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GEMS 3
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Matthew H. Fields

I mentioned a willingness to post some general and specific
observations regarding music composition, and so far, I continue to
receive an enthusiastic response. GEMS 1 was a discussion of drama
and climax, while GEMS 2 was about parallel octaves and fifths.
Therefore, this is the third such posting.

The topic for today is:

SHORTCUTS FOR UNDERGRADUATE THEORY HOMEWORK

We're composers, and we want more time to compose. But those of us in
conventional conservatory programs spend a lot of time mastering
4-part harmony and choral counterpoint. This takes time.

Can these shortcuts help? Maybe.

Disclaimers: I am presenting the material here mainly as my opinion. If
you try to make use of my suggestions and they don't help you write
fabulous music, I don't accept any liability. Likewise, it is strictly
to your credit and none of mine if you do write fabulous music before or
after reading these posts. Plenty of the ideas I will be discussing
in this series have been mentioned before, and some theorists may even
wish to lay copyright claim or patent claim to some of them. However, I
claim that the core ideas have been known to composers and used by them
long before anybody published any writings on them, and these ideas are
therefore basically in the public domain. But here let me acknowledge
the inspiration of the great late Russel Dannenburg, a fine composer and
the first person to teach me music theory.

On the other hand, I actually sat down and wrote the text of this posting,
and it took me a bit of time and thought, so if anybody were to exploit
this text as a commodity without consulting me, I might get very mad
(standard disclaimer).

All that having been said, I am interested in getting some feedback
on how interesting or useful you find this article.

ABSTRACT
In this article, I will list a couple hints for (possibly) breezing
through theory homework.

INTRODUCTION
These hints worked for me, although I no longer conciously think of
them or any other methodology when doing that sort of problem.

DEFINITIONS
I'm not defining anything this week. If you're in Freshperson Theory,
you're probably already bogged down in definitions.


THREE BASIC SUGGESTIONS

Try these on one or two examples. If they help, they help, if not,
discard them and stick to the instructions in your theory book.

The bass line can either move by step/7th, third/sixth, or 4th/5th.

1) If the bass moves by step, try moving the other 3 voices as little
as possible, in contrary motion to the bass. If it moves by 7th, treat
it as if it were moving by step and the second note just got moved to
a different octave---then apply this rule.

2) If the bass moves by 3rd or 6th, try holding on to as many common
tones as possible.

3) If the bass moves by 4th or 5th, try modeling the progression on
the tail of a familiar cadence formula.


LISTENING ASSIGNMENT

Play and listen to your solutions. Don't just work them out on paper.
This is not a chess game: it's a craft that may be useful to you some
day. Train your ear to tell you when you've made a mistake.


WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT
You've already got enough written assignments.

CONCLUSION
I hope some of these ideas are useful to some of you out there. The
only way to learn to use them is to play with them constantly until
they become an automatic part of your musical personality.

For at least a while I will be keeping a copy of this article here
in my disk directory. As long as the volume of "reprint" requests
is reasonably manageable, I will offer to send copies out by e-mail.

Next time: hints for canon and fugue (from a composers' point of view).

I can't really tell you when the next article will be ready for
posting, since I haven't written it yet. The feedback I get from
this article may have important consequences concerning how I write the
next one.

14 September 1992 Matthew H. Fields, D.M.A.