Class Notes for Counterpoint - Carnegie Mellon University.

I recently learned the five species of counterpoint, but feel like I am not grasping the significance of counterpoint in music. I get the feeling these principles may be used to write a bass line for something like a metal song or J-pop song, but how do these rules fit in to modern-day music such as electronic dance music and pop music?

How do you go about writing using counterpoint? When I write I think in whole chord terms which I feel is limiting my results. What's the method of writing counterpoint? Do you do one voice at a time? Start with the bass and build your way up?. How do i write music? F) A new topic. Edit: as I said in the comments, this post isn’t intended.

Counterpoint is an important element of music, but it is not one of the basic elements. Many pieces of music have rhythm, melody, harmony, color, and texture, but no real counterpoint.In fact, when describing the texture of a piece of music, two of the most important questions that need to be addressed are: is there counterpoint, and how important is it?

What to write one of your own? Oh course you do. Fugues are interweaving, flowing lines of music based on a common musical theme. Though they've inspired some of the greatest artistic creativity in music history, they're actually structured in a very logical way - it's the composer's challenge to make it all link up in a harmonious, musical way.

The usual way of proceeding is to write your counterpoint to a cantus firmus (a fixed melody) that is supplied for you. Later you can try writing your own cantus firmis, but Counterpointer can generate them for you and also contains the library of cantus firmi found in Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum. Previous How to write in First Species.

Counterpoint is the art of composing music by combining different parts (voices) in a way that sounds nice. Music composed like this is called contrapuntal. If the tune of Twinkle, twinkle little star is played on the piano and then some chords are added, this is harmony, not counterpoint.

Throughout the book, exercises are provided that call for the writing of music and that are intended to clarify the principles under discussion. Walter Piston, one of America's outstanding composers, created for this book an approach to the study of counterpoint that is stimulating and helpful to an understanding of the music of all times.

There are a lot of books on counterpoint out there and this is one of them. I still think the Fux's book is much more enlightening and it's conversational tone makes it easier to understand. That being said, this book does a great job handling the subject but just make sure you have a good background in music theory to dive in fully.

Counterpoint definition is - a complementing or contrasting item: opposite. How to use counterpoint in a sentence.. The music works in counterpoint to the images on the screen. Verb The violence of the movie is counterpointed by ironic humor. See More.

Principles of Counterpoint Contrapuntal forms. FUGUE. Fugue is usually considered the apotheosis of contrapuntal study. In his article on fugue in The Forms of Music, the collection of his Encyclopedia Britannica articles, Donald Francis Tovey suggests that fugue is not so much a form as a set of textural procedures: The decision to write a fugue implies almost nothing about large scale form.

Counterpoint was reinvigorated in the 20th century and given a prominent role in post-tonal music. This article first presents sections on reference works and terminology followed by a large section on counterpoint pedagogy from the 18th century to the present day.

Counterpoint and Improvisation and Music on Demand. But there’s another part of the story that perhaps leads to absorbtation. But whether it does or it doesn’t it’s an amazing bit of trivia and sidetrack. That so-called other part of the story is the idea of music on demand.