man i went down a rabbit hole last night on these modes of limited transposition. rick beato does an amazing job playing through them. modes 3 and 4 sound incredible for film score or simiarly haunted musics
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when it comes to arrangement theory for electronic music composition, two different approaches could be relevant:
1: for modular scenarios of voltage-controlled fabulous gadgetry … i couldn’t speak to that due to not having any direct personal experience with the wonderful world of modular.
2: Song Mode. as implemented by a number of current and previous companies.
and not just the selected list of Patterns to play one after the other - although that is an important factor.
the detailed extras, the potential to define start and loop points for selected Patterns on the Song Mode’s list, the possibility to Mute selected Tracks for a row, and nested loops. This is one major compositional tool, easy to overlook.
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I would say that at both the arrangement and instrumentation level much of what you are talking about already exists at the very least in the realm of “common parlance” and is often used to describe electronic music composition in online tutorials and books etc. Maybe it just hasn’t been formalised in the same way that it has for more traditional forms. It’s definitely been analysed, studied and had thesis presented on how the genre works structurally etc. In fact I believe our own @adamjay was interviewed (with others) as part of such an academic project which resulted in a book still widely available but can’t remember the name.
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Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music (Profiles in Popular Music) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0253218047/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_O7IWBbZ6BEXW4
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Nice find!
This is all I have to share - at least for now - of my experiments with Messaien Mode 4.
First up a simple Microbrute & OT jam - sequence created out of Mode 4:
Next, samples of Xynthesizr playing a Mode 4 riff and ThumbJam playing a 4-track loop of strings, also created in Mode 4, being jammed on in Borderlands Granular. These are the same samples I was using to construct that piece in Beatmaker 2.
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thread bump.
checked out A Very Short Introduction to Ethnomusicology, worth the $6 to read on an e-reader
ethnomusicology raises a lot of interesting questions about the usefulness of notation, theory, ‘musical genius’, individual musicians, etc.
i think somebody could write a whole book (or a few articles) about gear tinkerers and their contributions to music even if their ‘works’ are nothing more than soundcloud uploads, because i think its clear when you listen to popular music that the tinkering aspect of music technology is having a clear influence on performance and production in the mainstream…and in fact may be more like today’s way of musicmaking as a cultural practice than the old way of arranging, rehearsing, and performing.