That "sliding notes" thing

Hallo David,

At 01:03 AM 4/8/99 +0200, you wrote:
>What do you think of the following progression, with two simultaneous
>"slides"?
>
>S: d (20/9) d (9/4) e (5/2) d (9/4) c(2/1)
>A: c (2/1) c (2/1) c (2/1) H (15/8) c(2/1)
>T: A (5/3) A (27/16) G (3/2) F (27/20) E(5/4)
>B: F (4/3) Fis (45/32) G (3/2) G (3/4) C(1/1)

I'm all for it! The slide of the A and the D, from the first to the second
chord, looks good to me. I see the first chord as a subdominant, with the
F. But the second chord is "dominant of dominant". So I say slide 'em!

I believe Brahms' "Variations on a Haydn theme" has the same progression.
You can find a MIDI file of it at:

http://www.prs.net/brahms.html

Search for "Haydn" on that web page. (I recommend the file created by J. S.
Kaufman.)

If you transpose the theme to the key of C, the melody is:

bar 1: E F E E
bar 2: F E
bar 3: D C
bar 4: D E F D E C
bar 5: E D H C D
bar 6: E ...

Your progression starts at bar 4 and ends on the downbeat of bar 6. So the
sliding A and D are at in bar 4.

Another example of the slide is in J. S. Bach's "Air on a G String", in the
second bar. He has Violin II and Viola trade places on an H, as the H
slides up. So for the remainder of the bar the Viola plays higher than
Violin II. Maybe Bach did this intentionally, knowing that a single
instrument would try to cling to the first pitch!

A comment about your fourth chord (G F H D): I'd use "F (4/3)" instead of
"F (27/20)". My "Dominant Seventh" web page discusses why I make that choice:

http://www.pacificnet.net/~nowitzky/justint/dom7.htm

I just updated the bottom of that page, to link to a British harmonica page
with the same topic.

>Excuse me, Mark... do you live in Germany? My german is better than my
>english - I went to the "Deutsche Schule Valencia" - and I want to study in
>Germany...

No, but here's a coincidence: I play trombone in some groups in Valencia,
California, USA. I live in Glendale (near Los Angeles), California, USA.
Two of my grandparents were born in Germany, but the Nowitzky name came from
my grandfather from Dansig (Gdansk), Poland.

I can't speak German, but I've used AltaVista's translator to read German
web pages. It does a pretty good job. It's at:

http://babelfish.altavista.com/cgi-bin/translate?

Anyway, Danke, Gesundheit, etcetera!

--Mark (nowitzky@alum.mit.edu, AKA tuning-owner@onelist.com)
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| Mark Nowitzky |
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