trey song writing style/fugues

[Erictw83]

So I have been getting massively bored of just strumming/picking away the same old junk I always play so I decided its time for something completely new. I always hear about how trey writes songs in fugue style so I read up about fugues on wikipedia and they sound complex and interesting.  I still more reading to do since I have little formal music training.  I guess i was wondering what phish songs in the fugue style would be good place to start?

[Walker done done]

Good question....hope someone can shed some light 'cuz I sure as hell can't :? .  I'd like to know to, though...sounds interesting.

[Walker done done]

Was just reading up on more of this....and I'm as mystified as I was when this was first posted.  But the shit is VERY interesting to read about.  Unfortunately some or most of it is over my head.  Alas, something to strive for  

EDIT:

I just found this example that someone uploaded to Wiki to give an example of a fugue.  Using this format, you can totally hear the basics of so many Phish songs:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Wiki_fugue_analysis_audio.mid

[JamVol]

guelah papyrus has an atonal fuege after the vocals.  just learning about how to construct them as well.

[Walker done done]

guelah papyrus has an atonal fuege after the vocals.  just learning about how to construct them as well.

Sweet, let us know what you find! Welcome to the SD btw.

[Happyorange27]

Here is Page's mom playing a fugue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEqPahddpYk

Wouldn't this sound bad ass if Phish covered it?

[Heady Jam Fan]

very cool - Guellah is a great example of Fugue in modern music.

I was a music major in college many years ago and I can't remember the specifics of Fugue, but I would look at counter point in general: it is pretty much a horizontal/melodic construction of music before the consideration of vertical/chordal music. I think Fugue, IIRC, has similar melodic lines starting at different times:

Row-Row-Row Your Boat, gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is a but a dream...
                                                                    Row-Row-Row Your Boat, gently down the stream...

Often with melodic variation or pitch changes between lines.

I always liked Bach's Little Organ Fugue in Gmin. I did a rendition of it that becomes more chordal through a few passes on the original melody (pretty tough to play more than 2 melodies at once on guitar). If you listen to Bach's, you will hear simpler versions of the melody in the low register and more complex/ornate ones on top with continuous modal changes. I remember learning some of it on piano (I believe in Dmin) and the last note lead to a key change played in another mode that has a pretty natural progression, I would move the melody (with the modal variations) down the piano as a sort of etude for the piano-challenged.

[Happyorange27]

Well then Phish's music is quite "Fuguey" isn't it.  So many counterpoints going on in a bunch of tunes.

[Heady Jam Fan]

I would say so, lol... In a high school music theory class (actually somewhat more advanced than some college courses I had), a phriend of mine played GP as an example of Fugue, but I think others would qualify. IIRC, Fugue is a type of Counterpoint, probably the most complex one. I think there is a part of Reba is an example of counterpoint that might be consider Fugue (?) is has some layer melody that are in canon (repeated) with slightly different notes, though it may not be strictly enough of a variation on the main melody. I know it is structured, but maybe feels more free-form cuz of this - and certainly, when Bach wrote his Fugues, he was improvising (yea, Bach is a Jam Band now ).

For modern music, I think this might be sometimes hard to define, at least for me: the bass is almost always playing single notes, and Bach's bass/lower register, for example, is often much less ornate than the upper register, so it isn't 'mimicking' the melody (highest pitch melodic line) as the ones in the middle seem to. So if the guitar is playing a lead, the piano would have to really be doing the mimicking or following (and the opposite of the piano takes the lead). So if the bass is playing single notes as is common and the guitar and piano are tossing melodic ideas back and forth with some variation, does this make it counterpoint?

I think the idea is really cool though, even if not strict, as, when I had more time to jam, I found the coolest parts are like 10 minutes into a song when everyone is in the zone and you start hearing a new phrase go from musician to musician, sometimes turning into a theme itself, sometimes just a few rounds playing with it. It gets kinda fugal even though the keyboard player is still usually comping. Not that I am saying we were writing fugue, but it kinda seems to be natural in certain types of improvisation during jams. [I think I tried to write a fugue in my teens and it sounded very contrived].

[Happyorange27]

I think this stuff is where the magic happens.  I want my mind to start to go in to overdrive and work a bit trying to follow all the individual parts, but as they are all working together.  And then at some point you stop analyzing because it's too taxing to keep track and you start to get lost, but in a good way.  You start swirling and twisting and floating around and it chaotic genius.  YES!

[Heady Jam Fan]

Lol - I know! You want to, and some times can briefly (at least for me) hear them all working separately, but the cool part is that they work together. I think that is the neat thing with counterpoint is how even the lines that are not playing the melody currently have important content that harmonizes with the melody (even though the song wasn't designed harmonically). Like taking something like an old fugue and trying to decide which chords you would use if you were rewriting it in another style. I decided to do Franz Liszts 12 Etude for a macroanalysis during the high school class I mentioned above and I remember there being many options at some points - you have to look where you came from, what comes next and as far away as I am sure I was from how he was thinking, you start to get a glimpse of where the song came from or how he thinks.