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Forum / Music Theory Tips / Good example of pandiatonicism

• katejenkins Feb 28, 2019, 20:52

  Music is great art. Only genius can create it, write some songs or music. I prefer classical music.

• arralou Jul 1, 2010, 11:51

  I would love more simple and practical music theory ideas. Maybe I could make a post how I do it, I'm very simplistic when it comes to chords.

• ebjazz Jun 3, 2010, 07:58

  Nice! I thought I heard a Maj9 chord in there...

• aaronmusic May 30, 2010, 14:19

  Nice!  There's a couple brief instances where it implies a IV chord with some nice tensions too (or bVI, as I end up hearing the whole piece in Am now that I've heard the minor chord in the middle :)

• MusicRevolution1 Aug 14, 2020, 15:21

  Composer Aaron Copeland often used a technique called pandiatonicism. Pandiatonicism is when you use only the notes of a given major scale, say C, but do not combine those notes into any conventional harmonic rules like a I-IV-I-V7-I a chord progression. It's basically "anything goes" on the white keys.
  
  Check out this attached example I created in Logic 8 using standard orchestra samples:
  
  https://www.musicrevolution.com/static/ftp/Pandiatonicism2.mp3
  
  There's a strong hint of a minor six (vi) chord at :24 which began as a happy accident.  I wound up augmenting that section with percussion because that one familiar chord feels great in the midst of all the other note movement.
  
  That's the point of pandiatonicism: The notes are familiar but the usage of them is not. 
  

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