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Pitch Levels and Relationships
Relationships of pitch levels contain most of the pertinent information in a piece of music. The artistic message of most of the music of Western heritage is communicated (to a large extent) by pitch relationships. The listener has been trained, by the music heard throughout their life, to focus on this element to obtain the most significant musical information. The other artistic elements often support pitch patterns and relationships.
Pitch is the most precisely controlled artistic element in traditional music. The use of pitch relationships and pitch levels in music is more sophisticated than the use of the other artistic elements. Complex relationships of pitch patterns and levels are quite common in music.
Information about the artistic element of pitch levels and relationships will be related to
(1) the relative dominance of certain pitch levels,
(2) the relative registral placement of pitch levels and patterns, or
(3) pitch relationships: patterns of successive intervals, relationships of those patterns, and relationships of simultaneous intervals.
The artistic element of pitch levels and relationships is broken into the component parts: melodic lines, chords, tonal organization, register, range, textural density, pitch areas, and tonal speech inflection.
A series of successive, related pitches creates melodic lines. Melodic lines are perceived as a sequence of intervals that appear in a specific ordering, and that have rhythmic characteristics. The melodic line is often the primary carrier of the artistic message of a piece of music.
The ordering of intervals, coupled with or independent from rhythm, creates patterns. Pattern perception is central to how humans perceive objects and events. These basic principles relate to all of the components of the artistic elements. Melodic lines are organized by patterns of intervals (short melodic ideas, or motives), supported by corresponding rhythmic patterns. The complexity of the patterns, the ways in which the patterns are repeated, and the ways in which the patterns are modified provide the melodic line with its unique character.
Two or more simultaneously sounding pitches create chords. In much of our music, these chords are based on superimposing, or stacking, the intervals of a third (intervals containing three and four semitones, most commonly). Chords comprised of three pitches, combining two intervals of a third, are called triads. The continued stacking of thirds results in seventh, ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth chords.
The movement from one chord to another, or harmonic progression, is the most stylized of all the components of the artistic elements. Harmonic progression is the pattern created by successive chords, as based on the lowest note (the root) of the triads (or more complex chords). These patterns of chord progressions have become established as having general principles that occur consistently in certain types of music. Certain types of music will have stylized chord progressions (progressions that occur most frequently), other types of music will have quite different movement between chords, and perhaps emphasize more complex chord types. The patterns of the harmonic progression create harmony.
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