PERFECT music! Perfect melodic engineering!

[eti]

I can't understand how this is SUCH a beautiful song, what makes it so, but it's... WOWW...

I regularly have this on repeat for 8-10x!!

[John B]

It's probably the harmony. It starts out diatonic, but from then on its all modal interchange/chromatic mediant/flat direction major 7th chord substitutions which people tend to associate with epic and goosebumpy moments (technical terms).

[eti]

It's probably the harmony. It starts out diatonic, but from then on its all modal interchange/chromatic mediant/flat direction major 7th chord substitutions which people tend to associate with epic and goosebumpy moments (technical terms).

Wow! I'm no musician, but asked Google what all those terms mean, and it's very interesting, thank you. Vangelis is truly a musical genius of vast breadth and depth, seemingly endless.

[TimFox]

If you like subtle flexible harmonic content, you should check out composers from centuries ago, such as Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa (1566 to 1613), whose revolutionary chromatic language was not heard again until the late 19th century.  Like today's musicians, he was not a nice person--he had his wife (and innocent bastard) killed by minions for adultery, which was shocking at the time since a nobleman was supposed to do that himself.

[Mr. Scram]

You know what they say about taste.

[TimFox]

Non est disputandum--quod erat demonstrandum!

[eti]

You know what they say about taste.

Yes - you either have it or you don't, and thankfully I do! haha 

[newbrain]

You know what they say about taste.

Yes - you either have it or you don't, and thankfully I do! haha 

Really, beauty is in the ears of beholder (belistener?).

And I had to wash mine with this after Vangelis.
Once they were clean again, I could listen to this.

[Mr. Scram]

Yes - you either have it or you don't, and thankfully I do! haha 

Correct, you're either full of it or accept you're not any kind of benchmark. Guess which category you just landed yourself in.   

[eti]

Yes - you either have it or you don't, and thankfully I do! haha 

Correct, you're either full of it or accept you're not any kind of benchmark. Guess which category you just landed yourself in.   

 

How Fab. Drop me a PM and I'll send you my address so you can post me a membership badge, I'd love to join your club, but feel somewhat that I'm not as qualified as you need me to be.

[Cyberdragon]

There sure is something very surreal about the sounds of old-school synths. Is there record of what synths were used?

[ebastler]

There sure is something very surreal about the sounds of old-school synths. Is there record of what synths were used?

I dunno; that crop of synthesizer music has not aged well, for my taste. Give me an old-fashioned Hammond organ or a Rhodes piano any time...

[Mr. Scram]

How Fab. Drop me a PM and I'll send you my address so you can post me a membership badge, I'd love to join your club, but feel somewhat that I'm not as qualified as you need me to be.

The club has seen what "perfect" means to you and isn't impressed.

[bsfeechannel]

How to turn your ear into a spectrum analyzer.

[newbrain]

How to turn your ear into a spectrum analyzer.

I see your Ligeti, and reply with my Xenakis

[iteratee]

Nothing off-the-wall here. bVI straightforward modal mixture. Pedal at the beginning with IV7/IV (backwards circle secondary subdominant. My label for a common enough subtonic-like sound anyway.) Any weird autistic that hasn't touched an instrument in 10 years should have the full analysis from a single listening (right? other weirdos?)

Sounds nice.

[eti]

How Fab. Drop me a PM and I'll send you my address so you can post me a membership badge, I'd love to join your club, but feel somewhat that I'm not as qualified as you need me to be.

The club has seen what "perfect" means to you and isn't impressed.

This bloke here, long, long ago abandoned any hangups or cares as to what "impresses" people, most of all total strangers online  I have better things with which to occupy myself.

[fourfathom]

Music is one of the most personal things I know of.  I play electric bass, and have a good (but not formally trained) ear, and it's funny how deeply I can be impacted by bits of music.  It can be as simple as a three-note sequence, but I am entranced by the tone, timing, phrasing, technique, etc, to the point that I have to replay that segment over and over.  It just hits me somehow, I can't explain it, and other people don't feel the same impact.  I've given up trying to force them to "get it" -- it's just personal and that's OK.

In may ways, I feel the same way about electronics designs.  Some circuits or systems have a purity and elegance that can't be logically explained -- they are just beautiful to me.

[Alex Eisenhut]

Canadian content:

[Alex Eisenhut]

There sure is something very surreal about the sounds of old-school synths. Is there record of what synths were used?

For me the sound of Oberheim is very particular.





I mean you can pick them out like a laser in a lot of super '80s stuff like Rush, etc





Plus Tom Oberheim himself seems like an awesome dude.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Oberheim

[John B]

If you're interested in non-functional, experimental harmony, a more interesting and relevant discussion for an electronics would be the continued reliance on 12 tone equal temperament. In many ways 12TET/12EDO (equal divisions of an octave) has had a limiting effect on the development of harmony, then later MIDI by default adopted 12TET and that has in many ways limited the development of harmony in the electronic music era.

It's easy to implement other pitch systems that aren't based around 2^(1/12) in a software environment, and yet every music creation software I can think of is at least based around 12TET 0-127 MIDI notes. While you can do clunky pitch bend workarounds, the workflow becomes totally unintuitive, meaning that you have to spend a lot of time developing an interface to simply implement a new harmonic approach, before you can get to the music creation.

Something like Open Sound Control has opened some new pathways. For example note information can be sent as a floating point number that corresponds to a frequency, rather than a pitch from a defined temperament, or even a stream of information shaping an envelope rather than a piano centric concept of note triggering.

I came across this channel on youtube one day a few years back, and it has a wealth of really interesting approaches to harmony based on other equal temperaments and harmonic series. The compositions are made in Pure Data which is related to MaxMSP. A lot of the stuff is quite experimental, sometimes hit and miss with what the compositions try to achieve, but sometimes the results are sublime. It's the most unique harmonic content I've come across in some time.

https://www.youtube.com/user/acreil/videos

[TimFox]

Going back to Gesualdo, apparently he wrote for a short-lived instrument called the "archicembalo" (based on the harpsichord) that had 31 or 36 keys spread along each octave, using two manuals.  Only one survives, in a museum in Bologna.  The "extended quarter-comma meantone temperament" almost exactly approximates 31 equal tempered intervals.  It must have been a pain to tune and maintain, since harpsichords (with wooden frames) go out of tune quickly.
With respect to equal temperament (normal for modern pianos and adopted for electronic keyboards):  On an audio forum, we were discussing why 3rd order distortion sounds worse than 2nd order distortion, and one writer contended that the third harmonic (1320 Hz) of 440 Hz (A above middle C) did not exist in a table of equal-tempered notes, and that was why it sounded bad.  In "just intonation" (where all consonant intervals are ratios of integers), that note would be one fifth plus one octave above 440 Hz.

[GlennSprigg]

How Fab. Drop me a PM and I'll send you my address so you can post me a membership badge, I'd love to join your club, but feel somewhat that I'm not as qualified as you need me to be.

The club has seen what "perfect" means to you and isn't impressed.

This bloke here, long, long ago abandoned any hangups or cares as to what "impresses" people, most of all total strangers online  I have better things with which to occupy myself.

Dear 'eti'. I noticed that you have been 'scram'ed too... 
It amazes me how some people have nothing else to do in their life but put down some people & belittle them.
A reply (if at all from him!) could be... "The music is not my cup of tea, but I can understand that it has a certain 'feel' to some."
However, some enjoy their lonely 'Ivory Towers' and a 'keyboard', to placate themselves by mentally 'Squashing Ants'.

I am a non-professional musician, and play Guitar, Mandolin, Piano, Harmonica & various Flutes.  Certain music/notes/chords DO seem
to instill various emotions/feelings in individuals, beyond what is often apparently explainable. Yes, often it is the '7ths', Minors, and even
the occasional deliberate 'dis-chord' that emphasizes those emotions. But it is also 'subjective', like a fine wine etc. It also generally does
not need/require 'Words'...   MANY times, I've sat with other performers who don't even speak English, and somehow we just seem to
make music! There's an understanding between us all, and it just happens!!  It can't be put into words mate...

May I please be allowed to 'share' one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, to 'my' ears at least!   
EXPERTS have dissected it, and agree that there are certain notes that set the whole piece & give it the power that it has...
It is written by GIACOMO PUCCINI, for the 'Madame Butterfly' Opera. Simply called/referred to as the 'Humming Chorus'.
May people please hear it right through!, so they may 'understand' why/when mere 'notes' moves your soul!!  Glenn.

[Cerebus]

This bloke here, long, long ago abandoned any hangups or cares as to what "impresses" people, most of all total strangers online  I have better things with which to occupy myself.

Oh if only that were true. You seem to have spent all the short time that you have been on the eevblog forum trying desperately to impress people with your 'personality'. Why else would you start an  off-topic thread on a particular piece of music on an electronics forum? Music is all about personal taste, one man's meat is another man's poison, and so any reasonably intelligent person would know that what is 'good' music would be contentious. Conclusion, you're stirring it, as you always do, in a desperate bid to grab attention, any attention even if it's people lambasting you. And you claim that you've better things with which to occupy yourself? Ha!

[GlennSprigg]

This bloke here, long, long ago abandoned any hangups or cares as to what "impresses" people, most of all total strangers online  I have better things with which to occupy myself.

Oh if only that were true. You seem to have spent all the short time that you have been on the eevblog forum trying desperately to impress people with your 'personality'. Why else would you start an  off-topic thread on a particular piece of music on an electronics forum? Music is all about personal taste, one man's meat is another man's poison, and so any reasonably intelligent person would know that what is 'good' music would be contentious. Conclusion, you're stirring it, as you always do, in a desperate bid to grab attention, any attention even if it's people lambasting you. And you claim that you've better things with which to occupy yourself? Ha!

Oh my God. WHY do the Few keep trying to Down-Trod those lesser than them-selves???
I have seen other 'posts' from 'eti', and whether I agree with his philosophy in general, I gave what I thought was a TOTALLY
and honest/meaningful answer to what he said/asked ??  Why are 'some' people so deliberately negative in their responses??

I 'know', (sense?),  that you are supposed to be 'important' within your own 'circle', but I don't see it, sorry!! 
I think that ONLY you would revel in the use of such words as 'Lambasting' you. Pull your head out of your 'ass'....
No matter what YOU think of him, (and I have my opinions!), he posed a meaningful topic, that 'I' felt required/needed an
equally meaningful response.  And I dared to give it.

'You' are a bully, sorry... And I can't STAND bullies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They are weak, with nothing real to offer.
Thank goodness there are so many others from all corners of the 'Globe' that are basically/boringly friendly.