The Fake-out: A useful technique to fool your audience

[Thunder Dash]

The fake-out, as I have coined, is a technique that was quite common in the late impressionist eras of music. The fake-out can come in many varieties, ranging from dynamic fake-outs, to progression fake-outs to key shift fake-outs.

The fake-outs I mentioned above are the three basic type of musical fake-outs.

I will go over all three in depth.

1. The Dynamic fake-out

A dynamic fake-out occurs when there in an increase in volume. The listener automatically thinks that there will be a sudden loudness. However, instead of going loud, the piece backs down to soft. For example, listen carefully to the end of this original piece by me:
https://soundcloud.com/menelik-david-kenneth-cannady/hunger

[spoiler=]Thought there was going to be a bang at the end right?[/spoiler]

Dynamic fake-outs are really effective, especially when you have a piece that has a lot of buildups.
Here's a visual of what a dynamic fake-out looks like:


Notice how in bar 16, the dynamic is at mezzo-piano, or medium soft. At measure 22, there's a crescendo. Immediately, one thinks it would go up to mezzo-forte (medium-loud) or forte (loud) or higher. But instead, it backs down to piano (soft).

In terms of electronic music, dynamic fake-outs are very effective when there have been small buildups. These buildups usually occur during a fill, which occurs after a 12 quarter-beat phrase. A phrase is usually 16 beats. The last 4 beats of a phrase are what make the buildup fill-in. After several of these, comes the dynamic fake-out, which is then followed by a very slow buildup.

The progression fake-out, as it's name entails, occurs when there is an abrupt shift in chord progression. Take the most common jazz chord progression out there: the ii-V-I or two five one.
This progression occurs at the last phrase of a blues progression.
Here's a visual:

In what is known as: a two five fake-out, the two chord and the five chord (the dominant) are played, but the one chord (the root), is not. Instead, the ii-V pattern is left unresolved and either another two five pattern is followed or, another chord other than the I is played.
Take this pattern from Charlie Parker's "Conformation"

F-E1/2dim-A7+9-Dm7G7Cm7F7Bb7
The chords in bold indicate the two five fake-outs.

The progression fake-out can also occur during transitions.

Take this progression:

F-C-Dm-Bb

A fake-out can be used to transition to another progression like this

F-C-Dm-G7

Notice there's a two five pattern here.

Progression fake-outs can lead to just about anything. Just make sure the chord fits appropriately and does not leave one thinking about "that one chord".

Last but not least

A key shift fake-out, or a modulation fake-out, occurs during a certain progression, where a key change could be taken.

Take this progression for instance.

C-D-G-Em-G-D-G

Clearly, this progression takes the key of C and modulates to G.

But, in some cases, this could be faked like this:

C-D-Gm-Bb...

This pattern could have also been made to fake out the G modulation and instead modulate to F like this:

C-D-Gm-C7-F

Look at this, it's the return of the two five one pattern.

But wait, there are many more ways to modulate. Still, since the fake-out is very versatile, it can adapt to other situations, like when the modulation is a half-step, like this:

F-Eb9-C#7-F#

This half-step modulation progression can also be faked, by switching the arrival chord (the one in bold shown above), to minor. This produces

F-Eb9-C#7-F#m-E7-A

Notice, that instead of modulating to F#, the fake-out to F# produced a modulation to A major.

In conclusion, if executed in the right manner, the fake-out can be a useful tool to sort of "throw off" your audience and make your music less predictable.

[Sonarch]

That's pretty legit! Even if it'll be awhile before I can implement stuff like this in actual music, it was cool to read!

[Paianni]

The first song that came to mind when I was reading this was Queen's Who Wants To Live Forever. Near the end, it sounds as if the chorus could have a repeat, but then softens and fades away. I thought I'd bring that up to make the concept a little easier for noobs to understand.

[TrotPilgrim]

I love using fake-outs in my music. A common one is the deceptive cadence. An authentic cadence is when music resolves from V to I. However, when writing music, I and vi can be rather interchangeable. Resolving from V to vi when you're expecting a major lift sounds unexpectedly minor.

If I may use my old music as an example, starting at 1.53 it starts playing the melody that will repeat for the rest of the song. Every other time it plays through, it swaps back and forth between resolving on b minor and D major (for the purposes of this example, the equivalent of vi and I).
https://soundcloud.com/trotpilgrim/carnival-of-marionettes


As far as dynamic fake-outs go, my favorite band ever, Frost* does it all the time. They do it about 10 times in this album, but here's a prominent example, start listening at around 5.25:

[Docinterlude]

I am mainly a Classical Composer. Did you mention that Impressionistic music uses early jazz influences? So the greek modes for exemple. Debussy has very 'clear' exemple of that. You could use not only Dm7 - G7 - C7 but you could also use for more Impressionistic sonarity, instead of a C7 (Known as Dominant 7th, it sounds very jazzy! (Bluesy)), you could turn it to Cmaj7 for more Modal Change like Dm7 - G7 - Cmaj7 - Fmaj7(5+).

Deceptive Cadence is fun to use, if you want your music to suddenly turn Minor. (VI) so for exemple I - IV - V - iii7 - ii7 - V - vi (Modulation to A Minor) i - iv6/9 - V7(5+) - VI - III+ (Modulation to Ab) It6 - V. I'll just end here because you can make endless progressions with this.