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28 Jun 05 - 05:59 PM (#1511985) Subject: (Silly ?) What key / mode is 'Simon' in? From: CapriUni No, I'm not asking what key a guy named Simon is singing in... I'm wondering about that electronic game from the 1980's, inspired by the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The machine plays four different notes randomly, in an ever-lengthening pattern, and at an ever quickening pace. You have to play the sequence back without a mistake. An online version of the game is here: Simon/Flash (requires flash to play). Anyway, what little knowledge I have of music theory includes this tidbit: You must end a tune on the tonic note of its key, or will feel incomplete. The thing is, no matter which of the notes Simon ends on, the melody sounds "right" and "finished" to my ear (and, most infuriating, each of those random tunes is liable to get stuck in my head). So I'm wondering what key that is... Also, has anyone out there familiar with the game tried to use Simon to compose a song? (I warned you this was silly! |
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28 Jun 05 - 11:46 PM (#1512185) Subject: RE: (Silly ??) What key is 'Simon' in? From: M.Ted The deal is--the musical tidbit that you know is wrong--it isn't necessary for a musical phrase to end on the tonic--simple as that. It can end on any note. The feeling that a melody needs to resolve comes from something a bit different--it comes from movement from tonic to dominant harmony--and you can write melodies without this, too-- When you write a tune using the diatonic scales that we use them in western music,you create tension by moving back and forth between tonic and dominant harmony(between notes that are within the C chord harmony and notes in the G7 chord harmony)-after a certain number of counts, it l leads you to back to the tonic, because that is what our western music tends to do, our ears have learned to expect it. But it doesn't have to be that way. There are major scale melodies in music from other places, in Serbian folk music, for instance, that end on the dominant-- But there is a lot of music that doesn't create tension by moving to the dominant--so you don't feel that need to resolve at all. Indonesian Gamelan music is like that--and, a bit closer to home, pentatonic scales are like that. When you use pentatonic scales to construct a melody you don't ever move to dominant harmony, so you don't need to resolve. Anyway, when you create melodies without shifting from tonic to dominant harmony, your ear won't tell you that the last note is unresolved, no matter what it is. You can experiment with this If you pick out a melody, using only the notes in, say, a C 6 chord(C E G A C), and ending on different notes in the chord. |
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29 Jun 05 - 05:38 AM (#1512284) Subject: RE: (Silly ??) What key is 'Simon' in? From: The Fooles Troupe Simon Says: "I am in whatever key I want to be!" |
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29 Jun 05 - 07:36 PM (#1512852) Subject: RE: (Silly ??) What key is 'Simon' in? From: CapriUni Simon Says: "I am in whatever key I want to be!" Heh. That's true... Anyway, it's an addictive game. I've only gotten up to 11 notes in a row before I make a mistake. But a friend of mine recently got up to 56! :::Boggle::: |