Compose a chord progressions using harmonic cadences, cycle chord progressions, negative harmony, chord substitutions, back cycling or spice up and thicken your melodies with block chords, among many other harmony techniques:
Harmonize a melody using different chord extensions and chord formations like triads, seventh chords, chords by fourths, seconds or clusters:
Never get stuck again and unleash your creativity by re-purposing your musical materials:
Rhythm and melody go hand in hand as it creates movement, tension and contributes to the emotional value in the development of your musical ideas – learn how by using polyrhythms, different meters, accents, metric modulation and other techniques:
Use scale materials like modes, symmetric scales, two-octave scales or create your own to compose your melodies and extract your harmonies from them.
Experiment with the different interval relationships and learn how these can affect the feel of your main melody and chords – more about intervals:
Tempo can also be modulated just as you can modulate to a different tonality. That can be achieved by simply performing a given musical passage in a faster or slower tempo, or even gradually change the tempo (Ritardando or Accelerando).… Read More »Metric Modulation
Also called irregular meters, these can be considered the sum of two or more simple meters or time signatures. For example, a 5/4 can be the sum of a 2/4 + 3/4 meters. As a result, the natural accents of… Read More »Asymmetric Divisions of the Meter
In this post I will be mentioning two ways you can influence the listener in how a given rhythmic part or groove is perceived. In some cases you can even use the same rhythmic cell that you have been… Read More »Rhythmic Accent and Polymeters
Polyrhythms are a way of introducing some freshness and novelty in the way you combine different rhythms played by different or a single instrument. Also referred to as cross-rhythm, a polyrhythm is essentially a combination of two or more different… Read More »Polyrhythms
It is the use of two or more distinguishable key centers, simultaneously. However, the term bitonal can be used instead of polytonality, referring to the use of two key centers in the musical composition. One of the most important aspects… Read More »Polytonality and Polymodality
Polyharmony refers to a musical passage in which polychords are used in a chord succession or create a harmonic flow. As mentioned, when introducing the way polychord structures are built, the component triads can either be kept distinct through simple… Read More »Polyharmony
A chord is ambiguous when it can be associated or implies more than one tonality or mode. As an example, every major or minor triad can be associated to two or more tonalities. For instance, the C major chord exists… Read More »Harmonic Ambiguity
