Augmented Listening Experiences

I was listening to that bit in "Pulse Magnet", you know, that bit? The bit around bar 384 where both pianos are playing augmented triads related to the C whole tone scale, alternating between low left hand octaves and high four-note right hand chords. Except, because there are two pianos playing, Hindson sometimes has them alternating so while one piano plays high, the other plays low, and they are both playing semiquavers, leading to (at times) non-stop moving augmented chords AND non-stop moving low octaves.

When you add in some quaver hi-hats, it ends up looking like this:

So I was thinking, how on earth can I help students connect the visual of the score to the aural experience of whole tone/augmented harmony when it all flies by so quickly? The answer is relatively simple, so I thought I'd share it with you.

MIDI Software Save Us All

Thankfully for me, most of the harmonic interest in "Pulse Magnet" comes from the pianos, and so I figured, why make students struggle in vain to hear augmented chords flying past their ears when I could input the notes into a digital audio workstation as MIDI data?

I work in Logic, so I opened up a new file, and in Logic Pro X you don't even need a MIDI keyboard with you!

The MIDI input for notes is actually quite intuitive. The note input is separated into grids, and at the level of detail I was working in, each grid represented one semiquaver. Then along the side is the keyboard, so you can see what note you are inputting (if you are dragging notes around). Once I'd recorded a few notes, I decided I didn't need musical typing anymore, so I just copied and pasted the existing MIDI data I'd recorded to move it into the right places.

I worked with one piano part at a time, and then eventually got the two working together.

Then of course, the most exciting thing about putting notes into a digital audio workstation is that you can slow it all down. This would mean that I could this excerpt of the work to students and keep lowering the tempo until they were able to hear and even sing along with the augmented chords.

I think part of the reason why I think this is so important is because it's not enough for students to be able to recognise augmented triads from a score. That will help them pass their exam, but they also need to be able to recognise it aurally, and understand it so they can use it in their own compositions if that is a sound they like. I hope this little technique will help to bring students towards a more full understanding of the music they are listening to.