Pitch Aspects (melody, texture, harmony, bimodality)

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

• A repetitious melody is made up of recurring phrases.
• Homophonic texture: dominating melody with simple repeating accompaniment
• Harmonies are consonant, and adapted from the Western music culture.
• The "‘bimodality' of a constant alternation between the major and its relative minor key—is characteristic of both northern Ecuadorian highland sanjuán, and many other Andean traditional musics." In Western or Western-influenced music every major key/scale has a relative minor key/scale that starts on the sixth degree of the related major scale. A common example of bimodality was used in this selection: the close occurrence of Eb major and its relative minor, C minor. (The Eb major scale is Eb = 1, F = 2, G = 3, Ab = 4, Bb = 5, and C = 6, and D = 7). The scale starting on C, the sixth scale degree of Eb major, is the relative minor scale of Eb major or C =1, D = 2, Eb = 3, F = 4, G = 5, Ab = 6, and Bb = 7. Play these two scales on any keyboard instrument to see if you can hear the different qualities of the two types of scales (major vs. minor) and the close relationship between a major scale and its relative minor scale.