During this course, you are going to see hundreds
of variations. However, it all starts with a very simple premise.
Getting a lot of variety out of small numbers. For this, we
employ the magic of mathematics. In mathematics there is a
branch of study called permutations. Permutations is the math
of number variation and iterations. A Restricted use of these
permutations, is what gives this course it's many melodic
words. However, since in music, variations is the term that
is more commonly used, that's what we're going to call our
permutations, variations.
So, if we have three things, like 3 chord
notes, math tells us that we can get 6 variations of this.
See example below.
1 2 3
1 3 2
3 1 2
2 1 3
2 3 1
3 2 1
The phenomenon of music is such that when
you play the same three notes in a different way, it sounds
like something completely different. To get even more variation
out of your melodic words, you use create variations out of
3 notes in a scale segment used in a third.
If you have 4 note chords, or seventh chords,
you'll notice that there are 3 thirds in the chord. That means
you can use scale segments in thirds. By using the variations
for 3 objects, as mentioned above, you can select which thirds
will be played first and in what order will the scale segments
for the thirds be played in.
Below you see all the possible variations
for 4 notes. This is the mathematical version. I've used a
variation for this that makes the variations for seventh chords
and chord scales sound more musical. So, the variations you
see in the course for 4 note chord or 4 notes in general do
not follow the below pattern.
1234 2134 3124 4123
1243 2143 3142 4132
1423 2413 3412 4312
1324 2314 3214 4213
1342 2341 3241 4231
1432 2431 3421 4321
Ok, so how did I use a more musical variation?
Basically I would use the first note of a chord root or inversion,
and then just treat the remaining 3 notes as though they were
3 objects and use the variations for 3 notes as above:
In the following example 1, 2 , 3 and 4 refers
to the chord tone
1123 2123 3123 4123
1132 2132 3132 4132
1312 2312 3312 4312
1213 2213 3213 4213
1231 2231 3231 4231
1321 2321 3321 4321
The table below contained major seventh chords
arranged according to this more musical variation.
The remaining 123 refers to the remaining
notes after the chord. For example in column 3, row 3, 3312
applied to a C major seventh would be g-e-b-c, cause in second
inversion the notes would be g-b-c-e, the variation would
be on the b-c-e. Sounds more musical.
Now you can also create variations on the
intervals. A 4 note chord has 3 intervals. For instance C-E-G-C,
has a major third, minor third and a fourth. So you can assign
the 1,2,3 variations on those 3 intervals and you could play
the fourth first follow by the major third and the minor third.
Click here to listen. If you add scale segments to these intervals,
you can increase greatly the number of melodic words with
scale segments. You can have one scale segment going down
and another going up as you alternate the intervals. Click
here to listen
So, in theory, you can have immense variations
just using 3 chords and doing it all in major keys. If you
start using minor chords, combining major and minor chords
and modulation, the variation possibilities are really exponential.
Having this knowledge you really will never run out of melodic
words to use in your compositions.
