Lesson 2 Part 2 - Voicing Practice

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Do curso por National University of Singapore

Escreva Como Mozart: Uma Introdução à Composição de Música Clássica

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National University of Singapore

Escreva Como Mozart: Uma Introdução à Composição de Música Clássica

219 ratings

Este curso apresenta aos estudantes estratégias para compor ao estilo de música europeia. As questões relativas à progressão harmônica, voice leading e textura são tratadas além de conceitos relevantes de composição tais como repetição, variação e elaboração. O curso tem o objetivo de oferecer um espaço criativo mesmo dentro das restrições da emulação estilística.

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Module One

In this first week, we set the foundation for more advanced things to come. We talk about voicing of chords, voice leading of root position chords, and texture types. This first week might be review for some of you. If that's the case, the videos are still worth watching, I think, because they give a grounding for the thinking behind the music we will explore over these next 6 weeks. (You can always watch the videos at 1.5x or even 2.0x speed, but don't tell the instructor I told you that.) Even something as basic as voicing a chord involves issues of style, and approaches to these issues really give us a better understanding of the perspective of the composers making this music. Please note that there are two assignments for the week. There is a quiz designed to help you review the week's concepts. I would recommend taking it before you do the other assessment this week, which is a self-assessed chorale writing assignment. I use self-assessed assignments in this course as a way to deal with the limits of online learning. Ideally, I would look at all assignments and give feedback. When a class like this is taught at university, it is generally in groups of 20-30 students so students can get personalized feedback. However, that's clearly not possible online. I've tried to design these self-assessed assignments so that the videos really prepare you for the them and it is essentially practice of what we learn in the videos. This is easier in the beginning of the course than towards the end. As the topics become more complex, options multiply and hence correct solutions multiply and solution sheets become less helpful. For those who really do want to get weekly feedback, I encourage you to organize study groups via the forums to share your results and give each other feedback. Student-to-student teaching can be very valuable for learning, especially online. Please do not post your solution on the forum though because it's not permitted. Use the forum just to organize your groups.

Lesson 1 - Chords10:34

Lesson 2 Part 1 - Voicing12:30

Lesson 2 Part 2 - Voicing Practice10:47

Lesson 3 - Basic Progressions6:31

Conheça os instrutores

Peter Edwards
Associate Professor
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music

Okay, let's do some guided practice now with chord voicing,

since you were just introduced to the idea of open and closed structure.

Let's do some chord voicing in both structures, with some chords.

In the handout available, there are four, Questions given.

And let me just first read the text in the top, and explain it before we even begin.

And how we'll do this, actually, is you'll try to do the exercise,

then I'll actually do it, and you can check your work against my answer.

So anyway, what's being asked here?

You should add, and you may say, why am I adding Saturday?

No, it's soprano, alto and tenor.

Add soprano, alto, tenor to the bass,

to voice a root position C major chord with close structure.

Okay, so this is our bass, we know that the note we're given is the bass voice.

So we need to add a close structure,

finish off the triad with a close structure voicing.

So why don't you try to do that now, then come back, and I will go through,

actually doing the problem, so you can check your work.

Okay, good, so let's look at this.

We want close structure, that means we want the soprano, alto and

tenor to be very close to each other, they need to fit within one octave.

Something I forgot to mention on the other video, maybe another way

to think about close structure is that, for the upper three voices?

They need to be the chord tones that are right next to each other, so

that's what we really want.

And we know that what we have here, and

I'll do this example and explain that a bit further.

We know that we need two roots, right, so let's start with that.

And we have the bass, [SOUND].

So let's add the octave above that, [SOUND].

So that we have two roots, and now we need the third and the fifth.

Well, we look at this and

we say that's the C, the other notes in the chord are E and G.

And we want the notes that are closest to the C,

that are E and G, so we put in the [SOUND].

Oops, that's a bit too high, [SOUND].

We put in the E there, just above it, and we add the third above that, [SOUND].

And we get the G.

So here is a close structure C major chord,

with bass, tenor, alto, and soprano.

You may have done something like this.

[MUSIC]

Oops, sorry.

[MUSIC]

Something that looks like this, let me get it there.

This is fine as well, if you came up with this answer, and

you have a tenth between these voices, we still have close structure here.

Again we've got the E, then the other notes we need are the C and

the G, We go up from here to the next chord tone, which is the G.

And the next chord tone after that is the C,

and you get a close structure voicing, good.

Let's move on to the second one, okay.

Add SAT to the bass to voice a root position G major chord,

with an open structure.

So this one needs to be open structure and G major, we have the bass and

we need to add the three upper voices.

Go ahead and try to complete that yourself, and then once you finish,

come back and check your work Okay,

so, how I'd probably do this is to say,

well okay, I've got this here, so [SOUND],

let me add the fifth above that, [SOUND].

And then I go up, so I have the root and I have the fifth.

So I need the third, and of course I need another root, all right.

Well, then let me put the root in the soprano,

[SOUND] Sorry,

It always pushes me down, when I put in a new note, [SOUND].

Okay, so I've got the soprano there.

And I need the third, okay, so let's add that in.

[MUSIC]

Like that, whoops.

And so now I have root, root, third and fifth, I look at this and

how it's structured.

We've got a sixth between these voices, and a sixth between these voices.

So I have an open structure G major triad.

Now, you could have done this in, actually,

quite a number of different ways.

Let me show you another one, let's,

[MUSIC]

Put that there.

[MUSIC]

We get,

[MUSIC].

So we get the root and root, the third and the fifth, still open structure, right?

We have a fifth between these, and a sixth here.

You could put this as the third, and

then the octave, and then the fifth above that.

So you could do this, for instance.

[MUSIC]

That's still open structure as well.

Any of these answers are fine, none are better than any others.

At this point, they're just different.

Okay, let's move on to the next one.

Okay, so here's a little bit different than before.

We need to add the alto, tenor and bass,

oops, I need to change this to the soprano,

to voice a root position A minor chord with close structure.

Okay, so we've got this, which is the third of the A minor chord, and

we need to fill in the rest of the chord in close structure.

Why don't you go ahead and try to do this on your own?

Once you come up with an answer, come back and check your work.

Okay, so here's the third of the chord.

We can think about this as just the opposite of how

we've been doing closed structure voicing.

Before, we were saying, okay, if I get the tenor voice,

then I go to the next chord tone above that, and the next chord tone above that.

But we can just go in reverse, we can go down chord tones, right?

So if this is the soprano, I need to add the alto,

that means I need to add the next chord tone below it, which is A, right?

So let's,

[MUSIC]

Do that, and the next chord tone

below the A is the E, so let's do that,

[MUSIC]

Pardon me, there we go, [SOUND].

And while the bass has to be the root, so, that's pretty easy.

[MUSIC]

We just have a root, [SOUND].

And there's our close position A minor chord.

Could you put this, [SOUND] like that?

Yeah, that's fine, for our purposes now, this is finI And again,

if we look at this interval, it's a 12th.

It's about as far as you want to voice the bass and tenor from each other.

I think this is [SOUND], if you're able to do this, I think would be more sonorous.

But, again, you can't always do that, or you may not be going for that effect.

Voicing decisions aren't just about following

rules to be stylistically correct, they're also about making musical decisions,

about what you want the music to sound like.

Final example, add STB to this alto voice,

to voice a root position F major chord with open structure.

Okay, so open structure, this is an F, so

it gives us one of the two roots that we need in this chord.

Why don't you, again, take a little bit of time and

try to give an answer to this, come back and check your work?

Well let's start, actually, I think I'll start with the bass first.

Actually, I'm going to do this.

[MUSIC]

And I've go that on the bass,

so maybe if I add,

[MUSIC]

The tenth above that, that's nice.

And then we get the sixth above that, [SOUND].

And we've got root, root and third, and we need the fifth, so

I just add the fifth above that, [SOUND].

And there you have it, it's an open structure F major chord.

As I said before, there are, I guess, a bunch of ways to do,

well, this one's a bit trickier.

Because actually, what I mean by that, this is a bit more limiting,

because we were given this F, and it's right in between the soprano and

the tenor, so it doesn't give us many choices.

I think this is the answer, this is, I think ,the only answer.

The only thing you can change,

[MUSIC]

Is to bring the bass up.

This would still be open structure, because the other voices are open,

although it would be, [SOUND] nicer this way, I think.

Okay, so that should give you an idea and some experience, of how to voice chords.

Let's move on now, to talking about basic harmonic progressions in classical music.

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