explore the different textures. We hope the video helps to clarify some of these concepts.
