0:24
and corporation of assessments because, in the very beginning you know, there's,
there's maybe more of a clear of a sense of right and wrong in answers.
When you get to this point where we're dealing with two-to-one counterpoint.
There are so many options that it's very, well it's
essentially impossible for me to give you an assignment and
then give you a solution sheet. Because the number of
solutions would just be well it's not vast is maybe not the right word but.
But, significant number of right answers exist for any
kind of counter point a sum and I would give.
And it would rea, really require me to sit down and evaluate
things on a, on a one-to-two level which obviously in a class this size I can't do.
But then I was thinking about how we actually go about teaching
counterpoint, and what are some of
the pedagogical approaches to teaching counterpoint.
And then I remembered, well, one of the things that I, that I,
I sometimes do in class is have students submit assignments and
then we look as a class at the
student answers, and basically put these things up.
For all the students to give feedback on, and by evaluating the student work,
you learn yourself some secrets of counterpoint,
and you get better at it yourself.
So, I'm explaining all this just to clarify why, for instance, this week.
Although we spent some time on counterpoint,
there's no counterpoint in the assignment this week.
And I'm also using this as a chance
to explain why we're doing guided practice the
way we're doing guided practice, which is not
quite how we've done guided practice in the past.
So what we have here, so what I went ahead and did was.
I wrote some bad counterpoint for you, this is not
awful counterpoint, but it's filled with the kinds of mistakes that
are commonly seen when someone first sets out to
do to try their hand at writing something counterpontal.
2:52
Notice that I don't write perfect on any
of these, just because there's always things that
you wish you could have done that maybe
the, the counterpoints didn't allow you to do.
And I think that's one thing to
realize about counterpoint, is that you don't really
always get exactly what you want, but you do the best with what you have.
So guided practice will be as follows; basically.
We'll listen to each of these fake student examples.
The first two systems here on the page.
I've provided actually recordings of these, so if
you want to listen to multiple recordings multiple times
to the, to the audio you can, so that you can really listen closely to them.
But, essentially we'll pause for you to grade and give,
not grade but to, to give criticism of these examples.
And then you should press Continue once you're
ready to follow along with the feedback that I would
give and see how you did in your own evaluation.
So let's try this first one.
Let's take a listen to it.
[MUSIC]
4:28
But why don't you go ahead and take a couple minutes to look through it.
And see if there are any problems you may
have already spotted a couple, but look at it closely.
See if there are any problems that you spot then
press Continue and and we'll resume.
So I, I'll just play that one more time so we have it fresh in our ears.
[MUSIC]
5:09
And again, it actually sounds pretty nice.
But there are a couple of things that are a little bit problematic
when one is trying to do this kind of strict counterpoint.
The first thing I would say, to a student who wrote
this is that there's, [UNKNOWN] I'd point out the places of turbulence.
And that, that would definitely be right here in the beginning.
We get, if we just listen
back to this.
[MUSIC]
These first five notes of the first five notes.
Only two notes are, are used.
And there's just kind of fluctuating back and forth.
So, I think it suffers from a bit of turbulence.
This probably would be better off going up.
[SOUND] Like that.
That also gives us a bit more of the harmony here.
Here we ha, we get the one chord.
We get V hinted at, because we have the, the third and the fifth.
6:32
When doing one-to-one counterpoint.
And like I said before, sometimes you have to
hint at harmony rather than very, very clearly state it.
[MUSIC]
Let me put that back there so that we
can go back to the assignment that the student did.
The student quote unquote.
The fake student, also known as me.
7:04
This all looks pretty good.
There is only one other [UNKNOWN] for me really significant problem.
Which is here we ha, leap in the
same direction and we leap into the interval fifth.
So, this actually is [SOUND], I write it down [NOISE].
This is direct fifths we get here.
7:50
The example doesn't for instance use any non-chord tones.
I actually run into that a lot.
Sometimes students think that in this one-to-one
counterpoint, you can already start using non-chord tones.
That's not the case at all.
That only starts happening in two-to-one counter point.
So, actually that's part, this is already an achievement
to be able to clearly hear the harmony.
9:23
In general, the, it starts off very strong.
We have this third here, then we have a third here,
and these go in contrary motion to each other to this unison.
That's very nice.
This leap up is, I think, very nice as well.
We get to hear the iv chord very clearly, because we have root and third.
9:44
This is, one, one small criticism I'd say here, is that we have this leap up
of a fourth.
It might be nice to come back down by step, or even.
By a third but, it, but to be honest, this is one of
those situations where, you know, actually it's nicer if it goes up here.
So, I would put this more as a cautionary thing.
You're leaping up by this fourth. It's a sizable interval.
You might want to think about going in the opposite direction.
10:14
It's not really a requirement but it's highly suggested.
And but nonetheless, the positive is that what we
get here is some nice, very clear contrary motion.
And a unison on this fifth scale degree, which
let's us really clearly hear the V chord there.
And that's, so that's all good.
10:35
But, this is just something to be cautious of.
Where you really start to have problems is right
in here. So there are two problems.
The first problem is this.
We leap up to this F sharp which is
the leading tone and we're in an extremely exposed situation.
11:39
It's sort of at the limit of what you'd want to do.
It's not the end of the world. But but it's, it, it is a bit high.
And if, if you could avoid that higher register
might be, it might be a bit nicer.
It depends on what you end up with otherwise, of course.
The positive of this, though, is that we get a very clear climax.
We get a highest note in this.
12:18
I think that's all I have to say about this one.
What I'll do hear is just play it.
I say that this one's good.
I'd give this one I don't know, A minus-ish.
Let me play it, but let me say why it's good and not better.
So we take a listen.
[MUSIC]
12:53
So this is good, there's a very clear line going up to this point.
One could say that, it's a very clear line and yeah it's a very clear line.
I mean, first scale degree, second scale
degree, third scale degree, fourth scale degree, fifth.
It's a bit boring.
Might be nice to have a little twist and turn even in this beginning part.
Again, it's not bad.
It is clear and direct,
and we go from this G up to the top G.
This clear sense of direction, that's all positive, but it is something
to be aware of, it's something worth considering, whether or not there
needs to be something other than scale wise scale degree motion here.
Step-wise motion.
There is a mild bit of turbulence here as well.
Though, the thing is you don't really have
many options because you are going from the V chord
to the I chord to the VII diminished to the I.
You only have so many notes to work with.
So, I will also note this.
This is turbulent but not the end of the world.
I think this is definitely better than this one but
it is it gets a, it gets a little stuck.
I don't have the feeling that it gets really stuck, like this one does.
But it is nonetheless present.
And finally another criticism is that, this is quite high as well.
14:59
Well this, this one, I'll go back here so we can see the good and the better.
This one gets rid of that problem that existed here.
Now, this was very clear and direct getting
in and its goal was really this note.
This one doesn't really have such long term goals.
It has much shorter term goals.
It gets here, then it jumps up and then comes back
down, and maybe its goal is this, this next note here.
This next G here.
15:42
This is actually a nice use of consecutive leaps.
Usually you have a leap and then [UNKNOWN], a
bunch of steps, but you can also have consecutive leaps.
And but
not lots of them. Just a couple of them like you have here.
And this works out nicely, so we get the important, actually if we look
here in this bar, we get then finally all four notes of the V, VII chord.
They're just, you know, we just have two of
them presented here, and two of them presented here.
We have this nice contrary motion between
the leading tone and the fourth scale degree.
These are our tendency tones
of this, and we get very clear, outward motion from there.
16:53
Otherwise I'd probably label this instead as
VI, six, four. because it probably would be heard more
more commonly as a VI, six, four passing six, four chord.
But okay, we get that, and we get this nice leap here, and
because we have this one, six, four, we can't actually step out of it.
If we just had V, then we, we could.
But we leap up into this. Note which acts sort of like a suspend,
suspension. It's the four resolving to the three, the
third scale degree and sorry the third of the V chord and then the end.
18:04
Goals rather than this single sort of long-term goal.
And I find it more intriguing
to listen to.
Well, in the next video, we should now tackle these two-to-one counterpoints.
And what I've done, is taken this better one and done some
student versions of two-to-one realizations of this.
Two-to-one elaborations of this one-to-one counter point.
Let's pick up in the next
video with that.
Peter EdwardsAssociate Professor
