Using Pedal Point and Ostinatos to Create Effective Music
Repetitive Music 𝄆 𝄇
In many of these articles I have mentioned that much of music plays with the idea of familiarity. The more familiar a listener is with a musical idea, the more they feel comfortable listening to it and can predict what is going to happen next. This is why pop music tends to use a repeating four chord sequence and the chorus comes back several times with little change. However, it can be difficult to strike a balance between “familiar” and “boring”.
If something becomes too familiar then a listener will switch off and stop listening. This is why each verse in a pop song has different lyrics and there is often a bridge section (to throw some unpredictability into the music).
On the other hand, if nothing is familiar…then the music will sound confusing and it isn’t likely to make much sense. This is because repetition serves as a reference point when we listen to music. Listening to something completely new in a piece of music only makes sense if we have something familiar to contrast it with.
Fortunately, there are some musical concepts that we can use in or
2. Pedal Point 🦶🏻
Pedal point originated on the organ and so can sometimes be called an organ note or a pedal note. On an organ, as well as having severals layers of keyboards in front of them to play, there is also an additional set of bass notes that can be played on a keyboard of pedals underneath the organists feet.
Often in organ music a “pedal note” will be held while the chords and melodies played by the organists hands are changed. This concept has since transcended organ music and is often used in many genres and styles of music as a way of creating and building tension.
The concept is actually a fairly straightforward one, One note stays the same while chords change around it. So you may have a “C” in the bass with a C major chord (C E G) over the top of it, then the chord may change to D minor (D F A) while retaining the C in the bass.
A pedal note enables us to move to some interesting chords within the music because we have the familiarity of a single held note glueing the various unfamiliar chords together.
Pedal point is a great way of building suspense and tension in a piece of music because often the pedal note will clash against the chord (because it may be a note that doesn’t belong to all of the chords you play over the top). Yet it still makes sense to listen to because we become familiar with the note that’s being held.
Finally releasing a pedal note and moving to a different note can also release the tension that has been built and sound very satisfying to a listener!
3. Ostinatos 🔁
Another way we can balance the familiar with the unfamiliar is using an “ostinato”. An ostinato is a repeating musical pattern…most commonly a repeating melodic pattern.
The most interesting type of music (in my opinion) is music that develops and evolves throughout. While some genres of music like to repeat entire sections of music, there is a middle ground…you can repeat a musical idea but change other elements of the music around it.
In classical music, composers would often write short melodic ideas that could then be developed. These ideas might retain some of the same key elements (the rhythm, the pitch, the tonality etc.) while changing others. This allowed the musical idea to develop and go on a journey throughout the piece. For example you may have a melody that uses notes from a C major scale, it may then repeat but this time using notes from a C minor scale.
A listener can hear the familiarity of the melodic idea while still feeling the novelty of a change in the quality of sound.
While changing some elements of a melodic idea but retaining others is a great way of balancing familiarity with novelty, it technically isn’t an ostinato. An ostinato is an exact repeat of a musical idea. However, we can take some of these key elements and change them around the ostinato. For example an ostinato may be a melodic idea that uses the notes (C D and E) as part of its melody. We could repeat this melodic idea over and over again. But initially we may use a C chord surrounding the motif and then change to an A minor chord surrounding the motif.
Changing the tonality and quality of a chord around an ostinato enables us to retain familiarity but also change the perspective and meaning of the melodic idea. This melody in the context of a C major chord might sound bright and uplifting…whereas in the context of an A minor chord, it might sound darker and more cautious.
Music is a constant balance between the same and change (much like any story). Some of the most interesting stories begin with an idea, that ideas is then developed and transformed and then we return home with a new perspective. Music is exactly the same! The question is, how do you transform your ideas to take us on that journey?
Matthew Cawood
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