Tonal dynamics allows us to understand, study and theorize on the level of musical context itself. It's a branch of music theory that forms hypothesis on how our brains interpret contextual changes in a piece of music. Unlike Psychoacoustics, which is a science of psychology dealing with how our brains hear sound, Tonal Dynamics is a music theory and is not focused on harmonics or ratios. Tonal dynamics is a method to understand musical context in a way that allows us to interpret, repeat, and change the way we write and hear music. This page intends to explain what I think about it and some of the basic ideas behind it.
The way tonal dynamics probably will work, is rather than basing it on strict rules that change over time, or ambiguous information based on the harmonic series, tonal dynamics focuses on pitch class within a spectrum of notes which change in time. This means that it's entirely based on our assumed perception and not principles of acoustics or physics as much. We call a collection pitch class with time, musical context. So far I think of these as principles of context:
Pitch Class
Duration
Dynamics in loudness
Dynamics in Speed
Dynamics in color
Ornamentation
Harmonic groupings
Timbral groupings
Tempo
Sequencing
PITCH CLASS
Pitch class is the arrangement of tones in a piece of music or context. It sets the direction for the music and allows the ear to expect some sort of hierarchy between notes, similar to modes. The note in which the pitch class revolves around is called the fundamental pitch. Unlike the Tonic, the fundamental pitch isn't necessarily the home of the music, it's simply the notes in which the music revolves around at a given point. That means that the fundamental changes many times in a piece of music, and a new note/chord becomes the leader temporarily. While a piece in C major may have the tonic as C, the fundamental pitch may move from C to A to D or whatever the composer might want. One thing to keep in mind is that pitch class is NOT the same as chords. A pitch class often remains static for several chord changes. In this way, the ear hears the pitch class with the fundamental as the leader without changing each chord. It's almost like a sub-tonic, if you want to think of it like that.
The easiest way to know when a pitch class changes is when the music sounds like it "goes into another part of the song". The dynamics that propels music further in many styles is by moving the fundamental pitch around several times in a song. However in some styles such as Jazz or Hip Hop, the pitch class often is more ambiguous taking on a more chaotic, or floaty tone.
MODES AND PITCH CLASS
Modes in traditional theory referred to a set of scales in which monophonic music was played on with a note as the tonic. In tonal dynamics, pitch class is closely related to the idea of modes. Pitch class is a powerful idea in which we use the idea of having various modes WITHIN a piece of music. Any of the 7 modes of the major scale could be considered pitch classes as each pitch class has a fundamental which acts as the sort of leader of the group. Pitch class is sort of like, miniature tonalities. They act like they're part of the same tonality, but pitch classes change and sound different at different points in the music. As for what constitutes pitch class, it's changed by emphasis on one of the parts of context above.
TENSION AND RELEASE
The idea of tension and release in tonal dynamics is a bit different from normal music theory. In Tonal dynamics, there are multiple types of tension and release. The types of tension are:
Push and Pull The types of release are hard, soft, partial, surprise.
TENSION
Push tension deals with tension created by pushing the listener INTO the current pitch class furthering them to some sort of climax. Due to conditioning, we can assume that this kind of tension is followed by some powerful ending, chorus, or change in the song structure. Push tension can be both a hard rising build up in a classical piano piece as well as a build up in electronic music leading into a pumping chorus. The idea is that Push tension is meant to lead the listener INTO the music, almost like forcing their ear to want that resolution or that chorus or whatever might follow it. I would say at least 60 percent of classical pieces have a good amount of push tension in them. This sort of tension has a traditional sound to it, and often feels forced for modern music standards. Good composers can pull it off, but it's tricky.
Pull tension deals with tension created by pulling the listener away from the current pitch class. This type of tension is very popular in gospel and jazz music but all styles use it as well. This type of tension is not meant to push a listeners ear into wanting a resolution but rather, to confuse the listener and make the music more interesting. However, there are also many examples of pull tension simply changing the pitch class to another. The easiest way to hear pull tensions is to play in C major for a while then all of a sudden switch to any other key, doesn't matter which one. Let's say F# minor. You're ear will hear as you're being forced away from the C major tonality you were just listening to. A more subtle way of looking at it is to play in C major then switch to A minor. You are still playing the same scale but you just switched the fundamental from C to A.
Even if you play chords like C - F - G then Am - Em- F, you can still have only two pitch fundamentals on C and A.
EMPHASIS
Emphasis is the idea of taking the elements of context in order to declare a pitch class. The idea is that this normally is subconscious of the composer and they just find something they like. Emphasis can happen by any of the same words:
Pitch Class
Duration
Dynamics in loudness
Dynamics in Speed
Dynamics in color
Ornamentation
Harmonic groupings
Timbral groupings
Tempo
Sequencing
It allows us to hear A as a fundamental even though we're playing the chords D major, E, A major.
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WORK IN PROGRESS
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