I learned a lot with this exercise. Starting with the musical form I chose, a rondó, an outline of the new / better-understood concepts covered in writing this piece:
- form: rondó (and sonata rondó)
- theory: tension & release
- terminology: diminuendo
- theory: dynamics
- technique: better understanding of chord progressions
- form: counterpoint
- theory / terminology: note intervals
- theory: chords
- chord numbering
- technique: walking bass line
- chord inversion
Rondó
I talked about this more in the last write-up, but the rondó form is pretty simple, and pretty flexible. The trickiest part for me was the key change for the Sonata rondó form, because I hadn’t done that yet. And honestly, I didn’t know what keys to pick. I ended up just picking keys for the B and C sections pretty arbitrarily, because I don’t know wtf I’m doing.
Tension & Release
A key part of this exercise is about the interplay of tension & release. Really wrapping my head around what tension means in a concrete, theoretical sense was incredibly difficult, and I’m still not 100% there.
Tension can come in many different forms: dynamic, textural, rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, and even cultural. Tension is a vague term that, again, was pretty hard to pin down, but it all comes down to expectation, or anticipation. What solidified it for me was thinking of it (especially harmonic tension) in terms of the listener expecting the song to go in a particular direction.
Harmonic tension
Harmonic tension is governed by the interplay of consonance and dissonance. Any time 2 notes are played at the same time, one or the other (or a mix of both) is in play.
Supposedly, the most consonant interval is the 12 steps of an octave, and the most dissonant interval is the 3 steps of a tritone.
This is well & good, but I still had to keep digging in order to turn this idea into something I could actually work with.
Diminuendo
This one’s pretty easy. A diminuendo is the opposite of a crescendo. Basically, it’s a directive for the musicians to play gradually quieter (and a crescendo is a directive for the musicians to play louder).
This is another form of tension & release – dynamic tension.
Dynamics
Dynamics simply refers to volume. More specifically, the variation in loudness between notes & phrases. The more the volume changes from the baseline, the more tension; when it returns to the baseline, that’s release.
Counterpoint
Counterpoint is a huge topic, and there are a lot of rules and nuances to it. But I thought it would be a good idea to try my hand at it for the B and C sections. I learned about the different species of counterpoint, from first to fifth.
The first three species are pretty simple: they all start with a cantus firmus, which is a series of whole notes. First species is one-one notes, second is two-one, and third is four-one. Fourth species introduces ties – notes that tie across measures, so they can start off dissonant & then resolve on the next measure. And fifth species can mix & match between all of the others.
I won’t bother getting into all the other rules here, but it was fun trying to work within all the constraints.
Note intervals
I’d read up on note intervals before, but the naming & numbering was such a point of confusion for me I could never keep it straight.
The biggest help was finally fully understanding that the name / number comes from the difference (inclusive) in whole notes, or degrees.
So a unison interval (or perfect unison) is an interval of one – the same note. A second interval is two degrees (inclusive). For example, C to D. And a fifth is five degrees, e.g. C to G. The number of half-steps in an interval is simply how many half-steps it takes to change that many degrees.
Intervals can come in major and minor variants (among a couple others) — but basically, a minor interval is 1 half-step shorter than a major interval.
Chords
Figuring out & studying intervals for a while helped me greatly in the next bit, which was studying chords, chord numbering, chord progressions, and chord inversions.
The most basic chord is a triad – three notes played together. Each key (or scale) will have a set of diatonic chords – that is, chords that don’t use any chromatic alterations (sharps or flats).
These include major triads, which are made up of a major third followed by a minor third. And then minor triads, which are the reverse – a minor third followed by a major third.
A diminished triad is two minor thirds starting with the root note, and an augmented triad is two major thirds. These 4 combos make up all of the diatonic chords in a major key.
Minor keys… I don’t know yet.
Also, a 7th chord indicates a 4-note chord. Since, if you count each interval from the root, you would get a 3rd, a 5th, and then a 7th for the 4th note.
Chord numbering
Each diatonic chord in a key is assigned a Roman numeral, starting with the root. The general practice is to use uppercase Roman numerals for major chords and lowercase for minor chords.
So, for C Major, the numbers would be:
I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, viio
(the superscript ‘o’ indicates a diminished triad)
Chord progressions
All of this to finally begin to understand the notation for the Royal Road progression, which I was using as the basis for my songwriting exercise. It goes:
IVMaj7-V7-iii7-vi
The first chord is a IV chord, or a major triad 4 up from the root note of the key. And then add a major 7th.
The next is a V chord, with a minor 7th. This is usually played in the 3rd inversion, which we’ll get to in the next section – but here it just means the last note becomes the new root – which happens to be the same as the root of IV.
Next, a iii chord, also with a minor 7th.
And finally, a vi triad.
Furthermore, I studied chord progressions in general, how they’re put together and what the chords do. I learned that each chord in a key has a harmonic function – what it wants to do. There’s the tonic family of chords, which don’t want to go anywhere. They feel at home. Dominant chords want to go towards home. And subdominant chords want to go away from home, towards the dominant.
If I’m understanding this, the Royal Road goes: subdominant, dominant, tonic, tonic.
Chord inversion
Chord inversions are numbered by how many notes you move “up”. First inversion moves the root note to the top, second inversion moves the second note up as well. Third inversion needs a 4-note chord (since if you move the 3rd note up in a triad, you’d just get the same chord again).
Walking bass line
And finally, walking bass lines. This was actually what I started with when writing this exercise.
They’re meant to create a feeling of forward motion in a song, using notes of equal duration (usually quarter notes), and outline the basic chord progression of the song.
In general, the 1st note of each measure will be the root note of the current chord, and the last note is either a half step, whole step, or perfect 5th to the next chord’s root note.
A basic, dead simple way to write a walking bass line:
- identify the harmony & chord tones
- put the root note of the chord on the downbeat of every bar (1st note)
- on the last beat, select & place the approach note
- fill in beats 2 & 3 using chord tones
I still need to finish transcribing the sheet music for this piece, but here’s the song:
Etude 2.1 - dynamics.mp3