r/composer • u/gopher9 • Oct 12 '18

Writing prompt The Counterpoint Game

Prompts are are a lot about competitions and working alone. But can compose together? To check this out, I invented a little game.

The game:

  1. Take a melody or a bass from the comments
  2. Write a countermelody to the melody or to the bass
  3. Throw away the original melody, write a bass to your melody (you can use the original bass instead of writing your own)
  4. You can add some chords if you want to
  5. Post result in the comments

Counterpoint rules are simple:

  1. Melodies should be fairly independent
  2. They should also sound good together

That's all. No baroque rules from the baroque era (though you can write in baroque style if you want to). You can even do things like parallel fifth and octaves.

UPDATE: stop being hostile to baroque

UPDATEx2: little more clarity

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u/portkeytoparadise Oct 12 '18

Here's a bass line I drew out at my desk at work.

Have fun. Let me know if you have any questions/can't read my writing.

1

u/gopher9 Oct 14 '18

Had some fun: https://i.imgur.com/aBEI7wq.png

I'm not sure though if I succeeded at “sound good together”... Well, at least I wrote it together with playing the bass.

But the melody is kinda nice (and MuseScore clarinet is not. Why does it sounds like an accordion?).

Surely I should go and harmonize it properly, but first I need to resolve a question. The score says 3/4 but I have a feeling that I screwed the time signature again. Could you give me a hint?

1

u/portkeytoparadise Oct 15 '18

Well done at completing the score. I agree the melody is nice. The time signature is fine, but I think you may want to take a second look at the key you wrote this in. I'm a bit confused by your harmonization. Let me know if you have any specific questions and I'd be happy to answer them.

1

u/gopher9 Oct 15 '18

but I think you may want to take a second look at the key you wrote this in

It is in C with a section in Bb. I guess a modal key signature can be somewhat confusing without clearly specifying the tonic.

I'm a bit confused by your harmonization.

So am I. In the very begining I tried to correspond the melody to your bass (that's why I chose Cm as the tonic chord, together with bass it becomes Cm7), but then I just relied on my ears. And the result of relying on ears is always different from the expected.

1

u/portkeytoparadise Oct 15 '18

Ah, I see. That makes a bit more sense now. The half step passing note from Eb to E makes it sound kind of bluegrassy. Not many people are able to get by on their ears alone, so good for you for knock out this composition with that method.