figured bass reading excercises

anyone know a good set of excercises or a method i can find somewhere to train in rapid figured bass reading?? thx in advance

anyone know a good set of excercises or a method i can find somewhere to train in rapid figured bass reading?? thx in advance

You mean for performance on an instrument? What is your goal? Learning figured bass is part of the harmony excersises I'm doing. Like anything else, it's taking a while to become thoroughly familiar with all the chord indications. Some are not so obvious because they are abreviated (for instance '6' instead of '6/3' for first inversion chords or '6/5' instead of '6/5/3' for first inversion 7ths etc). Nothing rapid about it..

But perhaps someone who is in the know knows a quick way to memorize all of it. I would be interested in that.

Best thing you can do is get into it. Grab some Bach and have at her!

mainly for performance, yes

knowing what the figures mean is one thing, playing them quickly at the keyboard in any spacing you please is my goal, i guess that can be considered performance... it takes training with excercises, i'd like to find some

knowing what the figures mean is one thing, playing them quickly at the keyboard in any spacing you please is my goal, i guess that can be considered performance... it takes training with excercises, i'd like to find some

OOOohhhh.....you mean people have to be able to read and perform from figured bass?!

BAHAHAHA.....I thought it was only used as an analytical technique.

oops! :toothygrin:

figured bass parts were usually given to the keyboard to fill in the background harmony in baroque times, and the performer would be trained to be able to read and play the figures quickly, much like sight reading normal scores but with these figures instead... nowadays the practice is reserved for period style performers, since it grew out of style when conducting evolved and large orchestras became standard... Walter Piston's "Harmony" textbook touches on this briefly... personally i am interested in learning it

Best thing you can do is get into it. Grab some Bach and have at her!

I would agree partially. The best possible way to learn continuo playing (assuming that's what you're after, and not just figured bass as an analytical method) is indeed to really do it. For real. I would not recommend Bach to start with, though. Advanced harmonies and (sort of consequentially) lots and lots of figures makes it very difficult to play at sight unless you're really good at it.

I would recommend 17th century music. Here the bass parts are rarely very melodic in themselves, and the harmony is usually simple and understandable. The few figures you'll see are really important, and you'll get used to the most common figures, as well as to making assumptions where figures are lacking. Find a cooperative violinist, flautist, or whatever you will, and find some 17th century sonatas to try out: Marini, Castello, Corradini, Schmeltzer, Biber; I'm sure you can find plenty.

...The best possible way to learn continuo playing (assuming that's what you're after, and not just figured bass as an analytical method) is indeed to really do it. ...I would not recommend Bach to start with, though.

In my defence, I meant learning figured bass as an analytical technique. :( Something less harmonically challenging would be a better starting point for a player. There must be some exercise-books out there somewhere.

Continuo playing is actually what I meant. Maybe I wasn't clear enough. Thanks for the suggestions EldKatt.

Oh, and as for methods: Contemporary treatises abound; the most noteworhty, though, are C.P.E. Bach's Versuch

Hey, thanks for throwing me that CPE Bach title EldKatt. I've heard of it before and I will check it out.

Here is some figured bass by Frescobaldi I realized once, it was fun. But just 32 seconds of it, writing it out beforehand..... so my figured bass skills are next to nothing.

Biber is very good.... and Frescobaldi's instrumental canzonas are free in the online Werner Icking Music Archive. My harpsichord teacher says we will begin real figured bass soon, so I might know more later.

Canzon Prima.mid