On, about, and concerning Saga Music Concept

ace

Pepper's Keeper - Administrator
I, like most people, downloaded the WC Saga Concept Music that was recently made available to us all. After listening to it I decided to post my opinions in case anyone was interested.

First of all, I'd like to congratulate Glyn R. Brown on writing the best music for any WC fan project. The entire piece had a very distinguished layer of polish and an impressive aura of cohesive design that gave the impression that it was written with a single-minded and clear image. The instruments all had a very professional sound and the entire work seemed very cinematic.

Deeper though I have some criticisms that I hope could be constructive:

You have several instances throughout the piece where there are jarring moments of parallel motion between the bass and the melody. This is apparent during the first melodic phrase 48 seconds into the piece. The harmony here being a B Major chord going to a g sharp minor chord to an F Sharp Major chord, you have the melody first play through some intervals of the B Major chord, but as the harmony shifts from g sharp minor to F Sharp Major the melody goes from D Sharp to C Sharp which creates parallel fifths between the G Sharp in the bass to the D Sharp in the melody and the F Sharp in the bass to the C Sharp in the melody. This creates a very jarring shift as the entire piece moves down a whole step in every voice.

This same principle also continues on a few seconds later when the melody goes from F Sharp to B and the harmony from B Major to g sharp minor. There aren't any parallels here, but the similar motion combined with the syncopation of the rhythm still feels pretty jarring. This feeling also happens at other points in the piece.

Harmonically speaking, it never appers to me as though your F Sharp (Major?) chord has a third, which makes things very, very ambiguous. This is apparent about 35 seconds in when you modulate from b minor to B Major. The melody goes B, A, G sharp, A, B. The second A Natural seems counterproductive to the effort of transitioning to B Major. Likewise, A Sharps in all following F Sharp chords would provide a lot of harmonic stability.

The modulation at the very end also strikes me as very odd. While there's certainly no law against modulating from B Major to D Major it fells jarring to the listener. I can understand if you wished to return to the original b minor key signature of the piece through the relative major, but I don't think there's any aural connection at that point. I think you should consider modulating to a more closely related key like E Major.

Overall, pretty interesting stuff. I definitely look forward to hearing more.
 
... Whoa. If I didn't know what ace was saying, I'd be flat-out confused. Now I'm just bewildered. Gah, if I could just hear the chords in my head... Bah. I suck. Will return after downloading the music-thingy.
 
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