Episode 2
Song of the week, music history, theory/terms, personal note and challenge of the week.
Song of the Week
‘Only Stars’ is a song released by the English progressive metal band Haken off their 2020 album Virus, you can listen here. This song is sort of an anomaly compared to most of Haken’s other tracks; it has a slower tempo and very expressive somber mood, but it is profound nonetheless; particularly in the lyric content.
Lyrics
‘‘Here I lay
Far from grace
I’ll remember the pretenders
Save your tears
As I’m summoned hither
One last breath I wither
No remorse
No redemption
Only stars
Form the heavens
No more gods
Yield before us
All is clear
As I end’’
To start, this song and its context create a very expressive, drawn-out, and emotional quality. The tempo of this track is slow, which I think reflects the final moments of ones life, as do the rise and fall of the music’s intensity (particularly the crescendos and decrescendos). The lyrics make me think of an epiphany that one is having during their final moments in life; ‘one last breath I wither, no remorse, no redemption, only stars, form the heavens’, realizing the end of life doesn’t have any emotional profundity to it; rather that in this case it’s devoid of any remorse or redemption, just emptiness. The line ‘no more gods yield before us’ is so deep too. This could be interpreted that perhaps it was just an illusion that there is a higher entity out there, and our conception of heaven was just a illusion we have when we look up at the sky, or it could mean that the ways in which we have acted has cause the ‘Gods’ to abandon us entirely - either way intense as hell (no pun intended).
I’d love to hear your interpretation of this song. There is of course an abundance of interpretations possible.
Haken is a band I’ve been listening to for years now and can honestly say they still stir up some of the most profound emotions in me. Highly recommend listening to them, if you haven’t yet.
Music History
In 2008, archeologists discovered the remains of a bone flute in Hohle Fels (southern Germany) believed to be 40,000 years old; making it the oldest known instrument discovered to date. This flute was crafted from the bone of a griffin-vulture, which has naturally hollow bones. Four sound holes were carved out of the bone, which prompts one to think that this could’ve been the origin of the first musical scale, even before Pythagoras’ invention of the 8 note scale in 600 B.C.
So what are the implications, if this is true? Well, I think that it could mean our the structures responsible for music perception are more ingrained in us than we previously thought.
Music Theory and Terms
A chord is a group of 2 or more notes played simultaneously.
The name a chord gets is most often determined by its 3rd (exceptions being suspended chords), which is responsible for the quality it takes on. So, a major chord in the key is composed of the root, 3 and 5 notes of the key (C, E, G), the interval between C and E is a major third, therefore this chord is C major.
*Intervals can also be thought of as steps on a key board, a major 3rd being 4 half steps, and a minor third 3 half steps.
Lets look at minor chords. Their composition is root, minor 3rd and perfect 5th. In the key of C major, that would be C, Eb and G, the interval between C and Eb is a minor third, therefore the chord is C minor, and so on.
Between both major and minor chords the perfect 5 remains unchanged. Chords that alter the 5th have vary degrees of dissonance.
One example of a chord that changes the 5th, are diminished chords. These are thought of as having either a diminished 5th or augmented 4th, either one means the same thing, it is just a matter of notation. Diminished means the interval distance between two notes is reduced and augmented means the opposite; the interval distance is expanded.
Personal Note
This week I released the song ‘Tessellation’, you can check it out here. Writing this song was a lot of fun. I literally recorded parts on all the instruments I have plus midi; electric guitar, classical guitar, piano, and violin. Typically, I don’t write drum parts because that is an area that I am unfamiliar with largely, but I did on this track, and I was surprised with how they turned out (positively surprised that is).
A interesting feature of this song is its rhythm, switching off between quarter notes and quarter note triplets. For example, in the outro of the song 2:36 to the end, you can hear the open hi hat of the drums play 6 notes, then it sound like it plays 4 slower or more spaced out notes, this is the essence of the songs rhythmic motif. Those 6 ‘faster’ notes are the triplets, and the more spaced out ones are quarter notes; one - trip - let, two - trip - let, one — two — three — four etc.
What’s also worth noting is the fact that specific rhythms correspond with their own BPM (beats per minute). So ‘Tessellation’s BPM is set to 91 for a quarter note, but when we hear a quarter note triplet what were really hearing is three clicks per quarter note (or the insertion of two extra, evenly spaced clicks), or a BPM that is 1.5 times faster. With 91 BPM set to quarter notes, when we hear the triplets were actually hearing a tempo shift up to 136.5.
Most musical ideas for me come from improvisation or planning out specific parts. With this song, the drums for example were mostly improvised, then refined later, but the strings, for example, I planned out where they would play, and then determined what kind of harmonization I wanted to achieve. Utilizing different methods of songwriting helps creativity.
Challenge of the Week
This week, I would suggest exploring the unique sounds of different chords found in a key. For example, play around with the major chords, which occupy the 1, 4 and 5 degrees of the key, then the minor chords being 2, 3 and 6, and the diminished occupying the 7 degree. After you feel you have a good feel for how the chords in a key sound, try creating your own progressions.
A few things to consider when creating a chord progression is to first identify how many chords will be in the progression, then ask yourself what constraints you want to use (number of chords in progression? any non-diatonic chords used? inversions? etc.). For example, a chord progression containing 5 chords that doesn’t use the same chord back to back, but could use that chords later in that progressions can have 9,072 possible permutations. I will break this down below.
5 chords in progression.
7 available options for first chord (just using diatonic triads in first position).
6 options for each chord after the first (each chord after can have 6 options because we can’t use the same chord back to back, but we can reuse a previously used chord later on).
7 x 6 x 6 x 6 x 6 = 9,072 possible chord progressions
It follows that a chord progressions that also contains 5 chords but doesn’t reuse any chords would have a permutation that follows.
5 chords in progression.
7 available choices for first chord, then 6 for the second chord, 5 for the third chord and so on.
7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 = 2,520
If these numbers seem daunting, I would say that, yes, they are, but I point this out to illustrate the worlds of possibilities in music. Understanding this can also means that when one falls into a creative slump they can use different method to create music, in this case considering permutations.
Thanks for reading! New articles out Sundays.
About the Author
Isaiah Grip is a 21 year old multi-instrumentalist composer (guitar, piano, violin, and voice) out of Longmont, Colorado who records and studies music independently under the name Tetra Veda, as well as collaborating with Ghostwrite Inc, and playing guitar in the progressive metal band Cloud Temple. His personal repertoire can be found on Bandcamp and YouTube under the name Tetra Veda.