God Only Knows

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God only knows

After writing Translations from the Original I was aware of certain things.

Firstly that my 'Original' theme was limited to stepwise movements of chords with no sense of passing modulation to other keys so I wondered how a more organic and developed chord progression would sound.

Secondly I had opted for 4 note chords which had given me 43 translations – quite a lot – so a piece based on 3 note chords was an obvious next step.

Finally I had gone for a simple linear presentation of the translations with no sense of reviewing or previewing ideas, and there had not been any faster progression through chord types.

The technique used in 'God Only Knows' is the same as for ‘Translations from the Original’. There are 19 distinct 3 note chords within equal temperament. For traditional major and minor (which account for two of these) I also gave translations with the roles of x & y reversed. At this point I would have had 21 translations available. I reduced this - for all but traditional major and minor triads I treated inversions as equivalent to one another – and this left me with 15 available translations. It was a manageable number and it felt more in tune with the proportions of the harmonic series (there was a greater significance given to simpler ratios).

I divided these 15 translations into 4 groups with previews etc. in the following way:

Group 1

Intro [preview of 15, 9, 14, 6, 8]
Theme [1 – major]
Interlude [10, 9]
Theme continued [1]
Translation [2]

Group 2

Minor theme [3]
Minor theme but with x & y reversed [4]

Group 3

Translations [5, 6]
Major theme but with x & y reversed [7]
Translation [8]

Group 4

Translation [9]
Link [4]
Translations [10, 11]
Translations of opening riff [12, 13, 9, 4, 1, 2]
Translation [14]
Translation [15]
Link [9, 14, 6, 8]
Recap Theme [1]
Coda [10, 12, 11, 14, 15, 6, 13, 5, 2]

There are passages where chord types follow one another in quick succession – the opening, the end where translations are recalled floating over a repeated chord change, and the passage in Group 4 based on the opening riff of the song.

Two other things worth pointing out - firstly, I make a more conscious use of different time signatures. For example, the minor version that begins group 2 is in 5/4, and the recap of the theme is translated to 3/4 (heard in this extract) [this is achieved by the tune retaining its ordinary rhythm but the duration of the underlying chords expanding by 4/3].

Secondly, the shape of the original melody is often retained within the scales arising from the new harmonies.

One final point – I had no need of a computer programme. Once you appreciate the process (that is, the link between linear and vertical intervals in relation to the harmonic and inverse harmonic series) you can work out the chord sequences in a more traditional musical way by using inversion and transposition. A person learning these techniques from an early age would probably become very fluent in spontaneous translation.