Creating a melodic ostinato

Hello and welcome to lesson two in the unit Minimalist Compositions. In this lesson, we'll be creating melodic ostinati. Without further ado, let's jump right into it. In this lesson, you will create a melodic ostinato using the D minor pentatonic scale and develop the texture of your composition. Here are your key words. Pentatonic scale is a set of five notes. The D minor pentatonic scale is a scale that include the notes D, F, G, A, and C. Texture. The texture of music is how many layers of sound are playing at the same time. We can describe texture as thick, which is lots of layers, or thin, a few layers. In this first part of the lesson, we are going to be looking at developing texture. In minimalism, composers often add interest to ostinati by varying the texture. Remember from our keyword slide, texture is how many different layers of sound we can hear. So with that being said, how many layers of sound can you hear playing together in this example? To listen to this extract, please pause the video here and click the "Listen" button in the slides. Once you've listened and thought about your answer, come back to this video and press play. In this piece, there were eight layers of sound, which created a thick texture. How about in this example? How many layers of sound can we hear playing together at the start? Let's think about what gradually happens as the piece moves on. Again, to listen to this piece, pause the video, press the "Listen" button in the slides, and come back and press play once you've got your answer. So in this example, we might have noticed that there was a much thinner texture. That's to say that there were fewer layers being played at the same time. There are two parts at the start and gradually more join in. So we could say that as the piece went forward, the texture got thicker. We're now going to watch a couple of videos on developing texture of your own minimalist composition. We're going to watch an example of how to do this from bar one to eight and then from bars nine to 16 using copy and paste. Let's watch those videos now together. Now that I've created my ostinati on untuned percussion instruments, I'm gonna have a go at changing and developing the texture. We've learned that a thin texture is where we have only a few layers of music playing at one time, and a thick texture is where we have lots of layers of music. And by changing the texture, we can create some really interesting effects in our minimalist composition. The first thing I'm gonna do then is I'm gonna have a think about which ostinati do I want to start off with at the very start of my composition. So far I've got all of ostinati playing together all the way from bar one to bar nine, and I want to create some variety here so I'm gonna start with a thinner texture. I've decided that I want to start with these two tracks starting off on their own. So I'm gonna move the other regions out of the wafer now and see what these two sound like just on their own at the start. (percussive music playing) I think they work really well together. At bar three, I think I might make the texture a little bit thicker. So I'm gonna choose another one of these ostinati that I'm gonna add in to join in at bar three. I think I might go for. Let's go for this advanced machines one. Let's see what that sounds like joining in at bar three. (percussive music playing) So we can hear the texture is building up, it's getting thicker. I like that building up effect. So bar five then, I'm gonna make the texture even thicker. So maybe what I'll do, I'll experiment with this, is let's have this one starting at bar seven, and then these two both starting at bar five. And I'm just gonna shorten them so it's really clear what I've done here. If we have a look now, it's very clear that the texture is getting thicker. At the start, I've got just these two tracks playing in the first section. At bar three, this new one joins in, so the texture is getting thicker. Then at bar five, it gets even thicker still with these two tracks. And then at bar seven, my sixth ostinato joins in. So it's a very thick texture then by the end of that. Let's have a quick listen to this. (percussive music playing) So I like what I've got so far. Now I'm gonna create a little bit more variety by using copy and paste. For this section, I want it to finish at the end of bar 16, so bar 17. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna copy and paste some sections so that we have some varied texture between bar nine and bar 16. To copy and paste, on most doors it's the same. You right click on a region, click "copy," you put the playhead where you want to copy it to, and then you right click and click "paste." Now I think what I'll do for this section is I might have, let's say this one playing throughout, so I'm gonna keep that one looping. And then I'm gonna copy and paste this one so it plays every two bars. So you can see here in this fifth ostinato of mine, I'm moving the playhead, right click, "paste," move the playhead, right click, "paste," and that will then create an interesting effect 'cause I've got rest, I've got some silence, and then I've got my ostinato. I think what I'll then do is I'll do the same with this one, but I'm gonna paste it in the gaps instead. So I'm gonna do alternating bars, so right click, copy. Then there's that one, and I'm gonna put this one into bar 11. Not like that. Let's make sure I select the right track to do this. So put this one at bar 11, bar 13, bar 15. I think I will keep this orchestral kit one playing throughout. And then maybe with my remaining two tracks, I will have this one playing for the first four bars, and then I could try bringing this one in after that one at bar 13. So you can see now just looking at this, that the texture is very varied. It's chopping and changing between different ostinati, so it's gonna sound quite interesting. That's much more interesting than what I originally had, which was all of the ostinati playing together. So a few things to check when you're doing this. The first one is that we finish at the end of bar 16. The second one is that whenever you copy or move a region, that A, you've copied it into the right track. You saw there I accidentally copied one into the wrong track. So make sure you copy it into the right track by selecting that track before you copy. And second of all, that whenever you copy or paste or move one, that you line the start of it up with a bar line. So I'm gonna put the playhead there on bar nine, and you can see at the moment, this region is not lined up with that. So it's starting partway through the bar. I wanna make sure it starts at the start of the bar like that. So do make sure, do go through and check that whenever you move any of them, they start at the start of a bar, not crossing over a bar line like this one here 'cause that way it just sounds a bit messy if we do that. Okay, before you start, I'm just gonna show you what I've come up with here then so you've got an idea of what I've created, and then you can have a go and do your own. (percussive music playing) So to recap in those videos, when copying regions and looping, check that it finishes at the end of bar 16. Also check that you're copying into the correct track, and finally check that they line up with the starts of the bar. So let's do a little bit of checking for understanding of what we have looked at so far in this lesson. Which of these is the correct definition for the word "texture" in music? Is it A, the volume of the sound? B, how high- or low-pitched a sound is? C, how many layers of sounds are playing together? Or D, how long the sound lasts for? Yeah, well done if you said C. Remember, texture refers to the amount of layers. It's important to note that it doesn't matter about the amount of instruments. For example, in an orchestra, you might have 20 violins playing at the same time, but they're playing the same part. So just because there's more instruments doesn't mean that the texture is automatically thicker. It is the different parts that are being played together. With that being said, let's fill in the blank. A thick texture has. A, very few layers of sound at the same time. B, more than one layer of sound at the same time. Or C, many layers of sound at the same time. Well done if you said C. So the thicker the texture, the more layers, and the thinner the texture, the fewer the layers. So good job. That brings us on to task A, where we're going to develop a texture in our own rhythmic ostinati that we should have already started. To make sure that we are successful, let's have a look at the criteria for this task. We must include bars of both thick and thin texture. So bars that have lots of different parts playing and bars that have not so many parts playing. We must also make sure that all of the regions start and be one of the bar and not start partway through a bar. Your ostinato should also stop at the end of bar 16. And I'd also like you to experiment with different ideas and listen to your texture changes to check that they are effective. With all of that now covered, what I would like you to do is pause the video here whilst you complete your task. Once you've finished, make sure that you save it before returning back to this video and pressing "play" for the next part, I would like you to give some feedback for the following video. How could the example be developed even further? I want you to consider the following in your response. Are there bars of thick texture? Are there bars of thin texture? Do all the regions start on beat one of a bar? And does the ostinati stop at the end of bar 16? Whilst considering those four points, let's take a look at that video now. (percussive music playing) Well done if you were able to identify that it could include bars with a thick texture and that the ostinati needed to play right until the end of bar 16. For this next part of the lesson, we're going to focus on the D minor pentatonic scale. In music lessons where you see a capital letter followed by a lowercase M, that lowercase M means minor, and the the uppercase letter refers to the tonic of that scale or notes one. We also, in our key words slide, looked at this word "pentatonic." The pentatonic scale is a five note scale which we can use to make melodies. Now, at this point in our musical career, we may have come across lots of different kinds of scales. We might have heard about the major scale, the minor scale, the blues scale, and the pentatonic is just another common scale that is used actually across many, many different genres around the world as well. So it's a very, very useful scale to understand. If we were to look at that word and break it down, we might see that it starts with "pent" or "penta," which comes from the Greek word for five. So you might know the word pentagon, the five-sided shape, or a pentathlon, which is an Olympic event that has five events. The word "tonic" comes from tone, which is just another word for sound. So we could say that pentatonic literally means five sounds. The D minor pentatonic scale uses these notes. D, because it's D minus, so it must start on D, F, G, A, and C. That's five. D, F, G, A, and C. And if we take a look at that keyboard diagram, I want you to really focus on this pattern of notes. We have D, which is in between those two black notes. We skip a note, and then we have F, G, and A, which are all next to each other. We skip out B, and then we have C. So we have this pattern of one, skip, three, skip, and then one again. Let's take a listen to what the D minor pentatonic scale actually sounds like. Here it is. (piano music) So just to recap again, the D minor pentatonic scale uses the notes D, we skip E, and we go F, G, A. We skip B and we play C as well. Now, pentatonic scales are used in lots of different music because they sound good together. So it's good when creating ostinati, it's good when doing perhaps improvisation. So it's a very useful scale, as I said, because the notes sound nice together. Let's recap. How many notes are in the pentatonic scale? Is it A, three; B, four; C, five; or D, seven? Yep. Well done if you said five. Remember we're looking for that "pent" or "penta" at the start of that word, which means five. So well done. Which of these shows the notes of the D minor pentatonic scale? Now remember we were focusing on that patent, so we've gotta think back to what was the correct one, or if you remember the notes as well, and you're good at reading the keyboard diagrams, then you should be able to do this one as well. Was it A, B, C, or D? Thinking really closely about where those gaps were. So well done if you said D. Remember, we start on D, we skip E, we have F, G, A all in one go, skipping B, and hitting C. So we had that one, gap, three, gap, one pattern. So that brings us on to task B. On your keyboard or your digital audio workstation, we want to familiarise ourselves with this scale, the D minor pentatonic scale. We're gonna find all five notes and practise going up and down the scale using multi finger technique. So we'll play D with our thumb, F with our index finger, G with our middle finger, A with our ring finger, and C with our little finger. So each note can have its own finger. We have five fingers and five notes to play. Then we're gonna switch hands and practise with the other hand. So we'll have D starting on the little finger. D, F, G, A, C. Then we're gonna play different rhythms using the notes of the scale and just practise going up and down and skip some notes. So go from D straight to G, A, C or start on D and skip all the way to A and then do the same coming down as well. Maybe play C, G, D or C, G, F, D, something like that. So this is a little bit experimental and again, you can use your keyboard or your digital audio workstation. We really want to embed the sound of the D minor pentatonic scale and also get it embedded into our fingers as well and get it into our muscle memory. Because this is gonna be really useful not only for this task, but also in many, many different musical tasks as you progress through your music lesson career. So enjoy this task, pause the video here, and when you're ready to move on, come back and press "play." Great. So I hope you enjoyed playing the scale and learning it on the keyboard and like you managed to do it with both hands, which is really, really important. The second part of this task, we are going to listen to the clips and identify if it's the D minor pentatonic scale or not. So it's very simple. I'll play the extract and then you're just gonna simply write is it the D minor pentatonic scale, yes or no. So here is the first clip now. (piano music) So was that the D minor pentatonic scale, yes or no? Here is example two. (piano music) Was that a D minor pentatonic scale, yes or no? And finally example three. (piano music) Was that D minor pentatonic scale, yes or no? Let's take a look at the answers together now. So example one was not a D minor pentatonic scale. Example two was also not a D minor scale, that was just the first five notes, D, E, F, G, A and down again. But a well done if you correctly identified that example three was the D minor pentatonic scale. So that brings us to the third and final part of today's lesson where we're going to create a melodic ostinato. We can use the D minor pentatonic scale that we just learned to create a melodic ostinati for our minimalism composition. So we're gonna watch two videos. The first video shows us how to improvise using the D minor pentatonic scale. And this is kind of like what we've already just done, where we were going up and down the scale where we were skipping out some notes. Improvising is to make it up on the spot. So we know the notes, we have them in our fingers, and we are just going to, on the spot, decide which notes to play, which notes to skip, and what rhythm to use. And with improvising, what's great is that there's no right or wrong. We'll go into more detail in the first video that we'll watch. The second video that we'll watch shows us exactly how to record and loop the ostinato. That one's a slightly shorter video and I'll play them both one after each other right now. A go at creating a melodic ostinato. So the first thing I need to do is I'm gonna create a new track and I'm gonna choose a suitable instrument. Now for this, as we're using the D minor pentatonic scale, we need a tuned instrument. So we're not gonna be using untuned percussion like we were in the previous lesson. Instead we're gonna be finding something that can play pitched notes. That's entirely up to you what you use. It would depend on your software and it'll depend on your preference. But as long as you choose something that uses pitched sounds, you'll be absolutely fine. I've decided I'm gonna use a tuned percussion instrument and I've decided to go for this one called a marimba, which sounds like this. (marimba music) It's a really nice warm sound and I think that'll form a really nice basis for mine. You might choose to do the same or you might choose to use something completely different and that's absolutely fine. So I've had a practise of my D minor pentatonic scale (marimba music) and I've gotten familiar with those notes, so I know how to play those now pretty confidently. What I'm now gonna do is I'm gonna improvise to come up with some ideas for my ostinato. Before I do that, I'm gonna set the looper so that it loops and repeats my first 16 bars. So these will keep playing and I can just keep improvising over the top for as long as I want. In GarageBand, the way you turn that on and off is with that yellow arrow button at the top and you just extend it so the yellow section is the section you want to repeat. There's a similar function, similar tools on most other DAWs as well. Okay, so I'm ready to have an improvise. I've got my notes of my scale, I've put the looper on. I'm gonna put the playhead back and I'm just gonna try and come up with a four-beat ostinato using the notes of the D minor pentatonic scale. I'm gonna try some different orders, try some different rhythms, maybe do some higher up the instruments, some lower down, and see what I can come up with. Let's go. (percussive marimba music) So there's lots of different ideas there and quite a lot of those I'd be quite happy to use. However, I've decided I'm gonna choose this one that I played in the middle there, which sounds like this. (marimba music) The reason I'm sticking with that one for now is it's quite simple. It uses four notes. They're crotchets, it's not too complicated. And what I'll be able to do is I'll add my other ostinatos later on, is I'll be able to increase the complexity a little bit. In order to record it then, I'm gonna make sure that my playhead is back at the start of bar one. I can turn the looper off now. I'm gonna put the metronome on 'cause that's a good thing to do while you're recording to help you stay in time. I'm gonna make sure I've selected my track, I'm gonna find my notes on my piano, and I'm ready to go. So let's record. (metronome ticking) (marimba music) Now because I know this is crotchets, I can quantize it to one-quarter note. If you were using faster rhythms, so if you had quavers in yours or semiquavers, you'd need to quantize it to eighth notes for quavers or sixteenth notes to semiquavers. And then I can loop it. And for now I'm just gonna loop it so it'll last for the 16 bars. (percussive marimba music) And that's where I'm gonna stop for now. So to recap that first video, when creating a melodic ostinato, we need to make sure that we keep it simple. Sometimes less is more. Certainly in a minimalist composition, we want it to be really nice and simple, at least at first. We only want to use three or four notes. This is gonna help us to keep it simple as well. We're gonna keep the notes nice and close together so we don't wanna jump around the keyboard too much and we wanna make sure that it lasts for a whole bar or four beats. Which of these examples shows a 1-bar ostinato? Is it A, B, or C? Yeah, well done if you said C. Now let's just go through each of these really quickly. Example A doesn't quite make it to the line that says two. These are the most important numbers on what we call a ruler. Those numbers where it says one, two, and three, show bar one, bar two, bar three. Those other lines in between one and two represent the beats within that bar. So that first example, we're looking at a sort of three and a half beat ostinato, so it's not quite got to four. The second one, B, is only showing us a one-beat ostinato, and three, it goes all the way to two. We can see that it fills that whole bar. So that is the indeed the correct example of a one-bar ostinato. Let's look at a different example now. Which of these examples shows an ostinato that is looped for eight bars? Looped for eight bars. Is it A, B, or C? Well done if you said B. Now, A goes slightly over the eight bars. We can see it's leaked into bar nine. C, I could see. If you put C, I could see why you might have, but actually that's only filled seven bars. We need to make sure that we're in until the end of bar eight, so that we actually have eight full bars. If you did count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, we're gonna have seven full bars, which means that B is that correct answer. We've gone all the way to the end of that eighth bar. So our third and final task is us actually creating this ostinato using the notes of the D minor pentatonic scale. Our success criteria is as follows. We're gonna choose a tuned percussion instrument. That might be a xylophone or a marimba or the steel pans. Whatever you choose, make sure that it's a tuned percussion instrument. We're gonna keep it simple using three to four notes. Use only notes from the D minor pentatonic scale, so no black notes on the keyboard, no E naturals, no B naturals. Your ostinato is one bar, or four beats, long. We're gonna make sure that we're gonna loop it so it lasts until the end of bar 16. And as always, when we use a DAW, we're gonna make sure that we quantize our pattern. So I've left the notes on the treble clef and also on the keyboard diagram. So if you would like to pause this and use this for reference, then go ahead. Pause whilst you're completing your task. When you come back, make sure that you've saved your work and that you're coming back to this video and pressing play for the next part of the lesson. Great. So for the final, final task of this lesson, we're going to see which of the success criteria has been achieved in this example. Now, before we watch the clip, let's just go through the success criteria again. So was it a tuned percussion? Yes, no? Was the ostinato simple? Yes, no? Did it use notes from the D minor pentatonic scale? Yes, no? Did it last for one bar or four beats? Yes, no? Did it loop all the way until the end of bar 16? Yes or no? And has it been quantized? Yes or no? So there are six things to listen out for. Let's take a listen to. Well, actually, let's watch this example right now. (percussive marimba music) (metronome ticking) (music ends) Great. So well done if you were able to identify that they did use a tuned percussion instrument, the ostinato was simple, but that they didn't use notes from the D minor pentatonic scale. However, they did last one bar, it is looped until the end of 16, and sadly it wasn't quantized. Both of those things are quite easy fixes. We can very easily and quickly quantize that ostinato and we can also, add or remove the notes that we needed to make sure that it fits into the pentatonic scale. But well done for identifying that. And well done for getting to the end of this lesson. There was so much in this one and the D minor pentatonic scale and these new words, they can be quite daunting at first, but I hope that you have gained some confidence with the words and also with playing and understanding how to create melodic ostinatos. Let's do a really quick recap before we wrap up. So texture can be developed by creating sections of thin, which is few layers, and thick, which is many layers. Remember, texture is talking about the different layers, not necessarily the amount of instruments, but the different layers being played at the same time. The pentatonic scale uses five notes. We're looking at that "penta" and "tonic." "Penta" meaning five, "tonic" meaning tones, and the D minor pentatonic scale starts on D and has F, G, A, and C in that scale as well. And finally, we can create a melodic ostinato by improvising on this scale, the pentatonic. So that is the recap of this lesson. That means that we are now halfway through this unit and I'll look forward to seeing you in the next one. Have a great day.