Subtle Symmetry

This might be old hat to most people here, (especially to formally trained musicians) but this morning, as I was practicing and looking over various pieces of music, I noticed a subtle, beautiful sort of symmetry that runs through most pieces of music. I've been working primarily with waltzes, and maybe that's why it seems more obvious than with other styles of music, but when I caught a glimpse of it, it was like seeing a subtle geometry to things that seems magical, somehow. For as long as I've loved music, and all of the various types of music that I love, I'm surprised that I've never seen it before...

Symmetry related to which axis ?

Perhaps you start noticing the 'musical form'... Perhaps you see the ABA or tonic-dominant-tonic structures.

What did you discover in waltzes ?

If you still have the teacher, ask him/her about the structure of the pieces you are learning.

Uh... I don't know.

Um... I don't know.

Okay: Like, the way songs always (or almost always) end on the same chord that they begin on, and the way certain chord progressions repeat, and the way melody and harmony play off of each other... It's really difficult to articulate, especially now, several hours after the glimpse I got. It's like a mathematical perfection/precision that runs through everything... It's like it's even more intrinsic than the rheythm of the piece itself.

I will. I fully expect her to look at me as though I've lost my mind, though. This thing that I caught a glimpse of, I've seen it before while playing guitar: The spacing of the strings' tones, the spaces of the frets, and it's like crisscrossing equations or something... I wish I was a better mathematician, because then I could probably explain it in better terms...

'Oh if I only had a brain! tra la la la la....'

- - /****************************************************** **************** * Gary M. Letchinger * San Diego, California * Reply to the newsgroup only ******************************************************* ***************/

Congratulations on the Mozart, Gary. You should see my study/practice area: It's got sheet music all over the music stand, the desk, the floor, piled up on the speakers... The stuff is everywhere. I've got probably a hundred MIDIs loaded in my computer and between PowerTracks, Cakewalk, and Voyetra's 'Teach Me Piano,' I'm able to see how all different components to all sorts of different songs are put together. I've got classical, waltzes, pop, jazz, swing, big band, blues, ragtime, and gospel all crammed in here. I love it all... And yes, it's the patterns that catch my eye

Frank, although your insight is a little naive, it is the beginning of a very deep truth about traditional harmony and form. A man called Schenker devoted a good deal of his intellectual life formalizing these types of insights into something called Schenkerian analysis, and basically discovered that most tonal classical pieces could be simplified into very short simple chord progressions, even if the piece were 15 minutes long. Perhaps there is something about him on the internet that will give you a place to begin seeing how your insights match up to his.

Thanks, Greg. I'll do some searching around and see what I come up with.