Subtitle

This week, we're going to be talking
about, homophony. What that means is really chords following
chords following chords. We won't have a a bass and an
accompaniment in the melody. We'll have melody, we'll have a bass voice, but we'
ll just be working with
chords. Following chords and following chords. Now we should, now that we're fam
iliar
with the chords that we find in classical music, we need to talk about two
things. One is how do we voice those chords? So where do we put the root and the
third? And how far away can they be from each
other? Okay, these are important questions to ask
because they also define the style of a music. The second is, how do we move fro
m one
chord to the next chord? And that we call voice leading. We'll talk about that i
n a future video.
But in this one, let's deal specifically with voicing.
Well, of course a lot of classical music was, in
the early days, was written for voice.
And so the idea of voicing comes out, of actual singing and, and voices
making music. Which means that a lot of the, the things
about voicing are determined by voices. And of course we have to talk about voca
l
range when we talk about voices. So, when we write a chord, and we're going
to be working with four voices at the same time, we're going to always be workin
g
with soprano, alto, tenor and bass voices. One note for each vocal part.
And so what we have here are the, ranges.
Soprano range we see. Soprano is, this middle c. Up, a little bit more than a, t
han a,
twelth above that. Alto starts at fourth below that etc, etc. Always reference t
his when you are doing
any kind of a homophonic writing or writing, four part
writing for voices. So we see, if we look at the, the, the
largest range that we can go more or less from this e in the bass to this a in t
he
soprano. And we want to fit voices, all four voices
inside of that range. Okay, so let's talk about voicing of a
chord. Well, first, I should say that there are
two kinds of voicing. There's what we call open structure and
the other we call close structure. So what's the difference? First, open. Well,
this is an example of an open
structure. And if we look at it, we still, if we look
at the intervals between the voices, we see an
octave, a fifth, and a sixth. Now, if we look at just the top three voices, we s
ee a fifth here and a sixth
here. We see that these three voices, need more
than an octave. They fit more than a one octave space. And when that's the case,
we say that it's
an open structure. It's important to note that within these
three voices, we don't see an interval larger than an
octave. That's going to be important later on. We see a fifth and we see a sixth
. Well then, what's closed structure? Closed structure is simply when these top
three voice fit in the span of less than one octave. So we, here we have a third
and a fourth.
And the total span is about a sixth. Now [UNKNOWN], it is.
It's a minor sixth. Okay. So if we see this kind of construction,
then we say that it's closed structure. When should you use open structure, when
should you use closed structure? That's really an artistic decision. Generally t
hey say if you start open
structure you stay open structure for, at least the length of

the phrase. If you start closed structure you stay
closed structure. That's probably a good bit of advice to follow, but I wouldn't
stay too strictly
with that. If the sound required, that you're after, if the sound
you're after, requires you to switch from closed structure to open structure,
or vice versa, then you should do that. Okay, now just as a little bit of
practice, take a look at this one here. Take a second, to determine whether or n
ot
it's open structure, or close structure, and
then continue on. Okay. So I hope you took a look at this and said
hm, well if I look at the intervals I see I have a sixth between
these intervals and I have a sixth here. So that's definitely more than an octav
e. Which means we definitely have an open
structure chord and that's the case. Okay, let's move on and talk about things
to avoid. While there are probably many things to
avoid, but let's look at two very important ones. Put down here that this is a s
in.
Why? It's a sin.
You should avoid it. well, if we look, as I said before when we
looked at the top three voices in the previous
examples we say that, well you can have a fifth or a sixth
between two voices, but you never want more than an octave.
Okay, that you should stick to. You should never have more than an octave
between voices that are adjacent. So between soprano and alto, or alto and
tenor. 'Kay. Avoid a gap of more than one octave
between adjacent voices. Why is this? If we, so it's one thing to follow a rule,
it's another thing to understand it. So why would they say, don't do this? Okay,
we get inside the thinking of a
classical composer. Well, the sonority, this is as far as a
classical composers can sing. The sonority is jeopardized, jeopardized. The unit
y of this thing as a chord, as a
single sounding entity, is put in jeopardy, when in your
upper three voices, they're too far apart. And actually, would be the case here.
These things we hear as, one part, and
these two, we'd hear as something else. To get them to blend and come together,
we'd follow this rule of thumb that says, in the upper three voices,
avoid gaps larger than an octave between adjacent voices. Okay, so let's see, le
t's say you saw
this. An, an example, would this be a sin? Is this an example of the sin we just
talked about? The answer is no, actually.
This is not something you should avoid. Let's talk about why. Well, between the
bass and tenor voices you can have larger intervals than an
octave. It's very common to find a 10th.
It's fairly common to find a 12th. Larger than that, you might find, but
pretty rarely. So this is what I'd like to suggest. Any interval up to approxima
tely a 12th is
fine between the tenor and the bass. If you get to a 10th, that's usually large
enough of an interval between the lower
two voices. You can push it a little bit farther, and
go to a twelfth, but I would say if you're at a tenth, if you can keep
it at a tenth or less, good. If you need to go to a twelfth or
something like that, it's okay, but try to get back to a tenth or an octave as
soon as you possibly can. Hey, here's our final the, or the second
sin we should watch out for. Now, this looks okay, right? I mean, it looks, we'v
e got four voices. And the interval between them doesn't look
any larger than an octave. So, it should be okay, right?
Well, but let's look. Where's the lowest, of these top three,
where's the lowest note. The lowest note isn't in the tenor, as it
is in all the other examples we've seen.
It's in the alto. And when this happens. When a voice that's higher in register

than the other, goes lower than the other voice, we call
it voice crossing. So this is something that you'd want to
avoid. Now. You can very easily find examples of voice
crossing in the raptor, but it's a, it's a good rule of thumb to follow, in
general you avoid voice crossing. Okay, so why? Why should we avoid voice crossi
ng. Here's how a classical composer would
probably answer. He'd probably say that the independence of
each voice is jeopardized. And I think this is kind of interesting. Because if w
e look at this first one,
they're all worried about sonority, right? They're all worried about this thing
sounding like a thing. And at the same time, if we look at this, it almost seems
like a
contradictory answer, yeah? Well, you're worried about independence
while you're worried about unity. Okay, this is the case. That on one hand, you
want to work to
create sonorities. On the other hand, you want to make sure
that each of the individual voices can be heard
and followed. And when you get this voice crossing, it's
hard to tell. Is this now the tenor note, or is it the
alto note? So in general please follow these two rules of
thumb. And understand where they come from. A desire to create something sonorou
s, and
at the same time, the desire to have four things be
independent of each other. Okay. Now, one question that is very reasonable
will come up the minute you start doing any kind of voicing's of
chords, or voice leading, is. Okay, if I'm working with a triad, I've
got three notes, you're telling me I have four
voices. So, what happens, does one person not
sing? Or, do I double a note, and if so, what
note should I double? So at this stage, we're working only with root position
chords, or we will be working with only root position
chords this week. In that case double the root. So here's an, a nice example, ve
ry common
kind of voicing of a major triad. Root, root, fifth and third.
So two voices are on the root. One voice on the fifth, one voice on the
third. Okay so now what happens with a, with a
seventh chord. A seventh chord if you've got all four
notes then one note has to be in each voice. So here's an example. We just have
the root, go up here, the
3rd, the 5th, and the 7th. However, it's very common with 7th chords
that you drop a note. Now, which one do we drop. We drop the 5th. Omit the 5th.
Why? Okay, let's talk about these notes. What is the root give us? The root tell
s us what the function of the
chord is, right or at least what the inversion of
the chord is. The root tells us a lot about the chord. The third also tells us a
lot about the
chord. It tells us whether it's major or minor,
which as we saw earlier, can decide whether or not this is a, is a, you know,
a minor seventh chord. Or a dominant seventh chord. And if it's a dominant seven
th chord it
functions differently. So, we need to have the third, because it gives us a lot
of information about the
chord. It's very important in classical music
whether or not the chord is major or minor, especially with a seventh chord. And
, of course, we need the seventh because otherwise we just have a triad,
right? So, if you're only using three notes of a
dominant seventh chord. Please omit the fifth.