Just a little Ditty ... version 1.0 ...

• Aug 18, 2011 - 00:20

Here's the first draft of "just a little ditty" for solo vibraphone with a drum keeping the basic beat. Play it using the sound-font file "TimGM6mb.sf2" to hear it the way I do, and use plenty of reverb so the bells ring clearly.

Coming in at a mere 24 bars, I'm sure that I'll do more with this one as time goes on. Even so, I think it's a lot of bright musical fun. I welcome your suggestions and ideas.

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Comments

In reply to by Anonymous

For the record ... what did you change it to, and why?

I mean... I sure-as-heck don't mind, but (without muddying-up my box with different copies of the same thing), what was your reasoning? What are the changes you made, and howcum?

Edit... After listening to it, I have ... well ... mixed feelings. Some of those feelings of course come from being used to the original sound. I was trying for a fairly dissonant sound e.g. in measure 12. But, having said that, I can see that the character of that part does change (and maybe not in a good way) in measures 9-11 vs. 12-13 vs. 14-16. It does sound in some ways like the B-part as I originally wrote it doesn't quite know what key it wants to be in, and doesn't quite match the posted signature anyhow (as you can plainly see from "all those accidentals...").

Excluding the obvious use of accidentals in the phrases that are going up or down a chromatic scale, where many accidentals obviously have to be used, I'd have to say that the B-part (in my version) most likely isn't really in the key-signature that I claim... and that it doesn't really stay in just one. Hmm... hmmm... hmmm....

Granted.... it does! :-)

Now that I've put it down for a day and listened again to both versions, I'm seeing that the B-section appears to have three different sections each with slightly different tonalities, and that these various pieces wind up slightly "clamming against" one another. (And the differences are sometimes, literally, the one-step adjustment of a single note.)

It kinda seems to me that the key-signature change takes one of these tonalities, the brightest one, and makes it run throughout the entire phrase. Which is probably a good way to go. If the piece becomes longer, and re-states that section, then it might be adjusted to change the sound slightly. I do like phrases that hint of diminished and augmented chordal sounds and so forth... just a little bit of dissonance... I'm just not good-enough yet to write them.)

Comments, from anyone, welcome.

In reply to by Anonymous

I really enjoyed this. I think it was a good choice to have the percussion in there keeping time. Adds a bit to it.

I might look at measure 15 and 16 again. I can see you're going for changing things up a bit - you don't want it to just be a chromatic line that descends using 16th notes - you break it up by combining 16ths and 8ths. But it seems a little long to me.

I also like that you altered the melody each time it is repeated, it's not quite the same as it was the first time we heard it. I liked this. I am going to save it so I can hear it again when I want to.

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