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3 – SONG: THE INSTRUMENT´S DEGREES OF ACTION IN THE CREATION PROCESS

In composition processes, both in the “written tradition” and in the “oral tradition”, the musical creation may happen through “internal listening” sparing the handling of the instrument or the use of voice. However, in light of the statements made, we will point out three basic integrating categories in this process of creation that have the use and role of a melodic-harmonic instrument such as the guitar or the piano. The categories are not rigid, because the same music – as it will be shown – may use resources from all of them to present, for example, contrasting parts. It is worth emphasizing that, in general, a larger presence of the instrument in the melodic search favors contours that reveal a “harmonic nature” of the melody.

1 – Melodies composed with the voice (or “in the head”) [i] – use of the rhythmic support for the stimuli game established between the melody rhythm and the referential rhythmic of the gender, which may or may not be based on a fixed design of the “timeline” (or key). The melodic contour resulting from this game starts orienting a posterior harmonization in the usual harmonic repertoire of the genre.

2 – Melodies composed with the voice, counting on rhythmic-harmonic support of the instrument — reproduce aspects of the category presented above, transformed by the use of an instrument that enables to obtain a harmonic sense that becomes the piece’s attribute of identity, just as one of the “inseparable parts of the composition”. [i]

3 – Melodies composed with instrument interacting with voice in the melodic search – it does not dismiss any of the possibilities mentioned above; however, counting on the very resources of the instrument that then acts directly in the melodic search it may also create an instrumental piece – beyond the song – that many times gains autonomous life. [i] Herein, in consequence of the reflection generated from the research in compositional processes of the popular song, we present the concept of “active instrument in the melodic search”. [i]

  1. LINK with the idea “Mauro Duarte, João Nogueira did everything in the head” presented in – 3.5 – it seems easy, but it is impossible – in the statement of Guinga;

    LINK with the idea “(Baden) did a lot of things in the head” presented in – 3.3 – the song without the guitar – in the statement of P. C. Pinheiro.

  2. LINK with the same idea in – 1.2 – a guitar that meshes with the song – in the statement of João Bosco.

  3. LINK with the idea “this music had not pretension to be a song” presented in – 3.1 – the non-song? – in the statement of Guinga.

  4. Idea that starts being conceived in the theoretical plan in 2007 on the occasion of the workshop Melodic-harmonic elaboration in the Brazilian song that I conducted in different Brazilian universities through PAC – Program of Cultural Action – Secretaria de Cultura do Estado de São Paulo (Secretary of Culture – State of São Paulo)

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