I thought I’d use this platform to share with you some of the great work my students are doing together with some commentary addressing compositional technique. Here’s the first of many to come.
As part of one of my coursework portfolios, I offered my talented and creative students at Surrey the option to rework a Beatles track. Beyond a cover or remix, the brief was to reinterpret and/or electronically deconstruct/reconstruct musical materials from any Beatles track. There was some great work such as Em Bollon’s modal reinterpretation of ‘Here Comes The Sun’ Remodalisation (invented term) is the technique of translating melodic and/or harmonic material into a parallel mode (set of notes or scale). The original track’s major tonality (with some modal interchange and secondary dominants) is really effectively (and intuitively) reinterpreted into mixolydian and dorian ideas, blended with electronic japery. Quite lovely.
2 replies on “The Beatless – Part 1 Remodalisation”
This was fantastic! I’m glad I kept this link until I had the time to sit and enjoy it! Really, I only understand modes slightly, but this was a wonderful example for me to grok on a gut level the differences implied. And that’s besides this being a beautiful piece of work! Thank you!
Thanks Josh. Some words of caution ‘remobilisation’ is (as far as I know) a made up term here to describe a translation from one mode to another. This track does that but also some other techniques. It sometimes uses reharmonisation (that is the same melody with different chords). There is also some melodic reinterpretation (changing melody notes). But in terms of remod. you can do this to any piece or passage of music, and it’s quite a beautiful concept.