I settled on the key of B. The two modes, then, are an Enka mode in B, and the folk music In mode.

X:1
T:Enka scale
L:1/4
V:Y clef=treble name="B Minor"
B,^CDE^FGAB
V:I clef=treble name="yonanuki tan-onkai"
B,^CDz^FGzB

Modern, mainstream Enka uses a modified minor scale called ヨナ{抜:ぬ}き{短:たん}{音階:おんかい}　(minor scale without four and seven). I’m assuming that means the natural minor scale, not the harmonic or melodic minor scales.

Using the information outlined in [[Japanese modes]], I constructed the In mode in the key of B:

X:1
T:In mode (B)
L:1/4
V:I clef=treble name="In"
ecB | BG^F

which gives me the tones B C# D F# G

And then using the jumping to convert this to a scale:

X:1
T:In scale (B)
L:1/4
V:I clef=treble name="In"
BG^FECB,

which gives me the tones B G F# E C

And, finally, merging them together.

X:1
T:Polymode
L:1/4
V:S clef=treble name="Shared"
B,zz zz^FG B
V:E clef=treble name="yonanuki tan-onkai"
z z^CD
V:I clef=treble name="In"
z C zzE

So that’s 7 tones to work with. B C C# D E F# G.

• Shared: B F# G
• Enka-only: C# D
• In-only: C E

It’s definitely not the full chromatic scale, which… might be a problem for this exercise. I’m not sure how important that is.

It also doesn’t make the loveliest scale, but that’s not the point. Next step is figuring out what I can make with these – especially what chords.

The general idea I had for this song was to start out in the Enka mode, do a short transition to In, then finish the song with a section combining the two.

After starting the introductory section, I quickly realized that composing an ambient song probably wasn’t going to work for this exercise. It’s certainly possible, but writing passages that highlighted each mode was tricky without clear melodic phrases.

The opening came together pretty well. I wrote 3 sections & doubled them – A A B B C C. I then had to revisit my notes on modes and rework the passages to highlight the tonic and dominant notes (B & F#) which helped firmly position it as in B minor.

I then wrote a short transition section that only used the tones shared between the two modes (B F# & G), and wrote another passage, this time using the In mode. With this one, I tried to keep the stopping tones in mind, and built the phrases around the “tetrachords”. The stopping tones for this scale are just B & F# again, but this section did end up having a decidedly different flavor.

around this time I came across the first big problem. But first, I built a harmony around these sections where one voice used a guitar, and another that roughly followed the same melody used a koto. I then tweaked the koto part so it would add a few extra notes, or shift and repeat the phrase a little bit later. This worked pretty well.

But then I wanted to add some chords, and that’s where I ran into issues. Because I’m writing in a pentatonic scale, not all of the minor chords were available, and while I know that Jazz often uses a pentatonic scale, the Enka scale doesn’t quite line up, and so a lot of information in my research didn’t quite line up.

X:1
T:Enka scale
L:1/4
B,^CDz^FGzB

1. B minor (BDF#)
2. C# Minor (C#EG)
3. (DF#A)
4. E
5. (F#AC#)
6. (GBD)
7. A

X:1
T:In scale (B)
L:1/4
V:I clef=treble name="In"
B,CzE^FGzB

1. B dim (BDF#)
2. C Major (CEG)
3. D
4. E Minor (EGB)
5. F# dim (F#AC)
6. G Major (GBD)
7. A

This obviously wasn’t going to work for harmony. Much less adding any sort of chord progression. (also, I’m pretty sure I got the names of some of them wrong)

Finally, I discovered shell chords. This was one of the missing pieces. Basically, I could fill in the missing / invalid chords by using larger (7th, 9th, etc.) chords and just leaving out the unavailable notes.

This gave me several chords to work with (instead of only 2 for the Enka scale and 2 for the In scale), but when I started trying to pepper in chords or do anything, it just didn’t sound right.

And then I came to the second major problem – I just couldn’t figure out how to resolve the song. I tried blending the 2 modes, but it was way harder than I had hoped. Initially, I tried a variation of the Enka mode section for the guitar & a variation of the In mode section for the koto, and have them play off of each other / harmonize with each other. It was a decent start, and I do think it might still be a good idea, but I couldn’t get it to work.

Ultimately, this exercise turned out to be beyond my current capabilities. I knew it would be challenging, and I knew that I’d have to follow a trail of new concepts like I did with previous exercises, but this one required practice with some of the new concepts before I feel like I’d be ready to tackle it.

Specifically, there are 2 areas I think I need more experience with:

• using modes
• composing with a pentatonic scale

Also, more practice with key changes and chord progressions in general would probably help me.

I do think I want to revisit this song & try to finish it in the future, but for now, this is my unfinished song:

• Etude 7.1 - polymodal chromaticism.mp3

Polymodal chromaticism is the use of more than one mode (music) at a time.

Usually, the layered modes share the same tonic, like (e.g.) C Dorian & C Lydian. It’s so named due to the fact it’s possible to obtain the chromatic scale (all 12 possible notes in the Western tradition).

X:1
T:C Dorian
K:C dorian
L:1/4
c, d, e, f, g, a, b, ]

X:1
T:C Lydian
K:C lydian
L:1/4
c, d, e, f, g, a, b, ]

Polymodal chromaticism allow you to alternate between the modes, or use tones belonging to either simultaneously for harmony, greatly expanding the musical palette.

So…

I want to continue experimenting with Japanese folk music. So, I’m thinking that instead of using 2 Western (Greek) modes, I’ll use 2 Japanese modes.

The biggest issue I see is combining Western and Japanese music theory. The purpose of this exercise is to explore polymodal chromaticism, and the harmonic possibilities using it, and Japanese traditional music doesn’t really utilize harmony in the same way as Western music.

There’s always the shin Nihon ongaku route (that is, combining traditional Japanese music with Western influences).

Important thing is I need to try not to get too hung up on the folk music aspect & just focus on writing a song. I’m thinking sticking with ambient might be a good approach.

To get started, I revisited some research on Japanese modes. I need to pick 2 to combine, and a tonic (stopping) note… I’m also considering looking into the scale Enka uses…

Man, this one took forever.

I simply don’t have the skill yet to pull off writing folk music, and definitely not in the style of traditional Japanese folk music. I definitely need to do more study.

I ended up going with composing an ambient track for guitar, koto, shakuhachi & a couple nice ambient synths.

To start with, I built a few score files for FL Studio to enable highlighting Japanese pentatonic scales, and tried out a few of them until I found one that sounded good. I settled on the In mode (Miyakobushi scale), in the key of A. As discussed in part 1, this is built up of 2 tetrachords.

X:1
T:Miyakobushi (A)
M: 3/4
L:1/8
A_BD' EFA |]

I started with a series of strummed guitar chords, which I added echo & reverb to – inspired by Klimek – underneath which I layered a repeating series of long, echoey pads and another quiet synth that simply walked the scale. Once I was happy with this, I started adding a little bit of variation – a different set of guitar chords, and then a sprinkling of chords where the top note was offset by a half note.

Once I got this to a point where I could listen to it on repeat & sorta zone out to it, I tried extending the song – basically repeating the pattern a few times, and adding a little more variation here & there.

Finally, I added samples. I sprinkled in some Japanese bells for color, and added a backing track of forest + babbling brook ambience.

• Etude 4.3 - pentatonic scale.mp3

I’m definitely biting off way more than I can chew with this exercise.

Every step of this journey, I’ve been using these exercises as a jumping off point for research, doing my best of making sense of the information I find & trying to apply that knowledge. Or some semblance of something approaching knowledge. But without formal training or anything approaching a proper framework, so much of what I find is over my head, so when I start with 3 topics to study, the first one leads to 2 more topics to study, and those lead to 4 more… And because this is all self-directed, I’ve skipped over a lot of the fundamentals, and so none of my knowledge is built on a solid foundation.

… but at least with Western music theory (leaning towards Classical), there’s a lot out there to cross-reference & put together. With traditional Japanese music, however, the resources just aren’t as plentiful. Certainly not in English, and not at a level I can understand.

I know that Japanese folk music uses a pentatonic scale. Most of the stuff I’ve found doesn’t go a whole lot deeper than that. As far as approaches to melody, harmony, rhythm, song structure … That’s still lacking.

But! I have started to put together some useful information.

Heterophony

Heterophony (i.e. multiple voices loosely following a single melody) is much more common than homophony (a single melodic line supported by a chord progression). This variance is generally greater in Japanese music than in other genres.

oftentimes, the vocal & shamisen parts may seem to lag behind each other or “dance around” each other.

Meter

many folk songs are in free meter (esp. for solo voice or voice + shakuhachi), while others are more rhythmic. In those songs, the flute will sometimes play a countermelody, while the shamisen will play a melodic variation or drones. or, the shakuhachi will play a heterophonic variation line & the shamisen will play a tremolo drone

Instruments

Typical voice pairings:

• Folk:
  • voice + shakuhachi
  • voice, shakuhachi, shamisen
• Shinto:
  • wagon zither + kagura-bue (bamboo flute) + hichiriki (double reed) + percussion (clapper, bells)
  • taiko + take-bue (bamboo flute) + other percussion (hand gong)

Rhythm

• commonly has “forward-leaning percussion” (similar to an American shuffle, but w/o a strong back-beat)
  • I do not understand this statement
• drums do call & response with melody, filling in sustains & rests

Harmony

• voicings based on perfect 4ths
  • build up chords from 5th, to root, to 4th

Scale

pentatonic, obviously. But it’s not enough to just use a pentatonic scale (though a specifically Japanese scale will help), but use 4th-based “shapes” (instead of triads)

Otherwise, I have tried to analyze some performances of Japanese folk music, but I simply do not have the ear to be able to get much out of listening practice yet.

I’m sticking with this one for a while, but I may have to either:

1. drop the “make it sound like Japanese folk music” idea & just try to write a song
2. take some actual lessons
3. or, stick with it & see it through

Here I want to start jumping around a bit. And since I need some practice writing some Japanese folk-inspired music, this seemed like a good exercise to jump to.

So, first things first, I need to pick some instruments. I can change them later, but it’ll help to have something to start with. And since I definitely want to stick with freely-available instruments while I’m still learning, my options are somewhat limited. Eventually, I narrowed it down to:

• koto
• shakuhachi
• some vaporwavey-sounding synth (TBD)
• dungeon synth drums, with maybe a taiko drum if I can find it

Traditional Japanese folk music has been pretty difficult to study, since so much of the literature on music theory is Euro-centric or through a Western lens.

But there was an Ethno-musicologist, Fumio Koizumi, in the 1950s who studied Japanese folk music in-depth, and most of what I’ve been able to find has been based on his research.

Some general properties of Japanese folk music:

• Japanese melodies lack clearly defined intervals. Instead, they have easily moveable notes, and a central note that remains constant (the “nuclear pitch”)
• Some primitive Japanese music has melodies consisting of only 2 notes. The nuclear pitch, and another that functions an an embellishment, or a movement away from home base. This is sometimes called the “stopping pitch”

Some disorganized notes on Japanese scales, based on Koizumi’s research:

Four modes:

• Yoh mode (folk song mode) G-A
• In mode (Miyakobushi) B♭-A
• Ritsu/Ryo (Yoh mode) B-A
• Ryukyu mode G♯-A

Building these up to make perfect fourths, we get:

• Yoh: E-G-A
• In: D-B♭-A
• Ritsu/Ryo: D-B-A
• Ryukyu: E-G♯-A

(These are called tetrachords because they’re built around perfect fourths, not because they’re tetrads (4-note chords))

If we stack two tetrachords on top of each other (joining them by “jumping” or connecting), we get a pentatonic scale:

• Yoh: A-C-D E-G-A
  • something about B being added to create a strong pull towards A
• Miyakobushi (In): A-B♭-D E-F-A
  • This will sometimes be changed to A-B♭-D-E-G-A when ascending, then return to A-F-E-D-B♭-A when descending.
• Ritsu (Yoh): A-B-D E-F♯-A
  • This also changes when ascending/descending. Use A-B-D-E-F♯-A when ascending (ritsu), but lower the third pitch when descending, giving A-F♯-E-C♯-B-A
• Ryukyu: A-C♯-D E-G♯-A
  • Like Yoh, B is sometimes added

For this one I didn’t really have an idea to start, just that I wanted to branch out a little bit with instruments & I wanted to try to actually add drums.

I settled on a piano, a windy-sounding synth, and a backing cavernous pad for extra color. I also kept the dungeon synth drum pack I used for the last exercise.

After many, many false starts, I finally found a decent melody using the synth. I used the mainly the same melody for the A and B phrases, just changing the ending for the B part.

Then, I added an accompaniment to A using the piano; this heavily leaned on perfect fourths. For the B section, I started with the same accompaniment, but changed the perfect fourths to augmented fourths and tweaked the remaining notes to keep the same general shape.

As far as the rhythm… I still don’t really have a good sense for how to write for them. It was mostly trial & error this time, settling on a basic pattern for a measure & then repeating it, mixing up the hits so it wasn’t exactly the same every time. But it is very simplistic, & there’s no real variation to the rhythm; it’s just hitting different drums at the same times. But it’s a start.

• Etude 3.1 - fourth intervals.mp3

This one was tricky. I think it would’ve been helpful to have one or two exercises to play around with rhythm & percussion first, before this one which feels like it’s really pushing you to think outside the box wrt musical phrases, harmony, and percussion.

But, I did the best I could. I did more experimenting & trying things out this time, which was helpful for starting to get the hang of percussion. It was hard to find resources on how to write for drums – two answers to that question I found basically went “find a drummer, and tell them what you want” (basically, get a drummer to improvise for you).

Eventually I stumbled upon drum cadences, though. Which, confusingly, don’t have anything to do with the music theory term “cadence”. Drum cadences are basically whole pieces of music written for drum lines, and studying those were immensely useful to starting to wrap my head around writing for drums. With that, and a couple other resources I found that helped, I set out to start composing a question and answer purely in percussion.

I’m actually going to skip the sheet music this time, since I don’t really know how to write it with ABC notation

Anyways, once I got a passage I liked, I used the rhythm of the question as reference to write a harmony question using the same pattern. This ended on the dominant, making it feel unresolved, and even though I couldn’t resolve it in the traditional way (ending on the tonic) because of the constraints of the exercise, I feel like I did an okay job.

All told, while I don’t love this piece, I do feel like I learned a lot, so it was a success in that regard.

• Etude 2.3 - percussion.mp3

I’m having the hardest time with this one. The question and answer part I more or less understand – at least, when it comes to melody. But I’m struggling with writing for percussion in general, and fall completely flat when it comes to figuring out how to express an answer (or consequent) with just rhythm, much less in response to a melodic question.

So I’m trying to get a better sense for writing for percussion. Found a pretty in-depth tutorial that sent me way off the deep end. I realized, to start with, I need a good collection of percussion samples – ones that would cover a decent frequency range. This recommended breaking up the full range into a few buckets:

• low: <100hz
• low-mid: 100hz–1000hz
• mid-high: 1khz–8khz
• high: >8khz

So I started picking a few drum samples, but how do I know what frequency range my drum samples are? There’s something in FL Studio that can do it, but that’s an extra $100. I eventually found a plugin for Audacity that can do it, but it’s a random script from a forum post, and I don’t know how accurate it is.

In addition, another Youtube video I watched recommended tuning your drums to the key of your piece – which makes total sense – but then it leaves me in the tricky place of that’s basically impossible for me to do with the pitch tools in FL Studio, since I can’t check my work (Audacity still only works with the raw WAV).

Honestly, this is probably all overkill and I really should just get over myself & try to move on. I should settle on a core set of percussion samples, and try to start building out a rhythmic phrase using them.

I’m thinking the best approach might be to write out the whole phrase just using percussion, with a purely percussive question + answer structure, then mute the question part, and build a melodic phrase on top of it.

• Etude 2.3 - percussion experiment.mp3

Texture refers to how many instruments are playing at a time, but it is also related to other elements, such as melody, harmony, and rhythm.

Biphonic texture is when a main melody is accompanied by a bass drone.

• Monophonic texture is when a single melodic line is played w/o accompaniment.
• Thick monophonic texture is when the melody is doubled in octaves.
• Homophonic texture is when the single melody has a harmonic accompaniment, usually chords.
• Polyphonic texture is when the melody is accompanied by another, different melody
• Heterophonic texture is when a variation of the main melody is played at the same time.
• Homorhythmic texture is when there are multiple voices with similar rhythmic material.

I thought this one would be really easy, because it’s really just extending the last section of my rondo to give the song a proper end. And the requirements were pretty straightforward – my plan was to just have 2 of the instruments drop out, leaving just the oboe (pretty much the main voice) playing the melody, and the bass (the, well, bass) for the drone.

My first attempt just didn’t feel right, however. I tried playing around with it a bit more, and considered switching up the voices, but it just didn’t feel right for a different voice to take the lead just for the ending. So I poked at it a bit more, and got it to a place where I’m pretty happy with it.

• Etude 2.2 - biphony.mp3

• form: rondó (and sonata rondó)
• theory: tension & release
• terminology: diminuendo
• theory: dynamics
• technique: better understanding of chord progressions
• form: counterpoint
• theory / terminology: note intervals
• theory: chords
• chord numbering
• technique: walking bass line
• chord inversion

Rondó

I talked about this more in the last write-up, but the rondó form is pretty simple, and pretty flexible. The trickiest part for me was the key change for the Sonata rondó form, because I hadn’t done that yet. And honestly, I didn’t know what keys to pick. I ended up just picking keys for the B and C sections pretty arbitrarily, because I don’t know wtf I’m doing.

Tension & Release

A key part of this exercise is about the interplay of tension & release. Really wrapping my head around what tension means in a concrete, theoretical sense was incredibly difficult, and I’m still not 100% there.

Tension can come in many different forms: dynamic, textural, rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, and even cultural. Tension is a vague term that, again, was pretty hard to pin down, but it all comes down to expectation, or anticipation. What solidified it for me was thinking of it (especially harmonic tension) in terms of the listener expecting the song to go in a particular direction.

Harmonic tension

Harmonic tension is governed by the interplay of consonance and dissonance. Any time 2 notes are played at the same time, one or the other (or a mix of both) is in play.

Supposedly, the most consonant interval is the 12 steps of an octave, and the most dissonant interval is the 3 steps of a tritone.

This is well & good, but I still had to keep digging in order to turn this idea into something I could actually work with.

Diminuendo

This one’s pretty easy. A diminuendo is the opposite of a crescendo. Basically, it’s a directive for the musicians to play gradually quieter (and a crescendo is a directive for the musicians to play louder).

This is another form of tension & release – dynamic tension.

Dynamics

Dynamics simply refers to volume. More specifically, the variation in loudness between notes & phrases. The more the volume changes from the baseline, the more tension; when it returns to the baseline, that’s release.

Counterpoint

Counterpoint is a huge topic, and there are a lot of rules and nuances to it. But I thought it would be a good idea to try my hand at it for the B and C sections. I learned about the different species of counterpoint, from first to fifth.

The first three species are pretty simple: they all start with a cantus firmus, which is a series of whole notes. First species is one-one notes, second is two-one, and third is four-one. Fourth species introduces ties – notes that tie across measures, so they can start off dissonant & then resolve on the next measure. And fifth species can mix & match between all of the others.

I won’t bother getting into all the other rules here, but it was fun trying to work within all the constraints.

Note intervals

I’d read up on note intervals before, but the naming & numbering was such a point of confusion for me I could never keep it straight.

The biggest help was finally fully understanding that the name / number comes from the difference (inclusive) in whole notes, or degrees.

So a unison interval (or perfect unison) is an interval of one – the same note. A second interval is two degrees (inclusive). For example, C to D. And a fifth is five degrees, e.g. C to G. The number of half-steps in an interval is simply how many half-steps it takes to change that many degrees.

Intervals can come in major and minor variants (among a couple others) — but basically, a minor interval is 1 half-step shorter than a major interval.

Chords

Figuring out & studying intervals for a while helped me greatly in the next bit, which was studying chords, chord numbering, chord progressions, and chord inversions.

The most basic chord is a triad – three notes played together. Each key (or scale) will have a set of diatonic chords – that is, chords that don’t use any chromatic alterations (sharps or flats).

These include major triads, which are made up of a major third followed by a minor third. And then minor triads, which are the reverse – a minor third followed by a major third.

A diminished triad is two minor thirds starting with the root note, and an augmented triad is two major thirds. These 4 combos make up all of the diatonic chords in a major key.

Minor keys… I don’t know yet.

Also, a 7th chord indicates a 4-note chord. Since, if you count each interval from the root, you would get a 3rd, a 5th, and then a 7th for the 4th note.

Chord numbering

Each diatonic chord in a key is assigned a Roman numeral, starting with the root. The general practice is to use uppercase Roman numerals for major chords and lowercase for minor chords.

So, for C Major, the numbers would be:

I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, vii^o

(the superscript ‘o’ indicates a diminished triad)

Chord progressions

All of this to finally begin to understand the notation for the Royal Road progression, which I was using as the basis for my songwriting exercise. It goes:

IV^Maj7-V⁷-iii⁷-vi

The first chord is a IV chord, or a major triad 4 up from the root note of the key. And then add a major 7th.

The next is a V chord, with a minor 7th. This is usually played in the 3rd inversion, which we’ll get to in the next section – but here it just means the last note becomes the new root – which happens to be the same as the root of IV.

Next, a iii chord, also with a minor 7th.

And finally, a vi triad.

Furthermore, I studied chord progressions in general, how they’re put together and what the chords do. I learned that each chord in a key has a harmonic function – what it wants to do. There’s the tonic family of chords, which don’t want to go anywhere. They feel at home. Dominant chords want to go towards home. And subdominant chords want to go away from home, towards the dominant.

If I’m understanding this, the Royal Road goes: subdominant, dominant, tonic, tonic.

Chord inversion

Chord inversions are numbered by how many notes you move “up”. First inversion moves the root note to the top, second inversion moves the second note up as well. Third inversion needs a 4-note chord (since if you move the 3rd note up in a triad, you’d just get the same chord again).

Walking bass line

And finally, walking bass lines. This was actually what I started with when writing this exercise.

They’re meant to create a feeling of forward motion in a song, using notes of equal duration (usually quarter notes), and outline the basic chord progression of the song.

In general, the 1st note of each measure will be the root note of the current chord, and the last note is either a half step, whole step, or perfect 5th to the next chord’s root note.

A basic, dead simple way to write a walking bass line:

1. identify the harmony & chord tones
2. put the root note of the chord on the downbeat of every bar (1st note)
3. on the last beat, select & place the approach note
4. fill in beats 2 & 3 using chord tones

I still need to finish transcribing the sheet music for this piece, but here’s the song:

• Etude 2.1 - dynamics.mp3