Action Piece - Composition Walkthrough Pt.4 - Bars 19-24

Bar 19 starts the actual "chase sequence". As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to create a sense of unpredictability and yet keep some strucutural elements that hold it together and take the listener by the hand.

Constant meter and emphasis changes are a great tool for keeping things "unpredictable" so I utilize them alot in this sequence. As structural elements I use a few things:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/whtsto-bars-19-24/s-T11IU

There's alot to digest in this reduction above so let's go through step by step:

RHYTHM

From the rhythmical standpoint it is quite uneven. There are constant shifts in meter. Yet, these shifts only work if they are noticeable for the audience. If you keep coming up with streams of new elements nobody will actually understand that things are moving and will simply be lost in the "stream of notes". So it is essential to provide structure.

In this case, I use a pretty simple, yet effective rhythmic/harmonic/melodic motif which keeps reappearing at downbeats and provides the anchor needed. You can find it in bars 19,20,22 and 23.

So if we just strip it down to a rhythmical formula and call this Motif "A", we could reduce it down to: 

A---|A----|--|A---|A---|---|

Through the constant repetition on downbeats, the shifts in meter get quite obvious.

A quick word on readability and division on odd meters: Note that this rhythmical motif implies a strong rhythmical idea. In the 7/8 the subdivision is 2+2+3/8 in the 9/8 it becomes 2+2+2+3/8. It is essential that the beaming of groups in these bars reflects that as this will also be the pattern it will be conducted in. Grouping the 9/8 into 3+3+3 as it usually is done in this meter will cause quite some mayhem during a recording so it is essential to notate accordingly.

A quick word on the low register "stab chords" in bars 22/23. Both bars are from the content similar, however the second stab in each bar is rhythmically different. This was another decision to steer away from predictability.

HARMONY

The harmonic structure of the Motif mentioned above remains as constant as its rhythmic idea, it appears exactly the same way four times in this passage. The idea was to start with a minor chord in root position and have the outer voices move out and back in again.

I was pretty happy with the alternation of this minor second upwards and back again in the upper voice. For the lower voice I had three alternatives:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/whtsto-bar-19-motif-alt/s-rDs4e 

Observe the subtle yet striking differences between the three. The only differences here are which note the lowest voice goes to. All three are musically fine and would work. However for me the third option was by far the most appropriate choice:

The first one would alternate between an Fm and Dbm chord. From a taste level this progression has been used alot in the past and at least for me resembles a dusty golden age horror movie. Also, it would have been not very consequent of me to set up a specific non-triadic harmonic world in the preceding bars and then as a conclusion fall back into simple triads once the piece actually started. In fact I was internally debating whether I should use the Fm triad or if it wouldn't be better to start off with something "less familiar". However I eventually decided for the Fm to leave some room for development into more dissonant structures in the later parts of the piece. This means that I wanted to give me room to build the degree of dissonance over the course of the piece. If I had started with a complex structure from the beginning, I wouldn't have much room left to go from there.

The second alternative alternates to a quartal structure. While it has a desired degree of dissonance as well as ambiguousity compared to the triadic first alternative, for me quartal harmony simply opens up another harmonic world. It establishes a flavour that I felt was not part of that piece. If you listen closely above and also in context with the rest of the piece you might (or might not) agree that this one chord feels like an alien in the rest of the context. If we look at it even more contextually it gets even more inappropriate as additionally the implied F as a root or bass note still keeps ringing in our ear. This will turn the second chord into a Db(add9)/F or Fm7(b6). No matter which of the two ways you hear it, it establishes a "jazzyness" and with the add9 even sweetness that I definitely didn't want to have in that piece.

The third alternative seemed the most attractive one to me for several reasons:

You could interpret it as Dmb5 with a major 7th. This is a chord that could be derived from the diminished scale that I discussed as a source of harmonic material for this piece already before so it fits nicely into my "plan" and what also fits nicely is the framing interval of the major 7th. I use this interval quite a bit as "signature dissonance" in this piece but more on this later.

As you might remember from earlier parts I said I wanted to establish a specific chord as a central element of this piece. Mainly one could call it a "minor triad with the major third in the bass". This chord type appears quite frequently here as well. Observe it in bar 22 (with an added major seventh for extra spice) and 23 in the same way. Bar 24 has it on counts one and two.

If we look closer at bar 24 you might notice the heavy degree of dissonance established here. The outer voices of the bar move in contrary motion (which is always musically attractive to our ear) and the chords are being enriched with more dissonance additionally to the "signature" chords which are quite dissonant in themselves:

Count one includes the diminished cluster of E, F, G and Ab. so does count two. Count three increases the dissonance even further with the chromatic cluster of Bb, B, C and Db. So from a "microscopic" standpoint of this bar, I tried to give all elements a build in dissonance here towards the end of the bar. Simple reason for this is to build something "dominantic".

A Dominant-Tonic resolution is one of the strongest forces in music and can be characterized as Tension that resolves.  A G7 chord builds tension (with the inheret tritone between b and f) and resolves back to a stable C major chord. As in my example the following bar 25 "relaxes" towards the signature chord of (roughly) Dbm/F which in itself is rather unstable and dissonant, to create a feeling of resolution the thing that precedes it needs to be even more dissonant which in this case is count three of bar 24. There's no V-I or actual dominant going on but the principle of harmonic tension that resolves (somewhat) is the same.

There is also a small melodic compent in bar 24 of minor second intervals which keep adding to the tension of the chords.

A last word on harmony in this part: I mentioned earlier that I wanted to use the dissonance of a major seventh as a signature element as it is also a key interval in the signature chord, so I'm making sure to use it prominently as indicated by the red notes of which all are major 7ths (+octaves):

Observe again count 3 in bar 24 where I tried to raise the dissonance degree even further by stacking two major sevenths.

ORCHESTRATION

In order to leave some room for later development, I could't start with full forces. The bass register is used quite sparsely and mainly for stabs and only to actually appear in bar 24, again to build the "dominant bar". 

The violas provide the main rhythmical engine with a "nervous" measured 16th tremolo which at this tempo is close to what is physically possible for the players. Violins play short notes on the accents in unison with the viola just basically "doubling" the accent to create the neccessary rhythmical pulse. The actual harmony is provied by the horns which in their top note double the accents of the violins and in their lower two voices provide the rest.

There are several reasons for this:

1. I wanted the violas to provide the "engine" as this is the perfect range for them

2. A this tempo of the tremolos it would have been very tricky for them to accent the overlaying rhythmical figure so I double the accents in the violins at pitch

3. The previous two reasons exclude the possibility for the chords to be spread out in the strings, so I decided to go for unison here.

4. The horns are in their middle register where they are not too low yet to suffer from lack of control and lack of attack on the notes as well as can provide a more aggressive sound as I would be getting if I put the harmony in the woodwinds. An alternative would have been to put these chords into the trombones which I however needed to provide another layer in bar 22 onwards.

In bar 22 I establish the above discussed "stabby" chords as combination between low brass/woodwinds low strings pizzicato and Bass Drum. I didn't want them to be particularly loud but quite short in attack and "low end punchy" so this combination seemed most appropriate to me.

In bar 24, all high strings join in on the little minor second 16th tremolo figure while trombones/horns and low strings provide harmony this time in full length notes. I made sure to keep the outer voices of the chords to move in opposite direction as discussed above.

One more word on bar 20/21. As you might have noticed there is a timpani solo arpeggiating an F power chord and on second appearance an F minor chord. This is a personal preference as I simply like such Timpani solos and it felt appropriate here to create some "raw energy". The important thing with such "special" devices is to be consequent about them. This means that if you use it twice it feels deliberate (like the two timpani solo spots), if you only use it once it feels like an accident or random.

So this is probably the most extensive article I could ever write about 5 bars alone. I hope you like the amount of detail. In the next part I will go on further in the piece (hopefully in more than just 5 bar chunks) as well as discuss the "chord pyramids" in bars 17/18 and 27.