Dreamweaving - Margaret Susan Brandman

This set of five tuneful chord etudes for piano, has been composed to demonstrate the sounds of the seven standard four-note chords . They also demonstrate how modal scales can be used together with these chords. Each piece also explores skills in piano technique.

• Each piece demonstrates the sounds of a standard four-note chord -

  • Dominant 7th (Weaving)

  • Major 7th (Beaming)

  • Diminished 7th (Dreaming)

  • Major 6th and Minor 6th (Gliding)

  • Minor 7th and Half-Diminished 7th chords (Gleaming)

  • Weaving
    This piece uses the dominant 7th chord, in progressions moving around the Cycle of Fifths, and the occasional chromatic movement. The featured mode is the Mixolydian Mode.

    Beaming
    The distinctive bright character of this piece is achieved by the use of the Major 7th chords, on the 1st, and 4th degrees of the scale. The modal or scalic section demonstrates how the Major Scale ( Ionian Mode) and the Lydian Mode can be used of these chords.

    Dreaming
    This piece demonstrates how one diminished 7th chord shape can be used as a link between four seemingly unrelated keys. The chord used is C diminished 7th. When inverted the chord can also be seen as, E Flat diminished 7th, F sharp diminished 7th and A diminished 7th chords. The keys used in the piece are B Flat Major, D Flat Major, E Major, G Minor and finishing in the original B Flat Major key. The tune uses a broken left hand figure, and makes use of the other chords covered in the previous two compositions.

    Gliding
    This work uses both Major 6th and Minor 7th chords, which are in fact inversions of one another. The title comes form the gliding movement in the right hand melody line, which use triplets to glide through the D sixth chord. The rhythmic features of the tune include eighth note triplets followed by either straight eighths. The scalic section uses Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian and Aeolian modes.

    Gleaming
    The featured chords in this work are the Minor 6th and the Half-diminished seventh chords. The piece has a modern feel to it, and could be accompanied by a light eighth-note rock rhythm. Features of the work include syncopation. It is a through-composed piece, in four main sections. Which begin at measures (bars) 1,  11, 22, and 30 respectively.

    These pieces have been recorded and are available on Margaret Brandman's Sonorities CD.