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Saturday, March 21, 2026

488. Drone playing per tetra-chord and per- scale in Irish Bouzouki and overtone tunings.

The drone playing is similar to the finger-picking in guitar playing. In finger-picking we try to play simultaneously, the melody and the underlying chords. In drone-playing the underlying chord is only one, note,  the 1st or 5th of the underlying chord, or both.  And these 1 or 5 are essentially open strings up or down to the string that we play the part in the current tetra-chord) of the melody. 

See e.g.


Friday, February 20, 2026

486. THE CONCEPT OF CHROMATIC ARPEGGIOS

 About concepts of chromatic arpeggios over a chord (and chord-scale).

1) The chord 7-scale is split to 5-string + 4-string parts. 
2) 2nd concept of CA: We substitute the voice melody M of the song with a simplicial submelody SM of it. Each note of the simplicial submelody is a note of the underlying chord. Then we extend the simplicial submelody SM, with small oscillations (within the 7-note chord-scale) 4 times faster, (e.g. if the SM has  notes that are of duration  1/4, then the oscilaltion is with 4 notes of duration 1/16) around each note of the simplicial submelody. The result is the chromatic arpeggio CA-SM, which on the island of Crete is also called "condilies." The pattern of the oscillation determines the style-signature of the condilia.
3) 3rd concept of CA: We create a random sequence over the 5-string or 4-string of the underlying chord, so that it randomly sequences a uniform distribution of notes of it. This is also a chromatic arpeggio fitting harmonically to the underlying chord.
4) 4th concept of a CA: We design a melodic pattern over the 7-notes mode of the underlying chord , which is of the type: a)  stationary waving, or b) Spike or c) straight vector.
If the sequenced notes are a uniform distribution of the 7-notes mode of the underlying hord then, we have an harmonically fitting to the underlying chord, chromatic arpeggio. 
5) Then assume that , we are given a melodic theme M to make an improvisation with it. We identify the M , as a chromatic arpeggio CA , of a chord C. Then we compose a chord progression,  C1, C2, ...Ci , with the chord C in it, and we create chromatic arpeggios CA(i) for each chord Ci. The result is a composition-improvisation based on the melodic theme M=CA. 

Tuesday, January 13, 2026

Monday, December 8, 2025

482. HOW TO CONVERT ALL TYPES OF CHORD TRANSITIONS (CHROMATIC, MELODIC, HARMONIC) TO CHROMATIC THROUGH DIM7 CHORDS OUTSIDE THE 7 DIATONIC SCALE.

 

Exmaples


Harmonic transition 5M7->1M

becomes chromatic as 5M7->7Dim7->1M

Similarly, the 4 bars blues harmonic transitions, of the 3 major chords of the diatonic, become chromatic as follows:

5M or 1M->4M becomes  5M or 1M->4bdim7->4M

5M or 4M->1M becomes 5M or 4M->7dim7->1M 

1M or 4M -> 5M becomes   1M or 4M -> 5bdim7=1dim7-> 5M 

so the rule is to resolve to XM, we pass through the Xbdim7.


Chromatic  5M->6m 

becomes chromatic as 5M->6bdim7->6m

Melodic transition  5M-> 3m

Becomes chromatic as 5M->3bdim7->3m 


Melodic transition  1M-> 3m

Becomes hromatic as 1M->1dim7=3bdim7->3m 

Again the rule is :to resolve to XM, we pass through the Xbdim7.