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Posted

So I was feeling fine yesterday, until I got into a bit of an emotional state(okay, a lot a bit). And even a few hours after it stopped, all that came out of me when I played the piano was minor key after minor key. I guess yesterday was one of my minor key days, I have those. And one of the things that I liked was a basic melody set in the La Folia progression and I thought:

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Hmm, I could make a lot of variations off of this very basic melody and La Folia chord progression, from rhythmic intensification to time signature change to major key(although that brings me the question of whether the major chords of C and F would turn minor) to canon to syncopation, possibly even a fugue at the end. I should probably develop this into a Theme and Variations piece.

And this is how it came out when I was improvising the theme for said Theme and Variations on the piano:

633301409_LaFoliaTheme.png.5ee223f8ab78c4d2f1e40e520cf71402.png

As you can see, my voice leading is as stepwise as I can make it and the La Folia progression that I am using lends itself well to an almost completely stepwise voice leading. But I was told that my line of D, C#, D, C, C, C, D, C# is more like a tenor line than a bass line because it doesn't move much and that I should make the bottom line of the chords more dynamic. But how? What I have here is the smoothest possible way of voicing the progression. I was also told about the parallel fifths that occur when I go from D minor to C major and then from C major to D minor, but that depending on the style I'm going for, these parallel fifths may or may not be a problem. The reason for the D minor key? Simple, it's the most common key I see the La Folia progression set in, be it Baroque era, Classical era, or Modern era. Plus it was the key I was improvising this theme in on the piano. I'm currently listening to Salieri's 26 Variations on La Folia to get ideas of how I could vary this theme(not that I didn't already have quite a few, but nothing wrong with having more). This is what my Theme and Variations currently sounds like and I will also include a PDF of it.

 

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Posted

Hmmm. I really like the melody

You can use simple inversions to add variation. I started with a 2nd inversion.

Try to hear the desired bass line and how it 'steps' and figure out how it fits in the

original chord structure. You can also use sixth chord hear and there to maybe add texture.

dmin.mid

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Posted

You do technically have parallel octaves in the second measure as the bass and melody go from C# to D and parallel 5th’s due to the root chords in measures 3-4 and 6-7, lending to a “blocky” texture. I agree with the suggestion above about using more inversions.

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