Trick or Treat

[stevel]

A Halloween ditty for those of you who are into that kind of thing. Sorry the playback sucks - Finale is kind of funky (plus I changed the dynamics and didn't re-assign values to them).

Steve.

[Thorolf]

Not into halloween, but the music was nice!

Very good!

Regards

[stevel]

Originally Posted by Thorolf

Not into halloween, but the music was nice!

Very good!

Regards

Thanks!

[Ron Ofir]

Very cool!

[PeterG]

Hi Steve,

Very nice tune. I guess I'm a bit tonic oriented when I tell you I had a bit of trouble following through in the middle but loved the theme.

I absolutely loved your comments in the score; very cool and very Halloween (you must love the Halloween specials of the Simpsons as well I guess) !

Nice!

Peter

[stevel]

Originally Posted by PeterG

Hi Steve,

Very nice tune. I guess I'm a bit tonic oriented when I tell you I had a bit of trouble following through in the middle but loved the theme.

I absolutely loved your comments in the score; very cool and very Halloween (you must love the Halloween specials of the Simpsons as well I guess) !

Nice!

Peter

Yes - love the Simpsons and all the old horror movies (like the Vincent Price ones with the Harpsichord scores!).

I wonder where you had trouble in the middle? Maybe if I explain it might help you see it differently:

It's a little trick - it's a "Boogie-Woogie", so it's a 12-bar blues - but the treat is it's actually 13 bars (get it?, 13 unlucky, etc.). So I used the form:
I - I - I - I
IV - IV - I - I
V - V - I - I

But I modified it to outline minor 3rds, so I is B, "IV" is F and "V" is Ab. Then for a little sneaky thing, I put D in there (so the root relationships are a diminished chord - you know, minor 3rds - how "sad" or "scary" can you get, right?).

Often, 12 bar blues has the change in the first line:
I [IV] I I

so I reversed it and changed the chord to the "III":
I I [III] I

Then, the last line often has this change:

V [IV] I I

So this is where I added my "13th" bar, so I put:

"V" "IV" "III" I I but the V, IV, and III are really Ab, F, and D.

By the way, those three measures feature parallel tritones - which you should know is the "Devil in Music" from ancient times, so there's another little extra-musical reference for Halloween (in addition to the 13s).

So hopefully, some people will recognize these little "treats" in an otherwise pretty simple little piece.

Happy Halloween,
Steve

[Boneman]

Should have come with a warning Steve? Do not listen in a dark room alone!!!

[stevel]

Originally Posted by Boneman

Should have come with a warning Steve? Do not listen in a dark room alone!!!

This coming from a man whose 666th post this was!

:-)

Steve

[PeterG]

Originally Posted by stevel

This coming from a man whose 666th post this was!

:-)

Steve

Good point Steve.

But to come back to my comment:
I'll be honest with you Steve, i did not catch all the cleverness in the score (some of it, yes, but the chords theory is still somewhat of a mistery to me..) I play, and (de-)compose by ear mostly, but appreciate it more now I know what you'd put in there. The "ear" was tricked (or treated?) in the middle and when I say I had some trouble following through I mean I had some difficulty understanding the harmonics, which I know is my lack of musical knowledge.
(here's a nice paradox I guess; it takes wisdom to understand that you don't)..

Have a good pumpkin evening !

Peter

[stevel]

Originally Posted by PeterG

...but appreciate it more now I know what you'd put in there.

And that's one of the wonderful rewards about learning more and more about music (and any field for that matter). The more you know, the more you can appreciate, and the more it means to you. That's not to say everything has to be loaded with all of these "extra" things and that extra things automatically create more layers, but it seems to me that historically, the most important works are those that touch the most people on the most levels. I'm trying to do my little part here :-).

Steve