Lesson with CreationArtist

OK, finally our lessons will continue!! The last two weekends I was auditioning at various Universities and I really needed the rest!

Before you read the following lessons, it is still crucial that you dominate entirely everything we have done so far. Some of the exercises I have given you, you have completed perfectly; others have some very serious errors, like the last one. I suggest you always strive for perfection in exercises; as you write a real piece, you won't have time to sort through harmonic theories so now is the time to perfect your voice-leading abilities! Attached exercise I I made to review everything we have done so far.

Exercise I

Instructions: Fill in two inner voices for the cadences in bars 1-4. Bars 2 and 3 effectively have the same outer voices; make sure you think of two different ways to manage their inner voices while still keeping a third in all chords. Out of bars 1-4, which cadence is the least final sounding?

Now add three upper voices to bars 5-13. Make sure you cadence conclusively in bars 6 and 13. You might want to review the finer details of our cadence lessons. To get the upper voice to arrive at the right notes for a cadence, be sure to plan ahead.

Now on to our actual lesson.

PROGRESSIONS

So far I have been giving you the roots of all the chords in our progressions. In this lesson I will teach you one way to explain the chords I have chosen, so that you can also write pleasing progressions.

Open up the file called "Circle of Fifths."

In the first 6 bars I wrote a fairly random bass line and harmonized it. While the harmonies sound modal and pure, they are far from typical of most composers from the Baroque and onwards. Why do these harmonies seem to lack direction? The melody in the bass is fairly nice, as is the melody in the soprano, but the chords themselves lack tonal focus.

So to further investigate this phenomenon, let us look at bar 7. The cadence is the only progression we have studied carefully; its falling fifth (or rising fourth) in the bass is the strongest progression in tonal harmony. So, as the theory of the circle of fifths goes, other similar progressions with the root falling a fifth (or rising a fourth) share in that strength because they mimic the cadence.

A large part of the circle of fifths is shown in bars 8 through 10. Many composers feel that most tonal progressions can be explained as variations on this circle. Notice that here I omitted IV and vii*.

vii* is, of course, a diminished chord and we won't use it until we have studied inversions. IV and vii* are very common in tonal music, but they rarely appear in their expected places on the circle.

IV oftentimes replaces the function of ii right after vi, like in bars 11 and12. In fact, IV and ii oftentimes appear together; usually in the order IV ii, since ii is stronger, like in bars 13-15.

Another exceptional yet common progression is iii IV, like in bars 16 ands 17.

Finally, there is a new type of cadence called the plagal cadence, IV I. It isn't as strong as the perfect authentic cadence, but oftentimes complements it right before or after like in bars 18-19 and 20-21. Plagal cadences are not very common.

We can make a small chart summarizing these progressions below:

iii - vi - [iV and/or ii] - V - I

and

IV - I

and

iii - IV

HARMONIC STYLE

Don't be fooled into thinking you have to use all of those chords in every phrase of music!! In some simple styles you might only use V and I. Other times you will want to pick more varied chords. Even so, a rare chord like iii may not ever even show up in a phrase in the major mode. Be sure to combine these progressions in different ways.

And what do we do after reaching an I chord? An I chord is final enough that it can leap to any other chord, beginning a new chain of progressions back to itself.

Soon I will post exercises encouraging you to explore your own progressions. And I mean it this time; I should have free time for major lessons more regularly now.

Also, next we will move on to either the minor mode or inversions. Which sounds more interesting to you? We can begin with either.

Exercise I.MUS

Circle of Fifths.MUS