Lesson 7 - Voice Leading Practice Part 2

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Do curso por National University of Singapore

Escreva Como Mozart: Uma Introdução à Composição de Música Clássica

251 classificações

National University of Singapore

Escreva Como Mozart: Uma Introdução à Composição de Música Clássica

251 classificações

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 6 - Texture Types4:25

Lesson 7 - Voice Leading Practice Part 17:25

Lesson 7 - Voice Leading Practice Part 213:01

Conheça os instrutores

Peter Edwards
Associate Professor
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music

Moving on to bar six, seven, and eight. We'll now voice read this together.

I said we'd do chord by chord, but there's a first step that I want you to do.

First thing I want you to do, and I think this good advice for any of these.

Is fill in the bass. We see the chords on top.

We know we're dealing with only root position chords.

So for an exercise like this,

the first thing to do is actually just fill in the bass line.

So for all of these chords, please put in the, the root in the bass.

Once you've done that, come back and check your work.

Here we are, we have our bass filled in.

And I should note, first of all, that some

of you may have this in a different octave.

That's

fine.

Some of you may have started on this note, and went [SOUND] up instead.

That's fine.

Getting the bass written in doesn't mean that

you're going to stay on exactly those same notes.

You may move it by an octave and that's going

to depend on how we're voice leading from chord to chord.

We make those decisions as we go along but

in general [SOUND] if we have something like this

as the bass line it gives us an outline of what

the harmony is like and we can even begin to hear harmony.

Let me play for you what this sounds like, just these three bars.

[MUSIC]

Like that.

Actually, we need to do the left, the next chord as well, we'll get to that soon.

But it's on the next line, so I, I don't want to move to it just yet.

Well, where shall we start. Well, we choose some.

Voicing. And I'm going to do the first one for you.

[MUSIC]

So that we're on the same page.

[MUSIC]

With a nice open structure here. So why don't you do this.

So, you've got a one chord and you need to voice lead to the five chord.

Why don't you do that now and then come back.

And we'll look at my solution and compare it to your own.

Okay.

So how would I do this?

Well I'm going to try the common tone approach.

[MUSIC]

There's our common tone.

And we've got root, root, fifth, and we need a third.

That's great, because this Tennor note, the D B flat is really close to the A.

[MUSIC]

So we just fill that in. Okay, that's my solution.

Again you may have something slightly different but I,

I think this solution probably makes the most sends.

You may have this note up the octave, for the time being that's okay.

When we go to the next chord, it may make more sense

to lower it, but we'll talk about that when we get there.

Why don't you now move on, try to do this next chord, back to the one chord.

Okay, so how would I move on here. Well, I see this note going down.

And I see this, well, let's say, let me, let

me kind of work it out while, while I do this.

Okay, so if I was going to do common turn approach

[MUSIC]

I would give that, and then I want to

voice lead this nicely back to the root, right?

[MUSIC]

So I get that.

Well that's a problem, right, because that root, root, root, and fifth.

Okay if this was a third, wouldn't be so bad, we could do it.

We say oh maybe the problem's here. Well what if I,

[MUSIC]

did that. No, now we have two roots and two fifths.

Hey, this isn't any good.

So and we get this you know well okay, it's at the limit, but it's an

octave between these things and we have no

third so this isn't going to work out at all.

But if we do a non-common tone approach.

If the base is down here, we go up, then

we do contrary motion of all the other voices, down.

So that this guy doesn't still I'm a common tone,

that instead that goes there. Then you have something nice.

This would be my solution for this.

It's also my argument for why you would put the, this f here in this octave,

in this register, rather than the octave above.Try

to voice lead now to the sixth chord.

Remember you're looking at chords that have a mediant relationship.

They're a third apart.

That should already give

you a good hint as to how to voice lead this.

Two common tones.

We want to keep common tones, you know.

So why don't you try to voice lead from the

one to the sixth, come back, and check your work.

Okay, from one to six, we, first thing we want to do is find the common tones.

Well, we've got a g minor chord, so we got g,

b flat and d, we have the b flat and d here.

So let's keep our b flat in these.

[MUSIC],

which should be right here.

And the other voice we know we need to move

by step, we're going to move this up by a step,

[MUSIC]

, and there we have it. I'm just going to repeat this

[MUSIC]

And not revoice it. So I won't make you do that chord.

I offer it though, as

an example of something, another option that you have.

We saw that we can revoice when we keep the chord, but the melody moves.

Well, here, we're keeping the chord and the melody's not moving.

There's no problem to just repeat, repeat the same chord.

Voice leading doesn't mean that you always have to re-voice

a chord when you go from one to the next.

Here, it makes perfect sense to just keep

them on the same chord with the same voicing.

Now though, we have to go from the six chord to the

two chord, why don't you try to do that, on your own.

Come back and check your work.

While this to me looks like a fairly straight forward

thing, would make the most sense to do common tone.

Remember this is a six to five, six to two which, these chords are fifth apart.

So we want to decide whether we want

a common tone approach or a non-common tone approach.

I think the non-common tone approach makes sense.

Here's our common tone the g,

[MUSIC] ,

so lets put that in there. Let me look.

We have c, we have root root fifth.

We need a third.

That's fine because that e flat is right next to the, to the d, to the d natural.

[MUSIC]

So we put that in.

Okay, now try to go from the two to the

five chords that are a fourth apart from each other.

We see actually something interesting.

That gives us a hint about how we have to do the voice leading.

Try to do that yourself now.

When you're done with that, continue, and check your work.

Well, this is pretty much tells you

right here, this repetition here, pretty much tells

you that you have to use a common tone approach, because this is the common tone.

Okay.

So, then, let's figure the voice leading out for everything else.

Well, they need to move by step.

We've got the root, we've got the fifth.

If this guy moves to the root, which it probably should, let's put that in.

[SOUND] Then we have root, root, and

fifth. We need a third.

Easy enough.

This G can move to an A. [SOUND] And fill in the rest of the chord.

Now we go from five to one.

Again, try to do it on your own.

Once you've gotten a solution, continue and check your work.

What kind of an approach should we do here?

If I look, it looks to me, that's going to go there.

Well, let's try a common tone approach.

Because if I look at these, I see I have a common tone.

That'll give me root third and fifth.

And this one, we need another root, which is the

B flat, that can very easily move to the B Flat.

So.

[MUSIC]

Seems like a sensible solution that we use the common tone approach.

And note that, look, how do we, how am I making these decisions

about common tone, taking the common tone approach or the non-common tone approach?

It has a lot to do with, what's the voicing

of the chord, before it, where is the melody going?

It's not so much it's not always an artistic decision.

A lot of times, it's a very practical

decision, but to do this in a non-common

tone approach would be a little bit awkward.

This would have to go, jump up the fourth.

This would have to jump up also a fourth.

This moves by step. Then these would be, well be okay.

They'd be a tenth apart. Is that really the voicing that you want?

Well, probably, probably not.

This is, this is definitely smoother.

But of course we have to see what comes next.

but, we aim for the smoothest thing first, and if we

need to adjust based on what comes next, then we adjust.

Well, this 4-chord isn't going to force us to adjust, I can tell you that much.

Why don't you try to voice lead from the one to the four-chord?

And again continue once you've got your solution to check your work.

Okay common tone approach again seems pretty sensible here.

We keep this common tone which is this b flat

[MUSIC]

and we need to add the third we've got root root fifth, we need a third.

[MUSIC]

And there you have it.

Final one.

The final one is from this four to the five chord.

Why don't you go ahead and do that, come

back, and check your work once you have an answer.

I haven't put in the base note yet, so let's put in the base note.

Should be [SOUND] an F.

And well what makes sense, well we know that we want to, well

this is, this is great because this melody note is going down right?

And that's in contrary motion

to the bass, and we're going from 4 to 5, so we know

we need contrary motion against, well,

we'd like contrary motion against the bass.

And we know we need to move all the other

notes to the, you know, to the nearest core tone.

Let's see what happens if we do that. This G, then, would go to the F.

[MUSIC]

And this B flat would go to the A.

[MUSIC]

Does that give us something nice?

Well, we've got root, root, third and fifth, yes, this will be fine.

You can double-check it but since we followed the, the,

this, the rule, so to speak, or the, or the

algorithm, so to speak, of how to voice lead this,

You shouldn't have any problem with parallel fifths and parallel octaves.

Let's now actually listen to the whole thing through to that point.

[MUSIC]

Continued on a bit, maybe that's a, that's a good thing to do.

Let's go from that point, go from this five chord.

I'm going to listen to the rest of that

melody, because this is the bit that I want you

to do by yourself, and once you finish the

whole phrase then check your work, so let's listen first.

[MUSIC]

Okay. Well we hear a lot of repetition right?

So it's probably the case that you can repeat much of what's

going on here, but for certain we've got a change at the end.

So some of this will be sort of repetitive work.

But when we get to the end you're going to find

that you're going to need to do, to find some unique solutions.

Finally I'd just like to say, last little bit

the reason I put in this repetition was on the

one hand to not make it too difficult, and

to reinforce what you just learned and practiced with me.

But on the other hand, it's to show you that, the value of repetition in music.

And that in fact we can, make something twice

as long very often, by simply repeating it, repeating

it.

This is going to be useful to us in

the coming weeks when we start creating small pieces.

So I just wanted to introduce it at this point to you as well.

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