Modes - promotional

I am working on a piece called "Modes." Here is a video with some visuals for the second part of Modes.

Copyright: GavOnyx, 2021. All rights reserved.

Learn about my albums!

I have a page dedicated to each of my released albums. These pages include the album artwork, a list of the titles of each piece, and my thoughts on each piece as well as the album. And links to the album.

Learn about each of my releases by looking at the pages or checking out these links:

Restructure

Moldies

Oldies

The list is organized with the most recent release first.

Donate if you enjoy my work! Any and every amount helps.

PayPal.me/GavOnyx 

 

* Copyright: GavOnyx 2020 *

Restructure Preview

 Here's a little preview of the album!

* Copyright: GavOnyx 2020 *

Find this preview and more on my telegram channels! t.me/GavOnyxNexus

RESTRUCTURE - the New album is coming soon!

 I've got some new music coming to all your favorite streaming/music services next month!

This album is worth a listen to when it comes out. The last piece in the album –Ru– is certainly the best piece in all my currently released albums.

Check out this Loink: GavOnyx - HyperFollow 

Loink to Spotify: GavOnyx - spoopfiy

 

* Copyright: GavOnyx 2020 *

My first Album on Spotify!

Finally after years of having these things lying around I finally got em on spotify. I would recommend listening to a few but bare in mind they are my first ever compositions. At that time I had no (or at least very little) musical training so they pretty much suck.
simply looking up the name "GavOnyx" will get to my page in spotify
Album title: Oldies

Loink to list of places to follow: Hyper Follow

Loink to Spoopify: GavOnyx

*Copyright: GavOnyx 2020. All Rights Reserved*

First Albums on fartcloud

In an older post I mentioned that I had 6 albums in the works. That's true, but I haven't technically released any of them on to monetized platforms. In other words I have some of my music on the worst platform of them all, sound cloud.
My first 2 albums are there along with a few other goodies. Sound cloud is the worst because every good feature is behind a pay wall (spotlighting tracks, getting featured, no limit to uploads, etc). Beyond that they don't pay you one cent even if they have ads all over your music. I'm sure they get away with it because of some legal loopholes with the user agreement.
Anyways, I most certainly wont put any more music on that. But of course my early stuff is on there. Like way way early. Most of it is pretty bad –gonna be honest. But hey, if you're interested take a listen.

Yoink this Loink: GavOnyx on trashcloud

p.s. oldies is better than moldies

Tantacrul's look at Shostakovich

As I became interested in learning more music theory and exploring more music in general, I stumbled on a video by a youtuber with the handle "Tantacrul." The video was about the life and works of the russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich.
The video discusses how "Shosty" (as tantacrul playfully refers to him) was able to weave double meaning into his music during a time when the arts were oppressed and put under intense scrutiny during Joseph Stalin's regime.
As I later explored shosty's works, I really have come to appreciate the ways shosty was able to put modern aspects (or at least, non traditional aspects and tonalities) into his music during a time when the russian overlords wanted artists to return to romanticism and traditional styles. Not to mention shosty walked this tightrope when going to far would mean an end to his life and eradication of his work.

Anyways, here's the loink to the video: How to Compose Music Despite [ R E D A C T E D ]

Western Tonality and Music today

I have some college education on music and music theory. For any composer I highly recommend looking for and buying "Tonal Harmony – with an introduction to twentieth-century music" by Stefan Kostka, seventh edition. (isbn: 978-0-07-802514-3 ).

That book is chock full of information and any level of composer would benefit from reading it. One of the interesting things I learned had to do with melody. Melody in today's music is often overlooked, not only in pop but in other common genres like rap, synthwave, chill-hop, electronic, and virtually every genre excluding jazz and classical.
This isn't a rant on "how terrible music is nowadays! Ooohooho nOoooo." Rather it is pointing out certain rules of melody writing and pointing out that most songs nowadays do not follow those rules.

The first rule of melody of western tonality I would like to discuss is shape. According to western tonality, a melody should have a clear yet interesting shape to it. A melody without a shape would be one note type melodies. If you were to draw that out, it would be a flat line. Now, flat lines are pretty boring so not only are one note melodies boring but melodies that only ascend or descend are also uninteresting.
Old composer melodies are actually fantastic examples of this. Bach, Mozart, etc. Here's one from bach.

Here's the lines but exaggerated a little for clarity

This shape as a melody shape is much more interesting than just flat lines. yet, they aren't complex. If you had to look at the shape for 10 seconds and then turn around to draw it from memory, everyone could easily accomplish that.
For most melodies found in pop music, there is either very little shape or they violate the second rule I will talk about.

The second rule has to do with the melody having a single focal point. And a focal point is simply the highest note in a melody. Looking at the above melody you'll see that it follows this rule as well. Bear in mind that while there are 2 lines, in reality it is one melody. The focal point for that melody is in the second line and it is a D. There is no other note higher than that D and no other D exists in the melody making that high note the focal point. (of course bach gets pretty close with multiple C's but there is only one D).
In today's music, especially pop music, this rule is completely left out. Many many melodies in tunes played on the radio have no focal point, no highest note, unless it's the end of the song where the singer jumps up an octave to make a huge finish.

Take for example the melody to Shawn Mendes' 'senorita'. For the main melody, if I counted right, there isn't one focal point. In fact there aren't 2, there aren't 3, and there aren't 4.  There are 9 focal points.  . . . which makes it so none of the high notes are actually focal points . . . meaning the song doesn't obey the rules of western tonality because the melody has one high note which it repeatedly comes back to but never goes above.
(I will not have a picture to demonstrate because of copyright reasons)

The biggest problem I have with this fact is that that song, senorita, topped the charts a while ago cementing it as a huge success and widely popular. But the song doesn't follow the rules of western tonality. So for aspiring musicians and composers of our time, many will listen to these songs and assume that having no focal point and having a shapeless melody is a correct way to structure a melody.

Some might ask, "well, why exactly is that bad?" And this question is mildly difficult. The best answer I have is that we have these various rules for a reason. That reason is mysterious to me but I do know that when humans create music they mostly all end up following these and other rules whether or not they even consciously know them. The reason to follow these rules is because they add structure, they help to avoid monotony, they make your music sound good.
That being said, music is of course an art form. And art, being subjective and totally controlled by the creator, is subject to the artists wishes and desires. If you as an artist want your music to have a good deal of repetition (like most pop music), or if you want it to have structure (by using these rules), etc, then do it. Nobody is stopping you. The only advice I have is to say that when creating a piece of music or a song, keep in mind your purpose. They 'why' of it all. "why do I want the melody to go up at this point?" "does that further the purpose or message I'm trying to get across with this piece?" "What does having one versus many focal points convey to the audience."

Really what I want is for people to think.
Don't do/create because it sounds cool. Do it for a purpose and really think about every aspect of your music.

Music Preview - Cougar Boi

I currently have 6 albums in the works. It sounds like a lot but only 4 are actually complete and it also isn't too much since those albums took 2 years to make. Regardless, you can only access these from my telegram channel at the moment.

Here's a shorter piece I made back in 2019. It's minimalist in style and electronic in genre and only a minute 10 sec in length called "Couger Boi"

*Copyright: GavOnyx 2020, all rights reserved*

I enjoy it quite a bit. The progression of the melody is very interesting. In the first 4 measures in an intro that lays out the chord progression. The second four measures is the interesting part because I create the rest of the song using just the melody created in those 4 measures. We'll call this 4 measure phrase the initial phrase. The next four measures uses the melody from the first measure of the initial phrase. the four measures after that (we're on the 13th measure now) uses the melody line from the second measure of the initial phrase, and so on for the rest of the song.
So while the piece may be short, it remains impressive as I was able to take just one phrase and create an entire piece of music using it. And it is this interesting composition technique that is why I decided to show you this particular piece. Enjoy.

MattC Links to music

MattC, another artist and a co-producer, has his music on Spotify and youtube. I encourage everyone to check it out.
His genre is a mix of electronic, jazz, hip hop, and synth. I know, it seems like too many, but one of the interesting things about our music is we are not tied to any genre.

Here's the loink to spotify: MattC

Here's the loink to youtube: MattC Youtube

*image used with permission. Copyright: MattC 2020*