When I started studying composition, I also felt that the prescriptive prohibition of parallels seemed like a hardly understandable restraint. Instead, I soon understood that their rationale was about expressing musical meaning within a conscious and logically laid-out set of linguistic criteria, that is a grammatical structure which is the composer’s responsibility to define and to abide to. While it is perfectly possible to write music avoiding altogether the voice-leading norms of the classic counterpoint and common practice (thus devising new personal rules for - say - producing parallels of a given kind), I still believe that is not completely accomplished, from a professional standpoint, to ignore the subject of a perimeter of limiting criteria for concurrent melodies, especially between the inner parts and when the lead-bass relationship is concerned. In my earnest opinion and experience, a “by-ear/with the hands” approach tends to generate redundancies in voice movement, and misses interesting compositional opportunities that eyes and mind only are capable of spotting. Of course, this is not to deny that sketching/improvising on the keyboard, with some degree of mastery in one’s own musical language, is a truly rewarding spiritual experience and the primary source for initial ideas! Moreover, hidden parallels and occasional 5ths are clearly more a general point of reference than a rigid practical requirement, because they have been long the subject of ingenious strategies for avoidance, and are almost impossible to completely eschew in multi-part writing beyond six voices. As for the inherent sonic shine of consciously employed consecutive fifths, I for myself do love them, when they are used as an expressive tool of a certain primal uncorrupted beauty.
I’ve been reading through and trying to parse this interesting six-year “thread” that strikes me as being “frayed” in multiple dimensions.
At the risk of falling into being overly pedantic, I sketched up a quick chart to try and wrap my brain around it (obviously there’s a fair amount of “bleeding across the boundaries”):
What started six years ago as a very straightforward practical question (upper left cell) soon moved into (ahem) parallel territories. I offer…
…a few thoughts:
- It seems to me that the Steinberg/Dorico team would benefit most from having the feature-request kinds of questions and responses in a separate dedicated thread.
- Pedagogical questions are really significant for anyone having students notate counterpoint and 4-part chorale-style exercises in Dorico. For anyone interested, David Huron — Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the School of Music and at the Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences at the The Ohio State University — has written an excellent book titled Voice Leading: The Science behind a Musical Art, which takes a deep, science-based, dive into the question of the pedagogical value of continuing the emphasis on those historical-stylistic practices. Using research in psychoacoustics and cognition, he makes a strong case for continuing it to foster the development of musicianship.
- In the 24 years I taught counterpoint and 4-part exercises, I always found that the simple detection of parallels was, while necessary, only the smallest and least interesting and compositionally meaningful part of the learning process. What blossoms out of those detections is rich conversation about what happened before/after that might have created the problem, and — even more interesting! — what are the paradigmatic melodic/harmonic patterns that avoid the problem in the first place. (I used to joke with students that any intro-level monkey could be trained to spot parallels, but if it stopped there they’d be as statistically likely as the proverbial Shakespeare-typers to get rid of them effectively.) To that end, then, I’m not sure how bothered I would be by the automation of detection, but I would not want “the machine” doing AI correction — unless the goal of the exercise was for the student to be able to explain how the different treatments either brought about or avoided the parallels.
- From a(n) (ethno-)musicological perspective, calling parallel 5s/8s “wrong” is quite obviously absurd. Whether it’s Debussy engulfing a cathedral, McCoy Tyner chasin’ the Trane, Nirvana smelling like teen spirit, or countless other examples, those parallels clearly are (ahem) fundamental to the sound of that music.
- From an aesthetic standpoint, calling music without parallel 5s/8s “better” is a judgement I will avoid. If, if, IF losing a voice is musically undesirable, then such parallels are best avoided. If losing a voice is musically irrelevant, well, then…the point is moot.
Hello Romanos, is this published? May I purchase it?
Dan
Hi @judddanby, your reflective approach is very shareable, and I do not think that considering the “refractions” of diverse pedagogical approaches in music composition might be considered out of place here. In my opinion, it does not make much sense to expect total segmentation of technical topics, in forums concerning tools for creative industry. After all, in software built for delivering coded instructions, that implement an artistic object (music score), there are unavoidable cultural implications everywhere: in the app’s general conception, functions selection, menus structure, graphical choices and GUI design.
Hi, @Aetherclouds . I agree that “total segmentation” would be an undesirable expectation or outcome. That degree of artificial compartmentalization would definitely reduce the opportunity for important cross-connections between the “technical” (software) and the “creative” (composing; representing music through engraving). (The lines in my chart should definitely be thought of more as porous membranes than hard dividers.)
But I do think a bit of thread separation and cross-linking (users such as @FredGUnn are really good about that practice) could be helpful to all forum users.
My point 1 was simply a suggestion that for the parts of the thread that address the Dorico design team in that role and intersect directly with the software’s features (whether the purely pragmatic (“is there a plugin…?”) or the more philosophical ("is a plugin undesirable bloat?‘, etc.)), the team may be more likely to be able to grab hold of users’ thoughts and wishes if they’re not intermixed with quite so many others. After all, I can imagine their plates are pretty full trying to stay on top of the feedback and requests they receive here while also coding, debugging, etc., and we want them to be able to catch our feature requests in their workflow.
(I’d love to hear from a Dorico team member what your perspective is on this; whether I’m concerned needlessly, etc.)
As I hope my points 2–5 make clear, I’m really glad to see that the Dorico forum does have so many members interested in discussing musical topics that are merely adjacent to or independent of the software used to notate music. In this instance, I found the conversations about historical practices regarding parallels and about pedagogical concerns really interesting and valuable! A “purely software forum” would be a pretty dull thing, after all, and there’s a lot of collective wisdom here beyond the technical, and many experiences and perspectives to learn from.
After reading your posts @dko22, I concur that automated detection of parallels is a tool worth implementing anyway, as long as there are people who feel the need to employ it - somehow, somewhere or sometimes - in their musical workflow. I for me would welcome such an extension in Dorico - capable of partly relieving certain composers from a somewhat menial part of their revision tasks -, providing that it is configurable in order to work with tailored rules, besides offering, for tuitional purposes, some presets reflecting different historical practices of harmony, counterpoint and concertation. I think that the whole point of the occasional attritions, surfaced in this thread, might be to admit that there are musical genres that maybe do still require some kind of voice-leading check - in their own specific stylistic terms - and other which don’t. Electronic, ambient, theatrical, inter-medial and procedural music, to name a few examples, entail a kind of structural development very different from that of a notated orchestration of layered parts, thus require a specialised set of performing instructions that a modern notation software should be able to provide, without interfering with the related compositional process enforcing historically inherited rules.
One has to consider the opportunity costs in addition to everything else when asking for a new feature and setting one’s expectations for getting it sooner rather than later.
we all have out pet lists of urgently needed not yet implemented features. I see three main considerations in no particular order 1. the number of requests for features and strength of feeling from those who want it. 2. the amount of development time and effort required (as @Derrek says) and 3. how such a feature fits into the Dorico team’s overall vision for the software. I would imagine that priority will be given to those who best tick all three boxes?
I would probably add 4. marketability to the above too. Steinberg obviously needs to sell upgrades whenever Dorico 6 arrives, and incremental engraving features aren’t as flashy as more visible features that are marketable in an ad campaign.
I agree @dko22 and @FredGUnn, and would expand on the mentioned points with:
5] What is relevant update fees-wise for the specific user base of an engraving software.
A notation app is used by those who, under some capacity, know the techniques of a given kind of music writing. Thus, albeit there are more and more overlapping areas between the two, they tend not to have the same expectations in terms of new features as people from the DAW community. Therefore, I think that every kind of time-saving automation for revision of music proofs would probably be always welcome in new releases of Dorico.
my frend collin says aliens gave bach a computor then he chucked it in the bin and boasted that he done it all himself
now if only Bach had used that computer, he might have turned out to be a half-decent composer… 
Hi everyone!
I’m going to add my two cents to this discussion. Please forgive me if I ruffle a few feathers.
In my mind, using a computer command to check for parallel intervals is cheating. A composer should be aware of parallel intervals when he or she is writing them. And what do you do when the computer tells you that you’ve written these little “nasties”? Do you change them and let the computer tell you how to compose and which notes to keep?
Personally, I don’t obsess over parallel intervals. When the texture is greater than 2 or 3 parts, and the score is moving along at more than a snail’s pace, these intervals are not obvious to the casual listener. In fact, I don’t notice them, so why should I worry about them or jump through hoops to eliminate them for the greater listening public, who is ignorant about such matters in the first place. The music either sounds good or it doesn’t. Period. This attitude may be sacrilegious to some, but I am a man living in the 21st Century, who is making his own decisions about what notes to write and which ones sound beautiful and interesting to my ear. And let’s face it, with Impressionism, Jazz, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg, a lot of musical water has flowed under the proverbial bridge since Bach (who I adore, by the way). To me, slavishly following the musical edicts of ancient music pedagogues is not very helpful, relevant, or necessary in today’s world. Granted, if you are trying to emulate the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, then I suppose you need to “follow” the rules and tow the line. But tell me: Do you really need a computer to tell you when you’ve committed a musical sin? After all, it’s YOUR music.
Mike
To play devil’s advocate here, we are all supposed to know how to spell, but I dare say the vast majority of us have not disabled spellcheck.
This to me is the bigger issue. Spell check, and range warnings are one thing. I wouldn’t mind at all if parallel intervals were pointed out to me. Now, whether or not I want Dorico suggesting fixes is an entirely different matter.
Amen, brother.
Perhaps some people would like to be warned if they’ve accidentally missed something that, because of the school of music they subscribe to, such a thing is indeed considered a mistake. I don’t know that we should deprive them of a helpful tool.
Thanks for your contribution to the topic. Let me propose my earnest objections to some of your interesting and legitimate views:
I believe that good composition is definitely not about spotting and resolving parallels, but composers should be capable of questioning themselves critically, as to what linguistic criteria they decide to apply while writing their music, whether those chosen rules are old, modern, relaxed, completely personal or no rules at all are engaged.
To this end, an automated algorithm of parallels detection, with a configurable grammar, is a time-saving tool for many composers, even if they legitimately decide to ignore most highlighted “irregularities” altogether, just like we all do with spell-checkers while typewriting texts.
This is honestly a bit objectionable Mike, in such general terms. While we all compose works for the emotive purport of their sound, a piece is also a cultural artefact per se, as a display of effective development and formal coherence, even if nobody is listening to it or it is fallen out of fashion. This is equally true for - say - Genesis’ Selling England by the Pound, Bach’s Art of Fugue or a motet by Th. Tallis. There is more to good music than the acoustic image that the ears can catch. Structure, lexicon, syntax and implied symbolic values also contribute, to render it a meaningful aesthetic phenomenon.
While there lies a certain exercise of creativity, in rewriting a passage to avoid some kind of parallelism, I would not say that this is today a crucial component of someone’s style. Still, it is a recommendable kind of technical expertise, for a musical score to survive in the repertoire beyond the specific occasion and time of its production, because it imparts to the layering of voices a sense of solidity, lack of redundancy and good economy of movement, which performers are very quick to sense when they play their part in context.
Every tool can be used for good or bad. A parallels finder would be an interesting tool for all kinds of good reasons. However in the grand scheme of things, I hope the team focuses on improving other aspects of Dorico (like Playing Techniques organization!) before it gets around to a parallels finder.
While I also hope that the team will come up with a leaner implementation of playing techniques, usable across different libraries (maybe through some kind of machine-learned contextual analysis?), I believe that the assistance from configurable expert routines might define the future of notation programs. Among such automated revision functions, I think that a flexible voice-leading checker is one of the most expected from many “print-centered” composers like me. I do realise, instead, that for media-related scoring this kind of “theoretical” polish is much less important, if not altogether useless. Still, contemporary composition (albeit in a societally residual form) is not exclusively about producing soundtracks, song arrangements and video-games cues, therefore I’m sure that the coming virtual assistants will be welcome from many musicians.
As long as one can turn them off and as long as developing them does not take precedence over more widely needed Dorico functions.
And as long as a teacher can turn off their availability to students in a class.