Composing from a blank page can particularly challenging. Where do you start when you can start anywhere and with anything? Today though, the whole tone scale was on my mind, and as I was experimenting, a familiar Bach piece, the Musette from English Suite #3, jumped out at me. The first four notes in particular, B-C#-A-B, caught my attention since the three pitches A, B and C# also form a segment of a whole tone scale.
I continued by adapting the rest of the melody and countermelody accordingly, converting and condensing the piece from a 7-pitch diatonic collection to a 6-pitch whole tone collection. Overall, this wasn’t too difficult a task, since with a musette, which refers to bagpipe music, it is unlikely that there will be any key changes or modulations. The result sounds very impressionistic with mainly major intervals, or their enharmonic equivalents, in the melody and implied augmented triads throughout as harmony.
(Please consider supporting this site! Sheet music and tablature for Musette and other guitar studies available here: Innovative Studies for Guitar – Volume 2)
Ken Pasciak 