Re: the use of fifths forths,the heaviness in music

["L.Angulo" <labaloops@yahoo.com>]

very intersting thread guys,talking about fifths fourths power chords 
octaves and smoke on the water riffs etc. i always found it facinating and 
intriguing where this "heaviness" comes from and why we feel it that 
way...the old blues and a lot of the early flamenco were also already 
using them extensively.Also that forbidden flatted fifth somehow makes it 
more "heavy and evil"...
Blues and flamenco to me is almost like the roots of that "heavy"...they 
both have that flated or sharp interval creating tension...both use power 
chords and a lot of octaves as well,it seems to me the heaviness i feel 
from the early blues comes not only from the use of that "blue note" added 
in the minor pentatonic but from the use of those spread octave riffs 
which incidently is very african as well.Lots of rock riffs is just 
playing those scales in unison with the bass which are also in 
octaves;maybe here you can sort of see what i mean, Hendrix is using the 
12 string which has the octaves and is constantly pulling the lower e 
string letting it resolve to E and hammering its octave of it on the d 
string,this sounds to me heavy even without the need of distortion!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCQBbgb_Lvo&feature=related

or here african style
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rXgi2QYC74

in flamenco seguiriyas is a good example,constantly hammering on that 
sharp half step note on the octave from the root and following with the 
power chord

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKXKWrSUZ3o&feature=related

or in the context of music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiKrcHpDt3s

And in rock
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkuOAY-S6OY

cheers
Luis



www.myspace.com/luisangulocom


--- Rainer Straschill <moinsound@googlemail.com> schrieb am Mi, 5.8.2009:

> Von: Rainer Straschill <moinsound@googlemail.com>
> Betreff: Re: anti-looper bigots
> An: loopers-delight@loopers-delight.com
> Datum: Mittwoch, 5. August 2009, 15:08
> > when I was a freshman music
> major studying first year theory according to Paul
> Hindemith, we were instructed to avoid parallel fifths in
> all of our assignments
> 
> The rule to never use parallel fifths (and octaves and
> primes) is much
> older than Hindemith and comes from the early Baroque era.
> 
> Now for us power chord generation people, this rule is
> often hard to
> understand, and so it makes sense to see where it
> originally came
> from:
> Back in the early Baroque era, the human voice was an
> important
> instrument, not only as a lead instrument, but also in
> multi-voice
> harmonies (as in choral harmonies). Now the predominant
> singing style
> at that time for solo singers was to sing jumps portamento,
> i.e. for a
> fifth jump from D to A not sing the D, then sing the A, but
> to sing a
> quick glissando from D to A.
> 
> Now obviously, if several singers were doing that in a
> homphonic
> passage, then they all would do that glissando with a
> slightly
> different timing - which would mean they wouldn't be in
> exact
> intervals during the glissando.
> Now this sounds especially ugly if you are moving in
> parallel in very
> pure intervals - prime, octave and fifth - so this was to
> be avoided.
> 
> Just my historical two cents.
> 
>            Rainer
> 
>