"Serial Killer" Fugue: Somebody Stop Me...

... before I kill again! LOL!

Just for grins, I tested out this subject on the guitar, and... it works amazingly well. It is also nominally in A minor, so it might even replace the current finale of Sonata Zero, but that's just wild speculation at this point. One thing is certain, and that is that this is going to be a very modern, non-traditional sounding fugue: The chromaticism of the subject - and the fact that it is a twelve-tone row - made the most obviously perfect counterpoint to it quite radical by my admittedly antedeluvian standards.

The answer also absolutely, positively had to be perfectly real to replicate the tone row on the dominant level. You put all that together, and you get something weird and wonderous like this:



Here are the first twenty measures: The exposition, a non-modulatory episode, and a middle entry statement. It's tonally based, but quite dissonant, and it's in a unique style I've never written in - or even heard - before. I put it in my .Mac FileShare page as a Work in Progress The filenames are WIP_FTTS.pdf/.mid for those who might like to take a listen. It will certainly turn out to be the most teeth-grindingly "severe" fugue I've ever come up with, but God only knows where this mind-bendingly bizarre path will lead me. I really, really, really, look forward to this particular journey!

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New Site and Blog Links

I have added new links to some fresh and interesting blogs I've found in the sidebar. Be sure to check them out: I enjoy the bloggers the most who have opposing philosophies to mine. I understand better where I'm comng from when I try to understand where others are coming from, and remember: Despite my strongly-worded defenses of my own position, I accept and respect the positions of others who happen to ascribe to other musico-philosophical viewpoints. Cool thing about music is, it's more than big enough to encompass us all. And, it will certainly survive us all as well ;o).

I also went on a fugue-related surfing session this morning. If you haven't checked it out, Smith's Canons and Fugues of Bach is an incredible site, and that lead me to several others that I added in the Links category. There are actually quite a few composers out there who are writing fugues. As I get more time, I will add others that I found. One German winner of a fugue writing contest back in 2000 is spectacularly good: I'm going to see if he has a homepage at some point, but I have chores to do today (Fresh out of clean undies, and the truck is a mess, so it's "laundry and carwash day" (I just know you're glad I shared that)).

Finally, I added a link to an article that I'm not sure how I feel about. The guy sort of disses Bach in some ways, but the perspective is unique (At least, I've never heard a take like that on Bach before). I have always felt that Bach's episodes were kind of overwrought and overly virtuosic in some ways, but that's also one of the fabulous qualities of his music: He was a virtuoso improviser, after all. It's entitled "Bach: His Predecessors". Read it and see what you think.

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Beethoven's Ninth: Allegro, VII

Bet you thought I'd never get back to this. I will finish at least this movement, but these posts will probably be a once-a-month deal from here on out (If you are new to this thread, you'll have to go to the archives for the previous posts, but when I'm done I will post PDF and MIDI files of this entire analysis and transcription on my .Mac FileShare page).

Problem is, this analysis got my compositional juices flowing. The whole Sonata Zero guitar sonata "thing" has been pent up inside of me for the past few years: Beethoven just ignited the required spark, so "off I went". After analyzing the three movements of that guitar sonata, I realize I need a fourth movement in C to balance it out, but I'm now in no mood to write it. So, it's back to free fugues and Beethoven's Ninth.



We are now at measure 275, and theme four appears here in the dominant region. However, this theme is elongated from it's origanal form, and modulates from v to bIII. The bIII region continues into an episode comprised of the head and tail of the main theme, t2, in both rectus and inversus forms, over a variant of the tail figure of that theme. This episode continues through the end of the page, building in intensity as it progresses.



This episode modulates to the parallel major at the top of page seventeen (Can you really fathom how much effort went into just entering this music into Encore?!), and at 297 the t2 theme's head is utilized to get back to... the beginning of the movement... again. Only this time, the intensity is increased, and we are in the tonic level major mode. Basically, the entire "introduction" is replayed here, but now in D major.



At measure 313 we get to a huge hammered-home B-flat dominant seventh chord. Where the Samuel B. Heck did this come from?! The only way I could figure to analyze this was as a subV(7)/V, or in traditional parlance, as an enharmonically notated so-called German Augmented Sixth chord. But... It does not progress to the dominant, it goes directly to the tonic! Ironically, not only is this not jarring or unusual in this context, but it seems natural and inevitable. Sort of.

I seriously can't understand how anyone can possibly think the "well has run dry" with tonality when confronted by music like this. This is just the tip of an iceburg Beethoven only glimpsed opaquely in my view, but... excuse me... frack-all, what an iceburg!!

t1a appears at measure 315, and it's harmonization is fairly mild, but look at the main theme! Double-U, Tee, Eff? Uh... I would never have though of this... until now. WHAT A PASSAGE!!! There are no words to describe this level of perfection. Or intensity. I'm simply aghast here as a listener and as a theorist.

I analyzed 323-326 as being in G minor, but I may change that back to the tonic, as my bVI could easily be rationalized as a Neapolitan chord in root position, but isn't this just fantastic?! Sorry to get so over-the-top, but this is an all-conquering supreme masterpiece, and no words can do it justice.

The page break is unfortunate, as Beethoven here begans a sublime sequence that, incredibly, "sheds" all of the intensity he's built up to here. But, just look at the harmonies!

This may be the single best project I've ever undertaken. So many things I'm learning here just can't be set into words by a crappy writer like me. Sorry about that.

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Serial Fugue Subject: Raiding the "Enemy" Camp

All I have to say is "Ha!", and "this is going to rock!": A twelve-tone row fugue subject that still establishes pitch axes, so it can be broadly interpreted tonally. It is positively screaming "wind trio", no? Can't you just feel the love? (And hear the augmented sixths?). It even has stretto possibilities. I kill me.



I actually thought of this a while back, but didn't have the technique to tackle it. I might even try to cram it onto the guitar (Though, we do actually have a competent wind trio in Alpine, Texas, believe it or not).

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Organizing Classical Guitar Set Lists

One of the things that distracts me about some classical guitarist's set lists (Well, a LOT of solo guitarist's in other idioms as well) is that there is no "rhyme or reason" to them. Much of the time, the pieces selected are seemingly arbitrary in both selection, and in the order that they are performed. Just having a slow, fast, slow scheme isn't good enough, in my opinion, and selecting nothing but highly technical "show off" pieces really chaps my butt: You should - again, in my opinion - take the audience on some sort of a musical journey.

There are many ways to do this. You could start off with Renaissance pieces, work your way through the Baroque era, and wind up in the twentieth century, or you could start with Baroque pieces, play some high-classical stuff, and end up with some Spanish music: The organizational scheme is only limited by your imagination and repertoire.

I'm in an unusual position in that I compose most of my own pieces, I have a pop/jazz background (So I play some contemporary stuff, and I like musical eclecticism). But, anyone can come up with a scheme similar to the one I use if they put some thought into it. Surprising left turns and contrasts are certainly allowed, if they are effective.

Since I wrote a series of Figuration Preludes that progress around the circle of thirds starting in A minor, I organized my set list around those. Since they naturally alternate between minor and major modes, so does my set list (With one exception, which you'll see). Here is the first hour or so of my program, which I perform continuously, only taking brief breaks to sip some iced tea or something between "suites":


01] Figuration Prelude in A Minor - Hucbald
02] E-Axis Study in A Minor - Hucbald
03] Sarabande in A Minor - J.S. Bach
04] Sonatina in A Minor - Hucbald
05] Six Variations in A Minor - Hucbald
06] Classical Gas (In A Dorian, basically) - Mason Williams


As you can see, all of the pieces are in an A minor mode, the tempi progress slow, fast, slow, moderate, fast, fast, and the final piece is a "crowd pleaser" type of deal. I replicate the basic pattern of this suite in all of the following keys. This little suite of pieces runs about fifteen minutes.


07] Figuration Prelude in C Major - Hucbald
08] E-Axis Study in C Major - Hucbald
09] Bourree in C Major - J.S. Bach (It's a tiny little piece from one of the cello suites which I think is better on the guitar)
10] Sonatina in C Major - Hucbald
11] G-Axis Study in C Major - Hucbald
12] Guardame Las Vacas - Luys de Navarez (The variations start in C and end in A minor, which prepares for the next piece)
13] Desert Song - Eric Johnson (Also in an A minor modality)


There are soooo many nice guitar pieces in A minor that I used the Navarez piece (Which I love) to transition back to A minor for the Eric Johnson "crowd pleaser": Going from a Renaissance piece to a twentieth-century jazz/fusion improvisation with some Flamenco overtones actually works quite well. At least, I think so. This suite is about twenty minutes in duration.


14] Figuration Prelude in E Minor - Hucbald
15] E-Axis Study in E Minor - Hucbald
16] Sarabande in E Minor - J.S. Bach
17] B-Axis Study in E Minor - Hucbald
18] Bourree in E Minor - J.S. Bach
19] G-Axis Study in E Minor - Hucbald
20] Spanish Fly - Eddie Van Halen (People love this piece!)


All three of my axial study sets converge in E minor because the axes function as the root, fifth, and minor third respectively, and I have no Sonatina for this key (yet); as a result, I had to use a couple of Bach pieces here (Which is no problem, because they are both superb, and the Bourree is a crowd pleaser all on it's own). This suite is also about twenty minutes long.


21] Figuration Prelude in G Major - Hucbald (This piece is required to recover from the Van Halen tap stuff)
22] B-Axis Study in G Major - Hucbald
23] G-Axis Study in G Minor - Hucbald
24] Minuet in G Major - J.S. Bach (The little piece from the Anna Magdelena Notebook)
25] G-Axis Study in G Major - Hucbald
26] A Day at the Beach - Joe Satriani (Originally in A, I transposed it down to G so it fits on a classical fretboard)


The preludes get progressively longer and more difficult, and the G Major G-Axis Study and the Satriani piece are two of the three toughest pieces in the first half of my program.


27] Figuration Prelude in B Minor - Hucbald
28] Menuetto in B minor - Hucbald
29] B-Axis Study in B minor - Hucbald
30] Scherzo in B minor - Hucbald (The movement from Sonata Zero)


"All Hucbald, All The Time" here, but I am planning to add another Minuet from Anna Magdelena after the B-Axis Study: The bizarre little piece I analyzed here a while back (And, interestingly, I recently heard that new scholarship has shown that this isn't by J.S. Bach, but one of his contemporaries, and (Sorry, can't remember the name) that this person also wrote the earlier Minuet in my set from Anna Magdelena - which comes as no surprise to me because these are weird little pieces that would be out of character for Bach (The earlier Minuet even has a parallel ninth in it!)). But, I don't care if Bach authored them or not: I like them, and that's all that matters. The Scherzo is the most difficult thing I perform... period, and I'm pretty wiped out by this point. One of the nice things about having a prelude after the crowd pleaser type pieces is that it gives needed recovery time, which is something to consider. Especially if you perform 2.5-3 hours or more in a night!

I play through D major, F-sharp minor, and A major before my dinner break, but those suites are still a "work in progress": I'm working on - get this - Leo Kottke's arrangement of Bach's Jesu for the D area, since it and all of my pieces in that key use a drop-D tuning, and - ta, da! - Steve Howe's "Mood for a Day" for F-sharp. The A major suite currently ends with "Stairway to Heaven", but I'm planning to replace that (Or follow it, more likely) with Chet Atkins' "Yankee Doodle Dixie", which absolutely, positively cracks people up in the extreme (Including myself).

Some other cool pieces I'm doing for later in the set are Joe Satriani's "Tears in the Rain" (C-sharp minor) and Steve Morse's "Point Counterpoint" (E major). You get the picture. I'm not really a "classical" guitarist, I just compose that way (And I did stay at a Holiday In Express once or twice). LOL!

In my opinion, more nylon string players should take this kind of an approach versus being so stuck-up about playing only "standard rep" stuff: I get a lot of gigs because people like the eclectic variety of pieces in my set. I intentionally stayed away from jazz over the past ten years or so, but I'm now even thinking about adding some Joe Pass and Pat Metheny stuff to my set. Why the hell not?

And another thing! ;^) ...

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Concert Pitch vs. Philosophical Pitch: Questioning the Foundation

I began to become interested in well-tempered tunings and early pitch standards back when I discovered Davitt Moroney's recording of J.S. Bach's Art of Fugue. His pitch standards and tunings are those of Bach - as closely as can be reconstructed - and the sound is so sublimely wonderful that listening to any other pitch standard and tuning has become something that grates on my nerves.

As a guitarist, there is nothing I can do to slide the frets around and get J.S. Bach's variant of the Kirnberger III tuning system, which is certainly designed around the Golden Mean, but tuning the guitar to the Philosophical Pitch of C= 256 Hz (A= 430.5 Hz), is a piece of cake. I had thought about doing that, but there were no A= 430.5 Hz tuning forks around, and my Lexicon's built-in tuner was set at A= 440 Hz, and there is no calibration adjustment for it. Besides, I had no rational compelling reason to lower my pitch standard. That all changed today.

As far as the tuning system is concerned, I am stuck with the guitar's admittedly compromised version of equal temperament (Guitar intonation is NEVER perfect - even by equal temperament standards - due to the fact that the different strings start out at their own set pitch and progress base-E, base-A, etc. individually through their own version of the temperament), but I had already solved that cosmic conundrum: Since I play electric nylon string the vast majority of the time, I simply apply 36% of pitch-shift chorus to every virtual acoustic environment that I program. Combined with the Hall Reverb and various phase, flange, and comb filter effects that I use, the inherant nastiness of equal temperament is nicely ameliorated (Not to mention that my sound is "awesome" according to many of my audience members).

But there is that A= 440 Hz "thing". I thought that the foundation of our tuning system was a convienience that simply didn't matter, but then I read this article and all that changed. I'm going to need to re-read it several times to internalize it all, but I got goosebumps reading it because I knew I'd discovered something profoundly fundamental to add to my musico-philosophical outlook. I suggest you read it and question everything: The only truth about "conventional wisdom" is that it's conventional, because it certainly isn't wisdom, or even the truth!

Turns out there is a cool little chromatic digital tuner that can callibrate the pitch A anywhere from 420 Hz to 460 Hz, and it's small enough and cheap enough that I can buy five of them and put one in each of my guitar cases and gig bags. Bingo. The guitar is inaccurate enough that 430 Hz versus 430.5 Hz isn't of any practical or practicable difference anyway. I love the results. It's impossible to explain, but the effect it has on me is that the instrument and the music "breathes" easier and just has an... indescribable "niceness" to it.

Good luck to all you pianists out there ;o).

UPDATE: "Heh", as Glen Reynolds would say.

My blog is worth $6,774.48.
How much is your blog worth?

Via Scott Spiegelberg, whose blog is woth much more than my little backwater.

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Guitar Gear Philosophy

I have always been a big believer in two things where guitars and guitar gear are concerned: 1] There is no substitute for the finest possible quality, and 2] Small is beautiful.

My first electric guitar was a Les Paul, and my first guitar amplifier was a MESA/Boogie MK I. The guitar was a top of the line model and, of course, MESA/Boogie amps are legendary. The cool thing about that original rig was that it was small (But, admittedly heavy): The guitar was just a guitar in a rectangular hardshell case, and the amp was a 100 watt combo model with a single 12" Altec speaker. The whole enchilada fit inside my old 1969 VW Beetle, and the sound quality (And - ahem - volume) was second to nothing else out there at the time. I could even cram it all into the back seat if I had to make room for a girlfriend.

Even when I was a professional rock guitarist, I kept the original philosophy I started out with. By those days I had discovered stereo rack-mountable effects devices, so my rig had grown, and of course, I was a Synclavier guitarist in those days, so I had that monster to schlep around (It was at this time that I realized that pickup trucks with shells or bed covers are the last word in musician's vehicles (Unless you are a fan of vans, which I'm not)). But, discounting the Synclavier, the electric guitar part of the rig was still quite small: I had a Steinberger GL2T-GR guitar - which was positively miniscule - a pair of 1-12 combo MESA/Boogie MK III's, and a ten-space Calzone effects rack on wheels. It was still smaller that an 8-12 Marshall stack, and it sounded far superior to any Marshall-based monophonic rig ever could. And yes, it was ridiculously loud when it needed to be. I have never owned a full stack: The closest I ever came to that was having a pair of matching 1-12 cabs for my combos that made 2-12 mini-stacks. And, frankly, that was never necessary: It just looked cool (Hey...).

Fast forward to today, and the only thing that has changed is the equipment, not the philosophy: I play an electric nylon string Godin Multiac Grand Concert Synth Access guitar now, the Boogies have been replaced with a Bryston 2B-LP solid state stereo power amplifier, their EVM-12L's I used to love so much have been replaced by Yamaha AS108-II 8"/1" mini-PA speakers, and that ten space effects rack has now shrunk down into a Lexicon MPX-G2 Guitar Effects Processor, which I use in stand-alone mode as the rig's preamp also. The only other piece of gear in the rig is a Furman AR-1215 A.C. Line Voltage Regulator (Not a cheap "Power Conditioner": A real honest-to-God voltage regulator with isolation transformers and everything. Using super-expensive gear without a voltage regulator in various places where you don't know what the electricity is like is exactly for your gear like having unprotected sex with a series of strange chicks would be for you: Could prove fatal).

Since each piece of gear is a single rack space, I only need a four space ultra-lightweight SBK molded rack to house it all (If you don't allow for an empty vent space between your power amp an everything else, you are an idjit, pure and simple).

The only remaining things are the speaker stands, an Ultimate X-Stand for the rack, and a guitar stand. I got one of those nifty Gruven collapsable guitar stands that actually fits in my gig bag, and am getting a custom made ballistic nylon bag that will hold all three of the other stands.

Even at "cozy" gigs I have concert-quality stereo sound and I don't get in the way:



Those bags in the background are hops and barley! Playing at a brewery rocks: I drink for free (After the gig, of course: That's Diet Cola in that mug on my rack).

And, the whole PA fits on a single handtruck:



I believe in small guitar gear, but not in small pickup trucks!



The locking bed cover gives me the worlds second-largest trunk (It's only a 6.5" bed), and means my small venue PA and hand truck never leave the vehicle. I love that! I practice on my large venue rig in my studio, and both systems will fit into the truck if I have a larger gig. It's... perfect.

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Guitar Fugue, "Authorized Version": Recognizing Perfection

Because of my musico-philosophical connection with the overtone series, I believe that it is a fact - and not my opinion - that so-called "common practice" techniques are an inevitable product of man's intuitive, intellectual, and philosophical interactions with the implications of the nature of sound. And, within the comon practice technical universe, sonata technique has been the ultimate attainment so far. But, for sheer erudition and purity, nothing can touch fugue writing: It is the ultimate musical challenge.

My main line of attack against post-common practice music is to point out the laws of musical motion derived from analyzing the implications of the overtone series: These are the opposite of rules foisted onto music; they are simply natural and inevitable deductions pertaining to the nature of musical motion, whether they be the circular transformations of harmony, the axial combinations of melodic trajectory, or the laws governing contrapuntal combinations. These things, properly defined and applied, are the quantum mechanics of music.

Ironically, it is the champions of post-common practice music who are often the ones guilty of burdening music with a bunch of man-made, artificial, and unnatural rules. Just trying to keep track of the plethora of rule-sets the various schools of atonality, stochasticism, aleatoric music have come up with makes one's head spin. It is no secret to readers of this blog that I think it's all just so much poppycock.

I liken these approaches to cheating at solitare or solo chess: There's no real-world penalty for doing such a thing, but neither is there any spiritual or emotional paycheck. To me, there can be no satisfaction in creating your own rule-sets, because there is no challenge there. Results of equal musical validity can be obtained by scattering the floor of one's study with staff paper and shaking a fountain pen over them: Just let the ink droplets be the notes, apply some overly-complex rhythmic formula, and you have something just as valid as the music of Schoenberg, Webern, Cage, Babbitt, or whomever the twentieth-century "dope of the moment" is. Where the laws of nature are absent, or the rules are the whim of the composer, there can be no perfection. Sorry, but I believe that to also be a fact, and not an opinion.

As far as absolute music is concerned, there is nothing more absolutely pure than a fugue. That is why there is nothing I like better than J.S. Bach's Art of Fugue, and nothing I enjoy more than fugue writing. As I've mentioned before, the first step in learning to write a fugue is learning to compose a fugue subject. There is no greater aid in that endeavor than to study Joseph Schillinger's Theory of Melody and Theory of Counterpoint books out of The Schillenger System of Musical Composition: That's how I "autodidactically" managed it. Of course, before this is even attempted, one needs to learn to proficiently write countrapuntal pieces that are not immitative in nature, which is a serious challenge all it's own. There are three keys to this: Miniatures, miniatures, and... miniatures.

When the laws of musical motion are learned and ascribed to, perfection is not an impossible goal: In fact, it is the inevitable end result. Through intellect and intuition, a good fugue subject in an appropriate idiom will compose itself. The end result will be that there will not be a note that could be changed without damaging the piece. Of course, different fugues can be composed on the same subject (And, believe it or not, the subject I'm working with here would work on the guitar in four vioces, but I'm nowhere near the virtuoso who would be required to play it, so that will have to wait for another day), but each decision throughout the process that is varied will lead to a series of further variations leading to a different form of perfection in the end. It is a difficult thing to explain, but one need only listen to and study Musical Offering and/or Art of Fugue to get what I'm straining for words to describe here.

My little Guitar Fugue in A minor has now nearly reached such a state of perfection (Versus the state of perfection, and I say "nearly" because I usually don't issue final pronouncements until I've actually performed a piece for a couple of years). The final key was figuring out the one-and-only solution to the arpeggiation of the harmonized version of the subject in the third episode that returns the fugue to the tonic. I probably put more work into those seven measures than the entire rest of the fugue (Well, that's an exageration, but it was very difficult to devine the proper formations).

Since there are no changes to the first three pages, here's the last page in it's final form:



Starting in measure 48, the third episode is a harmonized version of the answer in E minor, which is the subject in the home key of A minor. That's how I achieved the modulation: By treating it as the answer at the beginning, and the subject at the end. It is also on the same pitch level as the first statement of the subject back at the beginning of the fugue, and the last statements in the concluding stretto. Se est cool, non? (Pardon my French ;^)) The first and last notes of every measure of the episode are the subject: That part was easy to figure out, but the arpeggiation pattern wasn't.

The crux of the problem in this modulation is how to get rid of the F-sharp and introduce the F-natural. I solved that in measures 52 and 53, but before getting there, let me describe the "inevitabiltiy" of the arpeggiation pattern. First of all, the progression, starting in measure 48, is:

|| E minor, B major | E minor, A minor | D major, G major | C major, F#(d7) | B minor, E(7) | A minor, B(d) | A minor, E(7) ||

Because of the subject's head in measure 48, there are two patterns in this arpeggiation that are out of sync with each other. Looking at the first chord of each measure you can see that the arpeggiation alternates between 6/4 and 5/3 forms: This continues throughout all seven measures, and is only varied in the final one. The second pattern starts on the second chord of measure 49: The first two chords starting there are triads sharing the same 6/3 orientation, and then in measures 51 and 52, the patern is altered by the introduction of the fully-diminished chord on F-sharp to become seventh chords in 6/5 orientations, with a diminished fifth in the middle of the figure. The second pattern's evolution is out of sync with the first pattern because of the unique and inevitable figure in the second half of measure 48, but it is also in a 6/3 arrangement. This creates an effect that I find somehow trancendental or something.

The pattern conspires to take care of the F-sharp "problem" in measure 52, where the lowest voice of the pattern progresses from f-sharp, to G-sharp, and then to A across the bar line. Then, and only then can the F-natural be introduced in the second half of measure 53. The final two measures create an inevitable cadential modulation to the A minor chord at the beginning of measure 55, which is in a necessarily imperfect form (No tonic octave on the top and bottom), and is also at the only pitch level that is possible to prepare for the final stretto entries of the subject starting on E.

It is also worth looking at the inevitability of the top line in the arpeggiation. Measure 48 has the B at the top, which is just below the pitch climax of the piece - which was the C back in measure 47 - and this pitch is reiterated three times before decending to A in the second half of measure 49: The second half of 50 gets us down to G, the second half of 51 to F-sharp (The E-flat is an augmented second, and so does not function linearly, but only harmonically), the second half of 52 to E, which is reiterated in measure 53 to prepare for the F-natural! See how this has to be "just so", and couldn't be any other way? After the introduction of the F-natural, that pitch has to be brought down to the C at the resolution point, and that explains the inevitability of the varied 6/4 chord at the beginning of measure 54. The little do, ti, do figure within the V(7) chord is, of course, the head of the subject (Well, answer, actually, on that pitch level).

When I think I have a piece like this perfected, one of the ways I test that is by destroying the idiom I composed it in. One of the nice things about being a twenty-first century composer is the technology: All I had to do to erase any traces that this was a guitar fugue was to transpose it up an octave and apply a variety of different sounds to it via QuickTime. Most standard QuickTime sounds suck (Although there are nice HQ alternate Soundfont sets out there, and porting them into the Sounds folder in OS X is now simple, if you have a Mac), but the goofy little sound they call "Ocarina" actually sounds like the pure flute ranks of a pipe organ with even a hint of chiff. I love the way this fugue sounds with that sound in the higher octave! It really does make a nice little organ piece, which is kind of interesting.

As usual, updated PDF and MIDI files are on my .Mac FileShare page as O_STA_3.pdf/.mid, and if you want to hear the idiomatically destroyed version in the higher octave with the Ocarina sound, I put that there as well as P_GUITAR_FUGUE_Organ.mid.

Yes, yes: I said I needed to practice. My obsessive/compulsive nature simply would not let me go until I finished this fugue. I'm OK now... No, really! (My ex-wife never bought that either)

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Guitar Fugue: v0.01 Alpha Test Version

I have been composing and blogging too much lately. Guess how I know that? I had a less-than-stellar performance at tonight's gig. I love to write, but when I do too much of it, my practice schedule shatters into jagged shards all throughout my subconscious, and they tear at the soft underbelly of my confidence when I hit the stage. That's nearly fatal for me: I simply must be secure in the knowledge that I'm well prepared, or I can't get on top of it. Nobody noticed except me, and I got the usual number of compliments, but still... I'm a frickin' perfectionist!... The first set was pretty rugged, but the second was pretty well tuned up. I need to give this writing stuff a rest for a while, and go back to my routine of having a guitar in my hands for at least four hours per day. And I mean for the forseeable future. I have some major gigs coming up in the next two months. Major... Gigs...

So, I decided to shortcut the guitar fugue so that I could post the first PDF and MIDI files on my .Mac FileShare Page for those who want to take a listen. The files are O_STA_0_3.pdf and O_STA_0_3.mid.

Here's a quick recap of the entire piece as it stands now:



Page one, the exposition and first episode, has not changed one whit since before I started blogging this piece. And, by the way, I strongly recommend blogging your way through compositions: Writing out your thoughts about a piece is an enormous organizational advantage, and it brings into sharp relief any flaws in your rationale. It doesn't matter if anyone understands what you post, or even reads it.



Page two has not changed since the last post, and it now has that ahhhh! feel to me, meaning it's in the bag.



The only change to page three since the previous post is that the measure of resolution has been moved to the next page. It's also bagged.



Here's the conclusion. I decided to get out of G major with a second deceptive resolution to E minor, and this is the climactic episode. As you can see, it is over a dominant pedal (The E is the lowest open string on the guitar, so this is quite easy to play), but what isn't so readily obvious is that the chord progression is a harmonized version of the subject in augmentation. The subject starts on the top space E, and the D-sharp at the end of that measure is the second note of the subject. Then, the top space E in the entire following measure begins the decending line: E in measure 49, D in measure 50, C in measure 51, and B in measure 52. The tail of the subject is played out with the A and B in measure 53, and the A and G-sharp in measure 54. This G-sharp makes the subject modulate back to A minor at measure 55, where the stretto recapitulation starts over a tonic pedal (Which is also an open string on the guitar, so no wucking furries here either). There are two harmonies per measure, as you can see, but what you can't see is that the first four chords are the same chord progression in the development and recapitualtion of the Sonata! I just love doing stuff like that.

In order to make this work, a judicious approach to accelerando and decelerando must be taken, but it is passable in it's current form (I programmed a crude approximation of the tempo changes into the MIDI file). Believe it or not, this fugue times out at only 1:55! The Scherzo is 3:45 and the Sonata is 5:30, so the Scherzo and Fugue combined are almost the same length as the Sonata, which was my goal for the shortest possible duration the Fugue could be. Enjoy.

I have 2.5 of three pages of another Beethoven's Ninth post ready, so that will probably be the next thing that will appear here.

UPDATE: Wednesday, 10/26/05, 3:40AM. Of course, I modified the climactic episode and the tonic chord at the return to A minor after a few listens and a few... ah... some beers. Instead of creating a new post, I just updated the files at my FileShare page. The voice leading of the arpeggiated figures now makes much more sense.

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Sweating the Details

Short list of updates today, but significant ones. No changes to page one (Exposition/first episode), so I'm not going to re-post the page. You can scroll down to see it if you're new to this thread.



At measure 24, where the inverted form of the answer enters, I have changed the counterpoint. I wanted to introduce it over a dissonance (Under one, rather) like all of the rectus form entries, but I just couldn't figure out how to do it. It finally occured to me that I could put la in the interior voice and fa in the lead: That makes the do the fifth of an A major triad in 6/4 inversion. This is much more elegant of a solution. I actually figured this out while working on the corresponding entry on page three. That's the only change to page two, and it's now "in the pocket": that little change has made all the difference.



The first change to page three is at the top: I got rid of the eighth note G within the G major chord and made it a naked quarter note. This is weird, because fugues are not "supposed" to come to rest at cadence points, the cadences are best elided, or glossed over as I had it before. There are a couple of reasons why this works: First of all, the deceptive resolution is a surprise, and second, the pattern was established after the first episode previously. But, there's more. The elision in measure 36 is a rising third, which is answered in measure 40 by a falling fifth: This is exactly like the previous middle entries in E minor, and this effected was ruined by the elision over the G major chord. I like it much better this way.

The second change is at measure 39: In the previous middle entries, I had the bass voice disappearing into a third, so I duplicated that by employing a unison G, which is easy to play on the guitar since G is an open string. This, coupled with introducing the inversus under a dissonance (Here, the G is the fifth of a C major triad in second inversion), makes the entry perfect.

Then, at measure 42 I changed the counterpoint of the lead voice to make parallel sixths with the middle voice versus the previous parallel thirds: This makes the phrase much better. At the end of that phrase, I changed the tail of the inversus to get a cadence to G versus the previous half-cadence to D; also a far superior solution. The sixteenth not at the end of measure 43 is also gone, so the first place with constant sixteenths is now at measure 47, entering the next episode.

I toyed with the idea of a deceptive resolution to E minor here, but found that a thematic entry on D in the bass in augmentation could be made to deceptively resolve during the episode, so that is what I plan to do: Have a series of augmented entries that will continuously modulate to wind me up in C, or back in A minor for the recap. Not sure which yet.

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"Onward, through the Fog": Blundering Toward Perfection

Back in my highschool days, there was a famous "head shop" called Oat Willies in Austin that all of us long-haired, hippie-types bought our paraphernalia at. They had these equally famous bumper stickers (Or infamous bumper stickers, depending on your personal perspective on psychoactive substances) which read, "Onward, through the Fog". The reference was to a "stoned" fog, of course, but I got a chuckle today when I remembered that in the context of this guitar fugue.

Previously, when I was not working within the hyper-restrictive idiom of solo guitar music, I composed fugues in a very rational way by sketching out all of the possibilities, organizing them in the sequence I wanted to present them, and then "constructing" the fugue. I wrote enough fugues in that way that I developed a tried-and-true methodology that I could count on. I've had to throw most of that out the window with this piece, and rather than composing it, I believe that what I am doing is closer to extemporizing it.

Also back in highschool, I was on the Speech and Debate Team, and I was a Texas State Finalist one year in... Extemporaneous Speaking. For extemp, you were given a subject and you had thirty minutes to prepare (Or, was it twenty minutes?), while in Improvisational Speaking you had to speak immediately. I hated improv, but I was quite good at extemp. Oratory was the category analogous to composition: You had your subject chosen, and your speech written coming into the competition, and you could hone it throughout the season. Strangely, I found Oratory boring.

Well, the process I'm going through with this piece is somewhere betwixt and between composition and improvisation: I'm making it up as I go, but working it out as well. It's like slo-mo improv, or seat-o'-the-pants comp. Take your pick. In any event, I am enjoying the process emensely and am quite happy with the results so far.

One thing you must be to wite successful fugues is a ruthless perfectionist: Saying "that'll work" and leaving it at that just won't do. I must admit to being kind of over-the-top in the perfectionism department in some regards (For the unabridged story, please see my ex-wife). Ahem... Anyway: Every single note must function in a way that contributes to the perfect cohesiveness of the whole in a fugue. One of the countless stupifying aspects of Bach's fugues is that they fulfill this requirement while simultaneously maintaining an easy, relaxed, quasi-improvisatory feel: Especially in the episodes. I've barely scratched the surface of that effect only once or twice before, but this piece is getting there (In my opinion). Cool thing about being a perfectionist composer is, it's your personal ideal of perfection that is the only thing that matters. The relative merits of your particular esthetic are for time and history to judge, but your contemporaries are excluded because it's impossible for them to have the perspective that time alone can offer: If they like what you do, fine. If not, equally fine. My attitude is, "don't matter/don't care": I'm my own harshest critic anyway (But not to a crippling degree, which many folks suffer from). But, I digress...



No changes to page one: Exposition and episode one are at 100%.

One of the nice things about the subject/answer combination I'm working with is that the subject begins with a cadence to the dominant and ends with a cadence to the tonic, and the answer begins with a cadence to the tonic and ends with a half-cadence to the domnant. That's one of the features that makes the dovetail effect in the entries. The first episode begins after a statement of the subject, so it begins on a tonic chord.



No changes to page two: First middle entries and episode two are now at 100% also.

With this cadence/half-cadence difference between the subject and answer in mind, you can see here that the inverted form of the answer (Which starts on the tonic degree) also ends on a half-cadence. That's why the second episode is four measures, versus the previous three: I has to traverse a measure of dominant harmony before arriving at the new tonic to get to the point where the first episode began. Thing is, both of the inverted froms end in half-cadences because of the asymmetrical division of the diatonic octave: To get a cadence to the tonic with an inverted from of the subject (Or answer), it would have to start on the subdominant degree. I toyed with doing this, but didn't like the effect, so...



First change is that I simplified the CP to the first entry in G major by going back to the version of the free voice in measure 20 and writing a variation of that. Not only does this add to the cohesiveness of the piece, but hearing the 2-3 suspension/resolution chain more clearly is a big bonus. The overly humorous effect of the deceptive resolution is also greatly attenuated now. It's more of a fresh surprise that brings a smile rather than a slapstic event that causes belly-laughs now. I also dropped the sixteenth notes in the bass at measure 35, deciding that building up to the constant sixteenth surface rhythm all at once was overly abrupt. I am now 99.9% sure of this first entry in G.

The entry of the answer at measure 36 is unchanged, and it's now built up to, which makes it far more effective.

So far, with the entries of the subject and answer, we have antecedent phrase (tonic cadence)/consequent phrase (half-cadence), but where I start the entries of the inverted forms, I had some problems related to the fact that they both end in consquent phrases to a half-cadence. The reason for having two entries here versus one in the previous middle entries is that I wanted both the 7-6 and 2-3 chains against the inversus forms. Had I inverted the previous 4-3 chain, a 5-6 chain would have resulted. In a post long ago I explained how this was actually OK, regardless of the objections of some counterpoint teachers, because it is an adorned series of parallel sixths, and not a chain of fifths, but I don't particulatly care for the effect in this piece.

As is stands now, the phraseology is antecedant/consequent, consequent/antecedant. I achieved this not by starting the inverted form on the subdominant degree, but by modifying it's tail at measure 47. I'll have to sleep on these last two entries, but my initial feeling is favorable. One of the things I like is that the parallel tenths over the subject in the lead voice that start in measure 41 (Which I was able to get away with because the resulting parallel fifths are perfect, diminished, perfect) have their line continued in measure 45 with the statement of the inverted form of the subject.

The C in measure 47 will be the pitch climax of the piece, and the third episode will be in constant sixteenth notes. Not sure what form it will take yet, but I'm thinking at this point I'll want to work a harmonized version of the subject into it. We'll see.

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Left Turns and Musical Humor

Sometimes I crack myself up. The guitar fugue was coming along nicely, and I had arrived in B minor (The supertonic minor) after the second episode I wrote (Which was just a variation on the first one). But, there was a problem: None of the material worked in B minor. Not on the guitar, anyway. As I mentioned before, immitative counterpoint is not even really idiomatic to the guitar, so a writing strict fugue on the fretboard is frought with problems and perils.

I had developed the subject-related materials in A minor, so you would think that a silly whole step higher would be no problem. Not so. The open strings I relied upon in A minor were suddenly absent, and the way I wanted to exposit the subject and countersubject ran me into intractable range and fingering problems. I tried a lot of things: The rectus and inversus forms of the subject/answer combo, a variation of the subject and answer with chromatic tetrachords replacing the diatonic ones - also in both rectus and inversus orientations. Several other variations as well. Bzzzzzzzzt! "But, thanks for playing the game, Hucbald!" Nothing happening. The key of B minor was out of the question.

Well, I had by this time modified the second episode to a point of perfection, and I fell in love with the darned thing. So, I began to work with the materials and found that not only was the key of C major available (As I had known from the beginning), but the key of G major was as well. Not only that, but when I was piddling around in G major it suddenly hit me: I could do 2-3 and 7-6 suspension chains against the subject and answer in that key. It was a moment all composers are familiar with: "So, that's what this piece is about: Suspension chains!" My favorite way to write fugues is as canonic combinations, so that they'll come out to be stretto fugues, but this subject and answer didn't have much to offer in that area, so it was nice to finally have the crux of the piece revealed to me.

Back to that episode: OK, I'm at a big, fat F-sharp dominant seventh chord. I can get to G major by... going there directly! Of course! A simple deceptive resolution! Well, ah... it has a humorous effect. With all of those uber-serious minor key prerorations preceeding it, it's just... funny. So - what the heck - I just compounded that by the way I wrote the counterpoint to the suspension chains and adorned the final cadential measures. I laughed myself silly. Really. Not sure if it will stay in this form or not, but here's what I did.



The exposition and first episode are unchanged (This is, in fact, a re-link to yesterday's photo). I'm 99.9% solid on this.



The only change to the second page (First middle entries/second episode) is the quarter notes in the top voice in the episode. The E and D originally took up the entire second and third measures of the episode, but I was not happy with the repeated D into the final measure of it. That small change really added more than the sum of it's parts to it, and that's one of the resons I am desparate to keep it. And then, I used the fourth (and the fifth inversion) in the counterpoint for the following entries, as you'll see. I would say I'm 97.2% sure I'll keep this page as-is.



Here we are: Instead of starting the subject off against the quasi-dissonance of a fourth below as previously, I start it out this time against the real dissonance of a major second. This is colorful, but not at all jarring. All you have is a 4-3 suspension resolution inside of it's fifth. No biggie. You can see the quarter note fourths in the bass between A and D, which integrates with the previous episode, and those notes are open strings, so this is the only key that this passage will work in. And, the second and seventh suspension chains don't work out well in the minor mode either.

As mentioned previously, I want the third episode to be constant sixteenth notes, so I'm working up to that by embellishing the cadential final measures of the subject and answer. It's funny, but these passages remind me of Fernando Sor for some reason. That's funny to me, because I really don't care for his music much.

The statement of the answer is as far as I've gotten so far. The G is not an open string, but the seventh suspension chain is much easier to play than the second suspension chain is, so the passage isn't too overly taxing.

The bottom two staves are the stretto conclusion, which I've developed with a constant sixteenth texture after the dotted eighth in the final measure. I take this close from 72 BPM to about 27-36 BPM, and it now has an inevitable finality to it that was juuuuust missing previously: This is a true perfect cadence now with ti-do in the lead and sol-do in the bass. While I'm not too sure about the G major entries yet, the ending is at that 99.9% point now.

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Compositional Choices and Cans of Worms

Choices determine style, and to me, style is everything. I chose to follow the examples that God has given me in the reflections of His character that I percieve in nature. The nature of sound - the overtone series - defines modality as the normative state of music, and the cumulative dominant seventh chord that the series makes defines the falling fifth/rising fourth as the normative harmonic progression. For me, the overtone series defines what music is and is not as well as what can and cannot be considered to be music. So, the pan-modal conception that I bring to music - which is the cumulative result of my thirty years of performing, writing, and studies in the rock, blues, pop, jazz, and traditional generas - is a choice that I made based on my rational analysis of the nature of the musical world around me.

To put a finer point on it, God at work in nature is the master pattern-maker: Everything in nature is a pattern. Every living thing is simply a variation on the thematic material of DNA, and the entire cosmos is made up of planetary, stellar, galactic and even inter-galactic patterns that are the result of gravitational interactions (On a mind-bogglingly vast scale!). So, as a man's expression of intuited and/or rationalized reflections of nature, art is also pattern-making. Therefore, random constructions do not constitute art by what I believe to be the only logical definition that it is possible to ascribe to. Others may disagree: I would only say that they have every right to be wrong.

What brought this to mind today was not some discussion or other, but some choices I was faced with in the guitar fugue I'm writing. This may seem like an awkward segue, but it's not.

While the decision to write in an idiomatically modal way (or not) constitutes the most fundamental of stylistic meta-choices, there are an infinite host of smaller decisions one has to make in the development of both an overall individual style, and the style within any given piece. One of those lesser choices that I made - albeit a profound one nonetheless - is that very small pieces of music can express beauty, perfection, and mastery. They don't even have to modulate (I tend to tire of Baroque miniatures because of the predictability of them: "Oh, we're in a major mode, so this phrase is going to end on the dominant.", or "OK, we're in a minor mode, so this phrase is going to end in the relative." Zzzzzz... Years of writing pop songs taught me short pieces don't have to modulate at all, and I write a lot of pieces like that). As a result, concision is an overriding goal of mine. If you look at the very late or final styles of most composers who are considered great, the music is taught, precice, and concise. Mozart died tragically young, but the finale of the Jupiter Symphony - with it's five-voice invertible counterpoint fireworks - times out at about six minutes. Beethoven's late string quartets have some monumental pieces in them, but also a bunch of tiny little pieces, many of which are around three minutes in duration. Most of the fugues in Bach's Art of Fugue are three to four minutes in duration, and even Moroney's completion of the final fugue - which has four subjects - is "only" 10:45. I'm trying to think of a string quartet movement by Haydn that is even close to ten minutes long, but the closest I can get is the cantabile of Op. 76 no. 3 in C (Emperor), which is about eight and a half minutes (And is quite exceptionally long for a Haydn movement). You get the point. I looked at all of this evidence and decided prolixity was for the most part abandoned by the overwhelming majority of great composers after their years of experience, so who am I to disagree?

When I recorded a CD to archive twenty-seven of my solo guitar pieces a few years ago, the longest piece came out to 4:57, and that was a Prelude that I played too slowly (I think it comes in at just over four minutes the way I play it now), and the shortest piece was 1:49. Out of those 27 pieces, 19 of them are less than three minutes long! The way I play them today - with five years to work out the interpretations - I'm thinking twenty-two of them are now under three minutes, and five or six are under two. So...

I have a collection of fugue themes that I've written over the years, and I was thinking about appropriating one of them that had a little bit of the character of the first one I'm using here. It was actually really cool because it's a slow, majestic subject that has some highly dissonant and expressive counterpoint written to it, and it has the feel of a lamentation. Since the sonata doesn't have a slow movement, I was thinking about writing a double fugue (and I still may), but I'm tending against at the moment.

Problem is, doing that will open up a whole new can of worms: The fugue is at 1/4=72 BPM, and the first subject is 3.5 measures long (If it can't be an odd number of measures in length, a fractional number is the next best thing). The other subject I'm thinking about is 7.5 measures long in 2/4, and would add a good three minutes to the piece in and of itself, as it goes naturally from tonic minor, to relative major and then to dominant minor before all of it's combinations are revealed. It is actually from an organ piece that I wrote years ago, but I was amazed to find that I could adjust the key and the ranges of the countersubjects and it fit great on the guitar in A minor, C major, and E minor (Both my compositional and playing techniques have improved markedly since those days).

If I decide I can live with the Scherzo's pitch climax being at around the 50% point of the overall sonata, I may do it, but the resulting fugue will be a monster by my standards if I make that choice. Just not sure if the stylistic integrity of the piece will be enhanced by that or not yet. Anyway...

Made a few enhancements.



As you can see, I added a point of resistance to the subject and answer in the final measure of each with the dotted-eighth/sixteenth rhythmic figure. Besides adding that moment of tension, the figure also yeilds four rhythmic values in ten attacks through seven pitches across the range of a minor sixth, which is quite an improvement. The rest of the exposition is unchanged, but I also applied the new rhythmic figure to the first episode.



The first middle entries are now much improved. On of the things I wanted to do was to take my time building up to a constant surface rhythm of eighth notes, but I was taking too much time with it, so things were dragging. By introducing a 4-3 suspension/resolution chain in the countersubject/counter-answer here (Which are both essentially the same now, as subject and answer are), I got the ball rolling far more effectively. The result is far superior to the original version: The new tonic E minor chord at the beginning of measure sixteen is now the last naked quarter note, which is perfect. Speaking of opening cans of worms...

Where I was thinking of putting an extreme episode previously, I decided that the bass voice needed a thematic statement instead. Playing the rectus of the subject starting on the current dominant level at the note B would run me off the fretboard, as it would require a D-sharp below the open E string. So, I used the inversus of the answer starting on the lowest E. This is frickin' amazing. I had to dispense with introducing it over (under) a perfect fourth, because the subject is actually "expected" here, and not the answer, but the resulting changes to the inverted counteranswers just add a sudden surge to the energy level.

And, while this post is about stylistic choices, I should mention that I flushed the idea of extreme episodes entirely: This is to be a strict fugue, versus a showy quasi-fugue.

At this point I have the second episode as just a variation of the forst episode, and it ends on the V/V region. This is further afield than most Baroque fugues go, but it is B minor, which is the key of the Scherzo, and I want to delay the appearance of the relative major until just before the end. One reason is that the minor inversus forms offer a lot of possibilities: They can start on the tonic, dominant, or subdominant levels, and with the raised ascending tones many cool dissonant sonorities are available. The major mode should come after all that jazz.



The little stretto/recap also now benefits from the new tail figure rhythm for the subject, as well as the suspension chain at what is currently measure 39 in this sketch. Combined with a deceleration, this phrase now closes out convincingly.

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