- Hi, I'm Gareth Green and in
this video we're going to be thinking about a topic
that vexes many people. How to harmonise repeated notes. Now it's amazing how many times
people present me with this issue and they say, "Oh, I'm
trying to harmonise a melody, "but I've got the same
note twice, three times, "four times and I dunno what to do", because you can't just
keep playing the same chord while you're repeating the same note. If you just do this, it's just a bit stuck, isn't it? So how do we deal with
this idea of repeated notes in a melodic line that need
to be harmonised in a way that kind of keeps the
music moving forwards that kind of works, fits
with that repeated note. Sometimes it's known as
a common note as well. So we'll think about this. Now, the example I've got in front of us, you can see what I've done here. I've got two bars, two
measures, of repeated G's. So here's the melody, it's the most exciting
melody you'll have heard in a long time. And at the moment it
sounds more like Morse code than it does a melody. But what I'm trying to do is
to take this problem to a more extreme point by saying,
okay, what have we got here? We've got two bars in
which we've got six G's in the key of C major. Well what am I going to do? Just have a chord of C under it? Well, at one level it works, but it's not the most exciting
piece I've ever heard. So let's think about a strategy for dealing with these situations. Then if you come across a
situation in your own writing where maybe you've just
got the same note twice or three times, you'll find it far less intimidating. Now one suggestion I've got is this. If you look at any
given note in this case, this G in the key of C major, it's worth bearing in mind that this G will be the root of one chord, it will be the middle of a
different chord and it will be the top of yet another chord. So let's think about
what do we mean by that? So G could be the root
of a chord V, G, B, D. G is also the middle of a
chord III, isn't it, E, G, B. And G is also the top
of a chord I, C, E, G. So at one level you could go
through these repeated G's thinking, great, I've now got
three chords that I could use so I'm not just stuck with one, and maybe I could just switch
them around so I could go, I, V, III, I, V, I. Well that already sounds
miles better, doesn't it? Because we've got this movement
in the chords even though we've just got this repeated
note going at the top. Now you might be able
to do something like, decorate that a little bit. So if I go chord I to chord V, then put a passing note in
the bass to go to chord III and then a passing note in
the bass to go to chord I. And then I could go V and
maybe I could jump the bass to a bottom G before I go chord I. Ah, suddenly it's sounding a
bit more interesting, isn't it? Miles better already. But let's sort of start thinking, well, what would we do if we really had to harmonise this in four parts? Because another option once
you've got these three chords going is to think, well, could I make some use of
inversion chords as well? Because you don't have
to have all these chords in a root position, do you? So let's kind of work
with the idea we've got and see if we can turn it into something. There are other ways we can decorate. We can use these passing notes, these passing tones that
we've just suggested in the bassline, but they don't have to
be limited to the bass. They could be in other parts, we could do a little bit with inversions, we could maybe use a few
suspensions or something just to make life even more engaging
and hopefully we'll be able to turn this into something that
sounds far less boring than a line of repeated G's. Now the only thing is if
we've got three chords to choose from, chord
I, chord III, chord V, there'll be people saying
in the comments, "Oh yes, "but I thought you weren't
supposed to use chord III "if you didn't have to". Well actually there's nothing
wrong with using chord III, especially in a major key. Chord III in a minor key
can be a little bit awkward because it normally turns out to be an augmented chord from
the harmonic minor scale. So that can be a little
bit awkward to deal with. Not impossible but a little bit awkward. I have to say though, that even in a major key
chord III is fairly low in the hierarchy, so you are much more likely
to use chord I and chord V than you are chord III,
simply because chord I and chord V are the strongest
chords in the hierarchy. And chord III is the kind of
next to weakest, there's only really chord VII that's
considered to be weaker. So you probably don't want
to overdose on the chord III, but it's a perfect reasonable
thing as you've just heard, chord III can work. So I'm going to sort of
see, well can we do this without really going
down the chord III line? So we're going to kind of
work with chords I and V for the most part and see
if we can make this work. Okay, well how am I
going to go about this? Well probably because
this is the first chord, it makes sense to start with chord I. Is there any reason why
you couldn't start with chord V or chord III? Well, if we're trying to
establish C major as the tonality, it's easier to start with a
chord of C major than it is to start with a chord of E minor, which is chord III, or a chord G major, which is chord V. The only time where you
might perhaps want to use a chord V is if you have an anacrusis. In other words, it's starting maybe on the last beat of a bar on
an upbeat or something. If it was actually going
V, I, across a bar line, well that's a reasonable time
when you might use chord V. But if you're starting on
the first beat of a bar, normally you'd probably want
to start with with chord I. Okay, now what I'm thinking about in the first bar is just
sort of thinking about whether we can do a little bit of what we're doing with chord I, but maybe using inversions but also having a bit of chord V. Now, if we were to start with chord I, well perhaps it makes
sense to go onto chord V, then we could come back to I
again and then maybe we could use I in first inversions. So Ib, sometimes known as I6, and then probably we're going to have to have a cadence here, so that's going to be V, I, to give us a nice perfect cadence. Now you look at that and
you think, yeah, okay, but so you know we're just
going between I and V. Well, maybe one thing we
could do is to put this V in first inversion, so Vb or a V6. The advantage of that is when
you are planning chords you can also think, well what's
this doing to the bassline? If I go from I to V, I'm
going from C to G or C to G. If I go from I to V in first inversion, actually the bassline moves by step. Well you know you don't have to do that, but that could be quite handy
if it goes by step to V in first inversion, comes back by
step to C on the third chord, that could be quite useful. So I'm beginning to get a feel
for a bassline that then does this and then it can sort of
move up to that first inversion and then we could go up to our V here and come back to I at the end. So what does that give us so far? Well I, V in first inversion, I, I in first inversion, V and I. So you see just that use of
two first inversion chords is already kind of
improving the situation. Okay, is there something we could do
to keep the movement going in that second bar, that second measure? Well how about this? It's a very simple idea, isn't it? Just having the bassline
leaping an octave, what I call a "hot cross buns cadence". You know that little nursery
rhyme, hot cross buns, hot cross buns, one a penny
two a penny hot cross buns. Now hot cross buns is dominant, dominant, tonic, and it often works really well at cadences and we've got an opportunity
here to go dominant, dominant, tonic. It could start on the bottom G, go to the upper G and then
come to C, more commonly it starts on the upper G goes
to the lower G comes back to C in the middle. But there we are, that's what
I call a hot cross bun cadence and I think they're really
useful things to do. Just gives you a bit of rhythmic movement in that second bar. So what have we got now? We're going I, V in first inversion I, I in first inversion,
V with a hot cross buns arriving back on chord I and it just keeps the rhythm moving. So now we're getting somewhere, aren't we? Okay, now let's see if we can start
thinking about middle parts because now we just want to
fill out our chords a bit. So there are various different
ways in which you can fill out the chords, but you know that would be an okay arrangement of chord I there. If you know about the rules
of harmony where you're trying to avoid these things
like consecutive fifths and consecutive octaves
and all this kind of stuff. But you know, something like this I think is kind of working reasonably well. Yeah, maybe we'll repeat that then maybe, maybe double that, it's
okay to double a note. There's a reason why I'm
thinking about doing that, which I'll come back to
and then we could do that and we could do something like that. I think that's secured it without breaking any rules hopefully. So what have we got now then? So here is what we've now got. Okay, how happy are we with that? It's going all right
actually, isn't it really? And we're beginning to conceal
this idea that we're stuck with these repeated notes
because we are just using chords I and V. I've not really touched
on a chord III so far, which is all good and we are just using a couple of first inversions. All right now then, once we've
done that we can start thinking, is there any way we can
just spruce this up, make it a bit more interesting? Well we spoke earlier on, didn't we, about the idea of passing
notes or passing tones. Well here's a gift. When you look at the bassline
on the third beat of the first bar, you can see we're going
from C to E, so we're going, we're moving a third. You've always got the option
to put the note in between. So instead of going C,
E, you can go C, D, E. Okay, now we could
carry on doing you know, another one of these and we
could we could put an F in there so we have a whole run of passing notes. That's one way of doing it. Or if you don't want to do
that, here's another option. I'm just exploring the fact
that we've got all these options there that's done it. I've managed to shoot
the bar line as well. That's really useful isn't it? There we are, repaired. So how about we do this
just as an alternative. I mean you could run up to
that F as a passing note, but you could come back to C. Now that's already given us a
bit of movement in the bass. So now we've got this. So that's spruced it up
a little bit, hasn't it? Now then is there anything we can do in any of the other parts? Well there's an obvious thing
we can do in the alto part in the third beat of
that first measure again, that first bar, because
we're going from E to C, so why not put a D in between
and then we get a nice bit of contrary motion with the bass because the Alto's going E, D, C just as the bass is going, C, D, E. That's quite a nice thing to
do in harmony when you can get one part to run three notes
going one way and another part to do the same three
notes going the other way. Now does that give us a
little bit more engagement? Well I think it does actually. That's all going fine, good. Here's another little trick we
could do to embellish things. How about this, on the
second beat of the first bar, the first measure, I take the alto D and just hop up to an F. Now why am I using an F? Well that F is turning
my chord V into a V7, a dominant seventh. So I'm just going to put that
little seven in brackets there because it's happening on
the second half of that beat. Now quite often this is something you can do when you've got chord V, you can then kind of add
the seventh in on the next quaver or the next eighth note, if that happens to work, and it turns V into something a little bit stronger, the only thing you've
got to be careful about is how things work out. Because when you write a V7 chord, the seventh should fall by
step and the third should rise by a step. Now does that actually happen? Well this is the seventh and
it's falling by step to E. This is the third. It's in the bass because in
first inversion and it's rising by step to C. So all as well, we've managed
to get that seventh in there with the notes resolving properly. Okay, how does our little piece sound now? Now we've added that seventh. Yeah, that's cool. It's all going quite nicely. I mean we could do this
little trick again. You know I was talking about
switching notes between parts. How about if I do this in the alto at the end of the first bar, we've now got the bass
going E, C at the same time as the alto's going C, E. So just flicking over
the same pair of notes, that just gives us another
little embellishment. Okay, well that's all sounding fine. The first bar, the first measure is certainly
getting quite busy actually, depends how busy you want to make it. By contrast, the second bar, the second measure, just sounds
a little bit more mundane, doesn't it, after that first bar. So what on earth could we do with this? Well, are there some
options that we could do? Well, I think there's
something we could do in the tenor part because we've got a C in the tenor at the end of the first bar and we've got kind of two
beats on chord V in the second bar, we've got room
to make a suspension here. So let me try and rub
this out without losing the whole world again. And guess what? I've lost half the world again, let's just repair ourselves there. Good. What I'm thinking about is
instead of going straight to that B for a half note or a
minimum in the second bar, the tenor could repeat
the C and then go to a B. Oh, right, now why am I doing that? Well, if you have a suspension,
this is a 4-3 suspension because that C is a
fourth above the bass G, going to a third above the bass G. So there's a 4-3 suspension. But when you have a suspension, it has to be prepared, it has
to sound, it has to resolve. So PSR is prepared on the previous beat to the suspended note. So it's prepared here
and then it's repeated for the suspension and
then it has to move by step onto the resolution. P has to belong to its prevailing chord. Well it does, it belongs to
that I in first inversion. R has to belong to its prevailing chord. Well yes it does because that
B belongs to the chord V. The suspended note is
dissonant, in other words, it doesn't belong to that chord V, but it must be a repetition
of the previous note then it must move by step nearly always downwards. So now we've managed to get a
suspension, a 4-3 suspension into the tenor part. So we'll just sort of notate
that while we're at at it and what have we got now, has that kind of made life
a bit more interesting? Oh yeah, I think that's sort
of done it rather nicely, hasn't it? Well, could we go further with this? There's a danger sometimes that
you over elaborate something, but it's amazing what you
can do to make life more interesting as you go. Well I thing we could do now we've written that 4-3 suspension, is we could have something
called a decorated suspension. Well, when you have a suspension
that you want to decorate, instead of going 4-3, try going 4-2-3. So in other words, you take the four, you jump down to the
other side of the three that it's going to resolve to, to two and then you come back
to three in the middle. So you do this, so I'm going to put an A in
the tenor and then that becomes a decorated 4-3 suspension. So the advantage of that
is it keeps the quavers or the eighth notes going
into the second bar. So what have we got now? So do you see, it's just
keeping the movement going. Now you might say, well,
that's all very well, but we haven't got that
same eighth note movement, that same quaver note
movement, on the second beat of the second bar. Is there anything else we could do? Well, there is something we could do. We could turn this into a
crotchet or a quarter note and then how about this little nifty idea? Now then, let's see what I'm up to there. Now, what's happening in this
alto part if I do this is D belongs to the chord V, so that's fine. E is a passing note or a passing tone, and F again is turning
our chord V into V7. So we're doing another one
of those nifty sevenths. It also happens to be the
case that when you look at the second beat, all of these notes sounding
on the second beat actually belong to chord III, aha. So we talked about chord III, didn't we? And how it might be the chord
that you're not going to use nearly as much as chords I and V, but we've got a little hint of chord III. So you could sort of say, well really what we're doing
on the second bit is using chord III and having used chord III, this is an upper auxiliary
note or an upper neighbour tone and then we're going with the chord I. Now the only trouble with
that is it doesn't really work like that because you tend not
to have a cadence that goes chord III followed by chord I. However, you can have a cadence that goes chord V followed by chord I, or chord V7 followed by chord I. So I think the most legitimate
way of looking at this is to say that this E is what we
call an accented passing note or an accented passing tone
because it's coming on the beat and it's taking us onto a note that is a harmony note because it's the V7. Okay, what have we now got? We've got this. Okay, now there's more
we could do to that. I mean we could carry on forever really, but we may be now at a point where it's got elaborate enough. But one thing you will have
noticed as we've gone through this is we started off with
this incredibly boring line of repeated G's and we've ended
up with something that's interesting enough in
terms of the harmony, the choice chords and the
embellishment of those lines that actually it's slightly concealed
the boring nature of the repeated G's and actually it
kind of makes the repeated G's work reasonably well, doesn't it? So the point of this video
is not to say, you know what, the most exciting thing in the
world you can do musically is to write a tune on one note. That's not my point. My point is to say that if
ever you have repeated notes, people tend to panic and think, oh no, what am I going to do
with those repeated notes? I'm hoping that by giving you
six repetitions of the same note, which is much more
than you would normally meet, that this is at least giving
you some ideas as to how you could build up a picture that
makes those repeated notes actually something that works
pretty well from a musical point of view. So I hope that's a helpful video
in resolving that challenge of harmonising repeated notes. Well, if you've enjoyed this video, you might well want to go to our website, www.mmcourses.co.uk and there you'll find on the homepage something to
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