Biting for Tears

So here I am back at the augmented chords. I'm trying to become more comfortable with these unwieldy beasts. The going is slow, as they are like wolves. They are strong and dangerous. They certainly have their place, I just have to find where it is, and not try to shove them just anywhere.

One place where they worked this morning is to spur greater sentimentality. As mentioned earlier they point you home to a minor root if they are used in the 5th position, e.g. a Eaug leads to Am. Usually, however you would use just the V or V7 chord. Here I am using augmented G chords to lead to Cm. They add an edginess that is more plaintive. The sample etude uses augmentation in a mournful passage with the edginess evokeing perhaps more pain. The odd note in the augmented G is the eb, and it functions as if seeding the clouds of sadness. Its added tension is the bite that, in this narrow context , allows it to work.

the sample is: www.dreamscience.net/RocuroEtude5.mp3

The progression is repeated 4 times: once simply, once with more arpeggiation, and then two more times adding a violin lead. The progression is Cm Bdim Cm Fm Gaug Cm.

On review, adding an Abdim before the Gaug may be even richer and breaks the monotony of an 8 measure pattern. If this were a tutorial, I'd break out this section into a new section and talk about when to have an even and predictable measure count and when not to. But it's not a tutorial, just an adventure in musical growth. And so some things we notice because of their neon sign, others we find partially obscured in the bushes along the road. So we keep our eyes open, huh?