# The modulation question my theory teachers at university can't give me a straight answer to...Help!



## SimonCharlesHanna (Sep 16, 2014)

Hey. So...

I bought the book on modulation (Max Reger). Great resource for functional writing.

I've learned quite a bit about how composers modulate. My question which has gone unanswered at school so far is "to what end?"

Why does a composer modulate? More specifically though, out of the many, many keys to modulate to, why choose the ones they do.

I guess what I am looking for is a resource on what is the "quality" of sound. What does a C major key sound like preceding a G Major key? What qualities does a D minor key bring to a C major key that came before it. Why not use a E minor key instead? 

When writing a piece, I am not an animal of function - for me it is Why? What emotional purpose does this achieve? And no one at university can seem to help me understand modulation through emotion, sound quality etc. 

I understand the function of closely related keys, and obviously modulating from major to minor etc.


please! Someone shed some light for me (and any known resources on the matter)


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## handz (Sep 16, 2014)

I would like to hear about this too, even i honestly do not get why there is such science about these things. Use the ear and feeling - thats my way usually. You for sure feel yourself what the change cause when you do it.


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## ed buller (Sep 16, 2014)

i'm not sure i understand the question. Are you trying to establish a guiding set of principles to help you pick where to modulate too. And would these be based on establishing mood ?

and are you sure you mean modulate perhaps just one chord after another rather than re-ptich a passage ( change key )


a starting point might be the work of Frank Lehman ; it's been an enormous help to me

http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.13.19. ... lehman.php

e


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## Markus S (Sep 16, 2014)

This is an excellent question.

Here is what I understood of it :

The tonal system is based on tension building and tension release.

If you have a chord and you are going to another you are building up tension (wanting to go back to the first one). Let say you go from C Maj to G Major.

Now to make it more exciting you can build up tension to go to the tension building chord. So you add tension to the tension so to speak. In this case you will add a D Major chord with the F sharp.

The new tension building note (F sharp) gives you a tension release on G and while you are there, you can stay there a little and use the new center of gravity around G (to play a new theme there ie), before going back to C, introduction the F (regular).

It's all about tension and changing the center of gravity (the tension release note).


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## SimonCharlesHanna (Sep 16, 2014)

quite the opposite actually. I know *how* to modulate. I want to know *why*.

Marcus - I see what you are saying. I might ponder on that for a bit. Does anyone know any books that address this topic directly (from a less purely functional standpoint a la Max Reger)


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## muk (Sep 16, 2014)

With modulation, it's not only (and not even foremost) 'what emotional purpose does it achieve', but rather what _functional_ purpose it achieves. Modulation is one fundamental ingredient that constitutes form. For example, there is no sonata form without modulation.
As Markus wrote, a modulation to the dominant builds a tension with the basic key of the piece. One that needs to be resolved (and that happens in the recapitulation of a sonata form). Subdominant keys on the other hand, resolve tension (that's why in codas, when there is a modulation, it almost always goes to the subdominant key). So, at least in classical music, modulation is all about tension and resolution, and about constituting form. Imagine a piece of a certain length that always stays in the basic key. It will get boring quite quickly, because there is no harmonic tension. Read about the 'sonata principle' if you want to know more about it. And if you want to know what emotional impact modulations can have on top of the 'technical function' they fulfill, listen to some of the last Schubert piano sonatas.


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## Markus S (Sep 16, 2014)

SimonCharlesHanna @ Tue Sep 16 said:


> quite the opposite actually. I know *how* to modulate. I want to know *why*.
> 
> Marcus - I see what you are saying. I might ponder on that for a bit. Does anyone know any books that address this topic directly (from a less purely functional standpoint a la Max Reger)



Eventually all this building up on tension led to the extinction of the tonal system: Composers were building up tension all the time (modulating constantly, look at Wagner's scores), the writing became more and more chromatic and it ended up in a constant harmonic tension. A constant tension is perceived somehow as static, this is what Schoenberg called "floating tonality", "schwebende Tonalität"- So the system didn't work anymore because it was based on building up and releasing tension aspect and composers were looking for new ways of harmonic writing.

Look into Schoenberg's Harmonielehre, all better explained that I ever will (or care to..)


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## JohnG (Sep 16, 2014)

Lots of people have asked this question. 

One practical point possibly worth noting is that John Williams moves through a lot of keys in his music, changing very frequently (and not afraid of lots of sharps or flats). With 50 or 60 or whatever Oscar nominations, that's not a bad place to start as an example.

As far as I know, modulation using functional harmony as a pervasive device is found only in Western music, so it's obviously not essential to human beings' making music.

In the 20th century, Paul Hindemith had a lot to say about key relationships and the overtone series. Like others, he sought to explore whether science could explain the "reason" why we modulate and use different keys, hence the overtone series as a reference. Not that I would box Hindemith into science alone, but that's one thing he looked at.

Here's an essay that touches on some highlights and cites a number of works:

http://www.oneonta.edu/faculty/legnamo/theorist/density/density.html (http://www.oneonta.edu/faculty/legnamo/ ... nsity.html)

On a completely different axis of thought, one form of harmonic analysis I quite like (particularly apt for non-functional-harmony music) is Hanson's pmnsdt approach, though it doesn't seem to be much in vogue today. It removes the "functional" element of harmony from chordal analysis, instead categorising each chord by its intervals. Some complex chords have correspondingly complex labels.

p - perfect interval
m - major third
n - minor third
s - major second
d - minor second (half step)
t - tritone


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## SimonCharlesHanna (Sep 16, 2014)

muk @ Tue 16 Sep said:


> a modulation to the dominant builds a tension with the basic key of the piece. One that needs to be resolved (and that happens in the recapitulation of a sonata form). Subdominant keys on the other hand, resolve tension (that's why in codas, when there is a modulation, it almost always goes to the subdominant key).



Tbh muk (& Marcus) that is the start of what I was looking for. You call it function which it is but it's emotional function. To say that dominant key builds tension to the tonic key and the subdominant resolves tension, these are the kind of descriptions I was after. Reasons why one wants to modulate. 

Thank you guys for your input thus far. I would still love to see anyone who has any resources on the topic (even chapters from a specific book?)


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## bbunker (Sep 16, 2014)

Well, you have to think about where modulation came from, really.

So in the days of chant in Western Art music, there was no modulation. Or, at least there wasn't the modulation we know of. And then organum came around, and organum just imitated the shape and rhythm of the 'cantus firmus,' but importantly did it at the same time. Then some clever chaps thought that it would be fun to sing the same thing at different times, and all hell broke loose.

Problem one is the tritone. People figured out pretty fast that it was a pretty powerful interval, so to have the smoothest and most pleasant voice leading, it had to be controlled. And that was done with musica ficta, or accidentals, that temporarily changed that nasty tritone into far more pleasant perfect fourths or fifths. Except, if you're dancing around the upper tetrachord of a major scale, and using lots of F#'s or Bb's on a C major scale, then what 'key' are you actually in? Well...no one particularly cared at the time, as far as we can tell. Probably it just became part of the modal language; you use the resources at hand, and musica ficta was a natural result of the aesthetic and the language.

Problem two is the 'real answer.' Skipping ahead a little bit to the early renaissance, polyphonists have really started to develop a pretty sophisticated level of imitation. The favorite imitation is either at the octave or at the fifth, although canons and imitative entries at virtually any intervals keep popping up, and by the time of Bach's Art of the Fugue, there's a veritable cookbook of imitation at every interval. But I digress: what does a 'real answer' at another scale degree mean to the key?!?

For renaissance theorists and composers, it didn't mean a damn thing. Because the lines dictated virtually everything, and 'key' was just the sandbox that the composer put his toys into. But...have a look at complex, many-voiced, full polyphony of the high renaissance. Those answers at different pitch centers lead the composers to tonicize any number of chords temporarily. And temporary is a relative term; if a piece begins and ends "in key" but spends most of its time tonicizing the subdominant and dominant, has the piece modulated, or is the composer just fooling around with imitation?

By the time Bach was thriving, the free play of temporary tonicization had generated a sort of rule book of what people had come to expect. You were GOING to get a fugue theme that really hinted at the dominant, and then went there first. And you were going to get to the Sub-dominant right before you had your big dominant pedal-point and ending. But in the mean time, you had to go somewhere else. Because who wants a fugue that sticks to entries in just two keys? Well, Pachelbel seemed to, but especially those North German composers like Buxtehude or Bach delighted in exploiting all of the "modulatory" resources that all those renaissance and early baroque composers had opened up.

And that fugal move to the dominant? Well, by the Rococo/Gallant/Vorklassik period, it had come to be expected so much that when composers started to tear away all of the imitative trappings for simpler, more "Classical" structures, they kept the move to the dominant. And it's this move to the dominant that came to define the Sonata-Allegro form. That A-B idea in the development section of a Classical Sonata-Allegro is coming straight from fugal practice, and giving listeners what they expected.

And then in the development section, something happened. Maybe it was just a recollection of the episodes of fugues. Because composers knew that the public knew that you were going to get back to that tonic again after cavorting on the dominant. And in the pre-classic period, composers like the Bach sons were pretty happy to just give the public what they wanted. But as the form became even more codified, NOT giving people what they wanted immediately became the thing to do. Make it look like you're going back to the home key, but...ha! You're actually on the sub-mediant! Joke's on you! By the time Beethoven wrote the Eroica, he's going through twenty temporary key centers, dragging people's expectations violently around.

Which kind of leads us to the question at hand. Because Wagner takes Beethoven's searching development sections and discards everything else in some pieces. Most of Tristan und Isolde is nothing BUT wandering modulations. He wanted a feeling of eternally unfulfilled searching, and constant, unfulfilled modulations did just that. And Wagner was kind of the beginning of the end: if dissolving ideas of key created that emotion, that soul-tearing zeal that expressionist composers were looking for, then why bother with key at all? And in a way, modulation itself begat atonality, which begat serialism, and so on.

So the why of modulation is tied up with the why of music itself. We modulate because that's what music DOES. It's so tied up in all of the common practice of composition that modern minimalist composers have exploited our expectation of modulation by writing extended pieces in one key. Try it: have a go at writing 30 minutes of music that doesn't modulate. It could be many things: boring, irritating, unnerving, strange...but what it won't be is NATURAL. Because modulation is a part of the very fabric of our compositional language.

Summing up, you might do yourself a favor by asking similar questions about other compositional materials that are core to our palette. 'Why Modulation?' Well...what about Why to the Dominant chord? Why does a dominant seventh have any power, and why has it been so used? And, if you can answer that question, then ask yourself what effect modulation to the dominant has. How about the Sub-mediant? It "feels" so much like the tonic, yet very critically is very much not it. So, how does this relationship change meaning and language and color when one modulates to the Sub-mediant, temporarily or otherwise. How long does a chord have to be tonicized, and how powerfully does its tonicization need to be done, to make something a modulation as opposed to a temporary tonal shift, or a half-cadence, or something else? I think if you start exploring these unanswerable questions, you won't just understand the 'why' of modulation better, you'll better understand Music. The capitalized, writ large, what is this art that we're all working on - Music.


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## JohnG (Sep 16, 2014)

bbunker @ 16th September 2014 said:


> ...modulation is a part of the very fabric of our compositional language.



In the West it is.


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## bbunker (Sep 16, 2014)

Well...I think it depends on how you define modulation, John! In Javanese Gamelan music there's extended periods that center on different pitches, that signal signpoints in the form. It may not be a tonicization from the western rule book, but it sure 'feels' like a modulation.

I'm thinking of something like the second strain of something like 'Eling Eling,' as it would be performed by a Javanese Court Gamelan.

Or, big structural points where there's a big change in the Tala in Indian Classical music? Those 'feel' like modulations, although they're purely rhythmic.

I just think that the west has developed its own rulebook for defining modulation from common practice, and other cultures have developed their own practices. Maybe it's just that our terminology fails us?


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## Rv5 (Sep 16, 2014)

There is indeed lot's of what could be interpreted in music from other cultures as modulation - and it is right to question the terminology. Also there is plenty of non-tonal music, so interpreting what might be modultation becomes another question. Or is modulation only something that can happen in tonal music? These kind of questions are good.

In terms of why - I kind of like that they didn't give you an answer - it should set you off to seek your own path and your own reasons. There is loads of literature on analysis of music offering different approaches that suggest why certain modulations happen when and where. Recently read some great articles on Shostakovich and how the Soviet state created a platform in which artistic expression was supressed and as a result paradoxically bloomed in ways otherwise not possible. The late Alexander Ivashkin (and former professor of mine), called this The Paradox of Russian Non-Liberty. Many seek meaning in Shostakovich's work, and hidden symbols and messages that speak out against the supression of art and Stalin's rule (look up DSCH motif and also Britten's Rejoice In The Lamb.

I'd certainly recommend having a look at Russian music during the last hundred years to see what motivations can lay in musical creation (perhaps including modulation), where what was composed could be a matter of life and death (see Shostakovich post Lady Macbeth and the events of 1936/ Fourth Symphony etc).


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## JohnG (Sep 16, 2014)

bbunker @ 16th September 2014 said:


> I just think that the west has developed its own rulebook for defining modulation from common practice, and other cultures have developed their own practices. Maybe it's just that our terminology fails us?



I agree emotionally with the impulse to try not to be exclusive. 

However, if you allow "modulation" to mean things like rhythmic changes or simply moving to a new tonal centre without any preparation or clear architecture, then the term doesn't mean anything at all except "all change" or something. It certainly doesn't mean what it meant in the baroque, classical, 19th century -- or even what the serial composers were trying to escape from.

Modulation as I see it is the use of what we see as "functional" harmony (originally but of course not exclusively) supported by the good old V-I relationships and variations on that. It includes the idea that, once you are in a new key (not just a vague tonal center), it is possible to define what every chord is in relation to that tonic.

I still think the OP raises a valid question.


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## bbunker (Sep 16, 2014)

I'm very much in danger of hijacking this thread, but I think it might bring some light on practice as well:

If we define modulation always in terms of 'functional harmony,' then can pieces which use different forms of 'functionality' or 'nonfunctionality' not modulate? What about modern pieces that use modality? What about pieces that use chords or scales of limited transposition? What about music that uses concrete or abstract elements? Or, what about pieces which simply avoid the V-I?

As an example, Debussy's 'Sunken Catheral.' There are nowhere elements of functional harmony, and no V-I to indicate it, but I doubt you'd find many who would argue that there isn't a "modulation" from G-major to B-major.

If I were going to posit a thesis, I'd say that Indian Classical Music uses key centers that are based in tala, and so changing tala for structural points complies with our definition of modulation, unless we're clinging to the idea that it HAS to be dominant harmony that defines modulation.


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## José Herring (Sep 16, 2014)

SimonCharlesHanna @ Tue Sep 16 said:


> Hey. So...
> 
> I bought the book on modulation (Max Reger). Great resource for functional writing.
> 
> ...



The idea was to break away from a single key and explore other key centers within the same piece, to increase the music's asthetic impact, ect...

But with the obliteration of definite keys in the late 19th and 20ith century it's harder to distinguish what is a modulation and what is a progression.

The constantly modulating music such as Wagner; the illusive key centers adds to the mystic nature of the subject matter. Making the music seem like it's always searching for some place to land. (which it eventual does after 5 hours of torture  ).

In the impressionist period it added to the ephemeral nature of that music.

In the end, practically speaking there really is no more modulation in my opinion, but rather progressions either smooth or jarring to closely related or distantly related harmonies. So there's a correlation between the relationship of the keys to how one perceives a modulation;

If for example, you modulate from C to G Major nobody will hear that you modulated. But if you go from C major to bflat minor then the ear can clearly perceive the new key. Especially with the popular I II V progression. Where II serves as a dominant of V which then becomes the new I in the new key. In school that would be considered a modulation. In real life, it's just a common progression.

Sooooo... there's a practical aspect to modulation. Some people consider the progression from I to vi a modulation. Especially in modern film music. In my speak a progression to the related minor doesn't even blip on the radar as a modulation especially since the diminished chords that would distinguish a new key in the related minor are seldom used in modern pop rock film scoring.

If you read Schoenberg's book on harmony you will see why he decided to go 12 tone and abolish key centers. It can get so cooky harmonie wise that it seems like the next logical progression would be to go atonal or 12 tone. Unfortunately, Schoenberg was very much mistaken when he tried to systematize music based on note names rather than on the actual fundamental and over tone relations. The ensuing disharmonious cacophony threw people off of new music for a century and it's still reeling from the impact of that type of thinking. 

In the end, try and think of modulation in today's music as progression. Or you'll run into the same traps that the late romantics ran into of setting up elaborate systems of harmony and tables and rows of tone relations just to go from c major to dflat 7. In that wise, Jazz is more fruitful in actually giving you harmonic tools that you can use. But of course these days, in most commercial music, you needn't learn anything more than how to progress diatonically in a minor key . But, when you're not busy trying to make a living, and you do music that you actually care about, these things then become important again.


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## handz (Sep 16, 2014)

I must say I never understand this effort to overanalyse everything in music. Dont we just mainly do what we feel sounds good / itneresting without any particular reason?


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## JohnG (Sep 16, 2014)

bbunker @ 16th September 2014 said:


> I'm very much in danger of hijacking this thread, but I think it might bring some light on practice as well:
> 
> If we define modulation always in terms of 'functional harmony,' then can pieces which use different forms of 'functionality' or 'nonfunctionality' not modulate? What about modern pieces that use modality? What about pieces that use chords or scales of limited transposition? What about music that uses concrete or abstract elements? Or, what about pieces which simply avoid the V-I?
> 
> ...


Well, I couldn't disagree more -- though in the friendliest possible manner!

I don't think tala complies in the slightest with my own definition -- even leaving aside the strict V-I convention -- of what modulation is. Modulation, for one thing, is totally divorced from rhythm. You can have any rhythm you like in C-minor. Of course, it would be possible to change texture and rhythm very significantly so that you had different sections of music easily discernible to the listener. However, that still would not be modulation -- it would be textural / instrumental / rhythmic changes, each of which belongs, in my hide-bound mind, to a different bucket.

Modal music or music that have non-diatonic scales or penta- octa- whatevera-tonic scales might have transposition, but I would guess likely not exactly. 

To me, the defining elements of modulation are:

1. a specific, conscious-on-the-part-of-the-composer relationship of chords to one another and their relationship to the tonic, and

2. once a new key centre is established, all the chords now have a new definition in relation to the new tonic. So, if you modulate from C to G, C-major is no longer I but IV.

That's not really the same as most folk music or non-Western music with which I'm familiar. (I freely admit to a certain amount of parochial limitation, so feel free to sort me out if I'm just unaware). 

I know there are lots of ways Western composers modulated that began pushing the edges of or dispensing with the V-I progression, but in many cases it was still implied and very much on the minds of composers, even as they sought to avoid it or find ways to escape repeating Beethoven and the other giants that had come before them.


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## JohnG (Sep 16, 2014)

handz @ 16th September 2014 said:


> I must say I never understand this effort to overanalyse everything in music. Dont we just mainly do what we feel sounds good / itneresting without any particular reason?



What an idiot that Bach was to wrestle with all those keys.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 16, 2014)

Well, there's harmonic rhythm, of course.

But the short answer is simply Because it's unexpected, and that makes it interesting. Gotta have some bumps in the road!


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 16, 2014)

That is, except when it's not unexpected.


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## José Herring (Sep 16, 2014)

The problem being John is that type of classical thinking in terms of modulation make it impossible to reconcile most types of progressions that include chords that aren't related to the original key. It also precludes using extended harmonic relationships such as sharp 11ths, which is common in jazz music. So you couldn't have a progression that say goes from c major flat 5 to f# minor to Bflat minor 7 in the functioning sense. Without going through mental gyrations of trying to fit those in some type of system. Whereas if you just thought of that progression in terms of common tone relations then it becomes quite easy and you could even improvise over it. But if you think of it functionally even in terms of chromatic harmony it becomes so difficult to almost impossible to understand how those chords work together.


Though I do hear your point. I just have to think of it differently. C and G are so closely related that you can put them on top of each other like Aaron Copland does and they work together just fine. You can borrow from each key so freely like John Williams does. So it's just hard for me in the light of the 20ith century to take modulation seriously


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## AC986 (Sep 16, 2014)

handz @ Tue Sep 16 said:


> I must say I never understand this effort to overanalyse everything in music. Dont we just mainly do what we feel sounds good / itneresting without any particular reason?



Yes!

Unless you're Bach. Hahaahhaha

When people talk about old music from 2 to 3 centuries ago up until not that long ago, what thy forget is what distractions they didn't have. Like internet, cell phones, texting, TV, travel etc,

Their distractions were limited to working and avoiding illness and disease.


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## José Herring (Sep 16, 2014)

adriancook @ Tue Sep 16 said:


> handz @ Tue Sep 16 said:
> 
> 
> > I must say I never understand this effort to overanalyse everything in music. Dont we just mainly do what we feel sounds good / itneresting without any particular reason?
> ...



Good times, good times.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 16, 2014)

Jose, there are scales of the moment and keys of the moment, and there are often several ways to analyze what's going on. Your example might be C lydian moving to that half-whole scale (whatever it's called), or it might just be a bunch of chords held together by common tones. Or something else.

But I think what SimonCharlesHanna is talking about is one of two things:

1. You move from one tonal center that you've established by hanging around it for a while, and then move to another tonal center and establish it.

2. You take a chunk of music - whether or not it moves around like you're describing - and then repeat it transposed.

At least that's what I think about when someone uses the word "modulation." And it's done in diatonic music as well as contemporary music.


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## JohnG (Sep 16, 2014)

josejherring @ 16th September 2014 said:


> The problem being John is that type of classical thinking in terms of modulation make it impossible to reconcile most types of progressions that include chords that aren't related to the original key. It also precludes using extended harmonic relationships such as sharp 11ths, which is common in jazz music. So you couldn't have a progression that say goes from c major flat 5 to f# minor to Bflat minor 7 in the functioning sense. Without going through mental gyrations of trying to fit those in some type of system. Whereas if you just thought of that progression in terms of common tone relations then it becomes quite easy and you could even improvise over it. *But if you think of it functionally even in terms of chromatic harmony it becomes so difficult to almost impossible to understand how those chords work together.*




I agree that it's difficult -- really difficult -- to analyze jazz changes in terms of traditional harmony and notation. Frankly, some of what even Mozart does is pretty hard to cram into I ii IV V I or three / four note chords. So by the time you get to jazz it's somewhere else.

But I'm not sure that undermines what modulation is or even the definition I've offered.*

Whether it's polytonality or pan tonality or bi-tonality, I guess I still view much of Western music as being created in the context of tonality, which defines the relationship of each chord to the tonic, even if it's specifically and deliberately "wrong" in the traditional sense or a self-conscious attempt to escape from those traditional rules. 

Even in jazz (have to define it as the jazz I like and know about), key still matters immensely, because you can't talk about a substitution or a remote chord from the expected unless you know, somehow, what the expected is. Same with Wagner -- there is always an implication of what "should" be there and certainly an awareness by the composer of it.

A lot of music doesn't exactly modulate, but circles around one or more key or pitch centers for a while. Can be a drone or a succession of chords that sort of have a relationship that moves to another pitch focus, then goes somewhere else. Personally, I don't find it useful to describe that as modulation, but that's just a personal predilection, not anything authoritative. I suppose I'd probably disagree if someone says tonal / pitch center doesn't even matter to the definition, but if other people want to broaden the definition for their own purposes -- why not?



*does someone have a textbook that has a good, or more than one good definition of modulation?


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## Kejero (Sep 16, 2014)

Probably not the most helpful link, but fun nevertheless: The Signature Series on CBC Music


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## rJames (Sep 16, 2014)

Oh boy, I'm going to have a try at this even though my "traditional" musical education is virtually nil.

I write music more like Handz...if it sounds good, do it.

But here's a reason to modulate. If you want to stay in a groove but want a little "push," into a new tension. You can take the same "feel," and just move up a minor third or something like that. Sometimes that modulation can bring a little tiny bit of notice to the music (where it touches an emotion) but you really haven't changed at all.

Another of my unscientific reasons to modulate is to "jump," as if weightless for a moment. I hear it a lot in adventure music. The melody is expected to go to a certain note at the end of a phrase and maybe even the end of a section but the percussive energy pushes and pushes, the melody goes up and up but when you hit the last note, you go to a note that is maybe a half step above where you should have gone and the chord underneath modulates to a new key (not necessarily a half step above).

Otherwise... never modulate. (just kidding)

Ron


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## rgames (Sep 16, 2014)

One of the most common reasons for modulation: writer's block. If you're stuck, snag some existing material and re-state it in a different key. Then use Reger's cookbook to connect the two sections. You just added another 30 sec 

Modulation is just one technique to add some interest to a musical idea. As has been said, you can do it with rhythm, or timbre, or register, or dynamic, or or or. It's just another tool in the toolbox. That's why modulation is a commonly used technique.

Now the question of why we like it is difficult to explain. But that's what makes music so great - the mystery...

rgames


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## José Herring (Sep 16, 2014)

@ John and Nick, I hear you completely.

I guess, I'm trying to develop a new theory that sounds new and that will break us out of this diatonic holding pattern that we media composers are in where simple progressions now become modulations because the prior progressions leading to the so called modulation are so static and unmoving harmonically.


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## clarkus (Sep 16, 2014)

Wow, Ed. This is so cool. Didn't know about this.


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## Dave Connor (Sep 17, 2014)

On a basic level, modulation is taking advantage of the full range of keys or color offered by the western musical system. There's quite a difference between Beethoven's modulation (mainly achieved through formal means) and Debussy who was very coloristic in his choices. 

Your question seems to ignore the high degree of sensitivity that musicians and their audiences in the past have had to the impact of this key or that on the listener. If you were watching a painter do a live performance and the first thing he did was throw bright yellow paint upon a huge canvas until the entire backdrop was that color, it would affect you entirely different than if he/she used a deep dark blue. The degree to which he stayed close to that color subsequently or departed it from it would also effect you in different ways. This is why words such as 'spectrum,' 'chromatic' and many others of a scientific nature are interchangeable in the arts (as when talking about a 'light' or 'dark' work or piece of music.) 

When Beethoven famously opened a work which was listed in the key of E major with a big C major chord, it was jarring to an informed musical audience that was not saturated with music from the TV, car-radio, phone, store, mall and so on. Any music they heard prior to a performance would have been on their own piano most likely. What we call 'perfect pitch' was far more common. Beethoven would {as always} justify this radically distant tonality by musically illustrating that it was a form of Neapolitan chord to E's dominant B major (C>B>E.)

Modulation is also the casting off of restrictions as well as an exponential increase in relationships between chords. Whatever number of relationships can exist between the seven or more fundamental chords in a single key: going to a different key is not just a duplication of that number of possible relationships but also the number of relationships between every chord in the first key and every chord in the second. Though it may be only a subconscious registering of these relationships, surely the most subconscious of all the arts is reaching the listener in this way. John Williams wouldn't leap out of key centers with the frequency that he does if this wasn't affecting the listener in a substantial way.


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## AC986 (Sep 17, 2014)

Also, when modulation occurs, if it's orchestral it will change orchestral colours and dynamics a lot of the time for even more added interest.

Good writers will do that instinctively whether they have been formally trained or not. You don;t have to go far to hear what I'm talking about. Just wander over to the Members Composition forum here and listen to Carles first track of his 4 if you need convincing about colour. Colour occurs whether there is key modulation or not. Key modulation is just an added bonus if you like. 

Some tracks I have done over the years have modulated keys and finished in an entirely different key than which I started in. Most of the time I have no idea how that happened. Remaining in the same key can be harder than modulating. 

:mrgreen:


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## clarkus (Sep 17, 2014)

Dave Connors, well said! Who says the English language is dying? 

Speaking of Debussy (and Ravel) you sometimes see the notes in a melodic line mirrored in bass movement. The "chord progression," to use the modern term, sometimes echoes what the melody does. You get a certain kind of integrity and cohesion this way. And it's one answer among several as to why a composer goes where he goes. This needn't be a strict correspondence. But you do find (and those French fellows certainly did) that if you have a melody full of thirds and scale-steps, and the chords move in thirds and scale-steps, a world is created with its own rules, and we buy into it happily.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 17, 2014)

Absolutely also what Dave says about keys all sounding different.

Jose:



> I'm trying to develop a new theory that sounds new and that will break us out of this diatonic holding pattern that we media composers are in



I'd have to think this through, but that's a current trend, and you can never separate trends from what's going on in the world. It wasn't like that for most of the second half of the 20th century.

Hopefully it's not just that people's brains are becoming desensitized by all the noise and speed!


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## clarkus (Sep 17, 2014)

The octatonic scale still has purchase in action / suspense / dark drama. Thank you, Rimsky-Korsakov & Stravinsky.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 17, 2014)

Which octatonic scale?

I want to know, I'm not disagreeing!

Do you mean the half-whole-half-whole one?


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## ed buller (Sep 17, 2014)

yup...there are three.

e


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 17, 2014)

There are three of that scale, but there are lots of 8-note scales.


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## clarkus (Sep 17, 2014)

That's the one. When I hang out with the jazz guys, we call it the diminished scale.

It's interesting how transformed it is when heard in a classical / soundtrack context. 

In jazz you often hear over, for example, a C7 chord C C# Eb E F# G etc.

But the notes of a dominant chord, or at least the maj. three & minor 7, are hanging around in the air, so everything has that blues / dominant chord coloration. 

In other contexts, in jazz / popular music, you get a "true" diminished chord ("Bye-Bye Blackbird" has one in measure 7) & there the scale is whole-half, giving you a major. 7 among other things.

In soundtracks (borrowed from classical usage), you get triads, open third, sixths, and tri-tones, as well as mixed interval structures (like the famous chord that happens a few hundred times in the Rite of Spring), and the octatonic scale, or part of it, is used to create these off-kilter melodies & musical material that no-one would associate with jazz.

It's one of those cases where the classical fellows got there first, historically & the jazz guys borrowed. The jazz players did something a bit different with it.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 17, 2014)

Right.


I've always called whole-half-whole-half diminished rather than half-whole-half-whole, but you can get the same notes one way or another.


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## toddbigelow (Sep 17, 2014)

Echoing what Richard mentioned. My most recent modulation need came when I had an original piece that needed something to transition into (for a different, more intense scene). I had something I wanted to use for the landing spot already. I liked where the first part was sitting, but I couldn't do much with the second part as it was already in audio form. So I came up with a cool modulation and transitioned right into it. Saved me a bunch of time and energy.

Also, Ron mentioned using modulation as a way to float, or build excitement. One of the coolest ways I've heard this used in in vocal pop. The singer has reached close to the top of their range, when suddenly the song comes around for another chorus. Modulation happens and the song builds up. Then, the cool part is that due to the modulation the perception is that the singer has stepped up in pitch, when in actuality they have dropped slightly, but that is masked by the sound of the modulation. This allows the singer to do one more chorus, sounding as if they have pushed themselves a bit further. It's a pretty cool effect, I wish I could remember an example off the top of my head. I'm sure it could be (or is) used in orchestral music to achieve the same effect with brass.


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## clarkus (Sep 17, 2014)

What do you call half-whole, Nick?

:?: 

:wink:


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## Nick Batzdorf (Sep 17, 2014)

I call it "that scale that goes half-whole-half-whole you know what I mean."


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## clarkus (Sep 17, 2014)

The demolished scale.


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## cmillar (Sep 18, 2014)

Thank heavens for people not afraid to 'break the rules', experiment, and just write some good sounding music to their ears.

Debussy was once interviewed:

(... I paraphrase to shorten and make his answer easily understood)

Interviewer to Debussy:

"Sir, you are an esteemed composer, and you teach your students at the Conseratoire about the 'rules' of music. Yet, why does your own music sound like crap?"

Debussy:

"Yes, I teach my students the theory of music inn order that they may appreciate all that has lead us to this point in history. 

But, as for myself, I now take inspiration and get my understanding of music theory from the sound of the wind in the trees."

(... very liberally paraphrased... I don't have the book with me!)


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