SongTrellis
Music and Musical Know-how For You

Author:  David Luebbert Posted:  9/4/06; 9:13:57 PM Msg#:  4911 (top msg in thread) Prev/Next:  4910/4912 Reads:  8130

Understanding Four

I've just posted a new kind of document to the site that tries to explain everything that happens harmonically within the chord sequence for the Miles Davis composition Four.

If you read this document for Understanding Four, I'd apperciate any feedback you can send me.

I certainly learned a lot about the tune by writing this.I hope you will also.

This document is structured like an outline, similar to what you may have already seen with the Directoty or Video Links pages that are listed on the SongTrellis link bar at the top of  most pages of the site.

When you look at that panel of the outline you will see four folder icons whose titles are "What's the form?", "What's the game?", "What are the moves?", and "Hints for the improvisor".

If you look within the "Where's the form", "What's the game" and "What are the moves" outline sections by clicking on the folder icon for those headings, you will find explanatory text inside the folders, which is liberally linked to musical examples that illustrate the passages described in the explanations. When you follow those links, music plays in your web browser and a matching score is displayed in a window for you.

When you look at the page for Four listed in The Changes, you'll that it mentions that the SongTrellis Excerpt Service works for that page. I used the Excerpt page for Four, to create most the exmple links you'll encounter in the tutorial.

Nearly two thirds of the links are links to excerpts of the Four midi sequence that was submitted to SongTrellis early in the site's history. Clicking on the excerpt link causes a section of the Four score specified by the link to be copied into a temporary new document so that a score and MIDI sequence can be prepared for the excerpt. The resulting score is displayed in an excerpt window which plays the excerpt MIDI sequence as it opens.

The other third are links which use the chord generation used by Chord Grids to produce an example voicing for a particular kind of chord specified by root and type. The page that is displayed when this kind of link is followed causes a score and MIDI sequence to be prepared for the specified chord which is performed within its own window.

The beauty of the Excerpt Service is that one score submitted to the SongTrellis service can be the source of many different musical examples, each of which can play in the user's web browser windows. It's not necessary to generate separate example sequences for each example and submit thoseseparately to the server.. Instead,  examples can be generated on the fly using the excerpt specification stored within the excerpt link's  HTTP text.

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