Make Your Music Evolve.

In music, context is more important than the individual notes, phrases or other musical concepts. As musicians, it is vital that we are able to imagine and produce music that fits within the context of familiar and unfamiliar forms.

Take this note for example, a semibreve of middle C within a 4/4 bar.

What I want to show you, is that by altering this single note ad infinitum, we can discover and create different ways to relate to it, increasing our understanding of its potential context as we witness how just this one note can relate to other musical concepts. 

The first step I will take in the evolution of this note is duplicating it. This will allow me to demonstrate how the same note can work in two different ways.

We can give each of these two notes some harmonic information.

So for the first bar, I stuck with C as the root note and voiced it as a Sus4 in the root position. But the second bar actually isn't a textbook C chord at all, It's an inverted F major. I did this to show that adding harmony to C doesn't necessarily require C to be the root interval. But what if I removed the C entirely?

In these two bars, I removed the C and replaced it with the respective Major 7th interval of each chord. So the first chord has a B in the higher octave, making it something like a 7-1-3 voicing of a G7. The second chord replaces the C with an E in the higher octave, so it's like a 1-3-7 voicing of Fmaj7.

So. The formula I used to create these variations went something like this:

1. Start with a simple musical concept (in this case, middle C)
2. Alter it rhythmically (duplicate the bar).
3. Alter it harmonically.

I'll provide three more examples of running music through formulas similar to previous example.

This is a Major second interval in the key of D minor, expressed as minims. I will do something similar to the first example, which was expanded to fit over two bars.

This gives us a bit more breathing space to create further alterations. Lets turn each of these notes into arpeggios.

So as the first bar was D, and the second bar was E, I've transformed each one into their respective arpeggios within the key of D minor. D minor and E minor. I could make these arpeggios a bit spicier though.

The arpeggios now contain their respective 7th and 9th intervals within the key. So D minor now contains C and E, making a Dm9 arpeggio. E minor now contains D and F, making a Em7b9 arpeggio. And all of this came out just from two minims! On to the next one.

This is just a simple, ascending G major triad in crotchets. I have an interesting idea on how to alter its rhythm.

I've introduced a new time signature, and as a consequence, the rhythmic values of the crotchets had to be altered by dotting them and distributing them over two bars. The 6/8 time signature works great with two pairs of three quavers so I would like to take advantage of that classic form.

In this case, I have turned the G and B notes of the first bar into ascending G major and B minor chords respectively. As for the second bar, the D returns to B and then D (descending and ascending minor 3rd interval) followed by another G major arpeggio, this time inverted and descending. Let's make one more variation.

I've turned each note into chords. Just like the F major chord in the first example, I decided not to use the existing note as the root interval. Instead, I opted to use it as a 3rd in a bunch of 3-5-1 triad voicings. Let's do just one more example.

For this last example, I have chosen an ascending G harmonic minor scale in 4/4 as crotchets. Let's do something crazy about changing the rhythm though.

I've taken the exact same notes, but split them across a bar of 5/4 and one of 3/4 instead of two bars of 4/4. Distinguishing them as uneven sets of 5 and 3 notes should greatly contribute to further alterations.

I continued to alter the rhythm by making the crotchets in 5/4 into quaver triplets, and the crotchets in the 3/4 bar into semiquavers. For the triplets, I added each note its respective 6th interval within the key of G minor and its octave. And for the semiquavers I just did some descending scale runs. Now for the last alteration.

The first quaver of each triplet has now been split into semiquavers, with the second semiquaver being a diatonic 3rd above the previous note. And for the semiquavers in bar two, I also divided the last semiquaver of each beat to add one more note to the descending pattern.

I highly encourage musicians to try these kinds of exercises in evolving musical ideas as a powerful and effective way to continually evolve their musical understanding, expression and ability.