Tonal HARMONY | The SECRETS of Four Part Writing (SATB)

everyone I'm Rick Beato today's episode of everything music is an introduction to tonal harmony we will specifically focus on four part or SAT be writing for those of you that might not be familiar with SAT be it stands for soprano alto tenor and bass before we begin there are some terms that I'm going to define regarding motion of voices number one is parallel motion parallel motion is when two parts move in the same direction in the same interval in this example we have two perfect fourths moving in an A sending direction creating parallel motion number two is oblique motion oblique motion is when one part moves and the other remains on the same note in this example the note G in the top voice stays the same while the bottom voice moves down by step number three is contrary motion contrary motion is when both parts move in opposite directions in this example you can see the perfect fourth expanding in contrary motion to a major sixth interval and number four is similar motion similar motion is when two voices move in the same direction but not in the same intervals in this example both voices move in an a sending direction but not to the same interval it's a perfect fourth moving to a minor third harmonic analysis of tonal harmony requires Roman numeral analysis and figured bass I have a video that you can find right here on figured base here are some basic concepts for part writing in tonal harmony first your counterpoint should begin and end any perfect consonants such as a perfect fourth perfect fifth or perfect eighth second perfect consonances must be approached by contrary motion or oblique motion which we've just talked about third use contrary motion whenever possible fourth two parts should not be more than a tenth apart fifth avoid crossing voices whenever possible six avoid parallel fifths and actives between parts we'll get into this in greater detail in a second 7 avoid moving in parallel fourths thirds or six for too long eight avoid leaping with two voices in the same direction simultaneously now here are the other rules that apply to SAT be writing number one no parallel fifths number two no parallel actives number three no hidden direct fifths or octaves number four no dissonant leaps like major seventh augmented or diminished intervals choose small intervals like the leading tone resolving to the tonic for example number five doubled the root or fifth in root position chords double any note in first inversion chords double the fifth and second inversion chords double the third in diminished chords double the third only when absolutely necessary to maintain proper voice leading number seven tried not to cross voices if possible number eight stay in the accepted vocal ranges and don't put more than an octave between the upper voices here's a chart of the typical voice ranges as you can see the bass register is from F at the bottom of the bass clef to middle C the tenor range is typically from C second space in the bass clef up to G in the treble clef the alto clef is typically from F below the staff to c5 and the soprano is from middle C up to a five here's an example of parallel fifths this is a cadence five one canes in F major so the parallel fifths happened here one of the reason that parallel fifths sound bad is because they sound Hollow so the better alternative is to do this now what happened there is that the G and the C move in country motion and create this interval of a tenth which as I said earlier is the largest interval that you really want to have between voices and it's best to have these large intervals in the bass and tenor range they sound much fuller so we've gotten there to there and that solves our problem so up here in the top bar in the tenor Alto soprano we have their soprano going from the leading tone up to the tonic for our perfect authentic cadence so so we've solved our parallel fifths problem that we had here which was bad because we had unless you're playing rock music so instead of this where we have parallel fists we've changed it too it's difficult to find examples of parallel actives that are hidden but here's an example this is where you get into trouble when you try and get fancy and use it versus where you shouldn't so you've got a second inversion G major chord we're solving to a first inversion C major chord now that may sound okay to you but you're not realizing that there are these parallel octaves here that because they're between the bass and alto voice okay bass and Alto so the quick way to solve that is to move in contrary motion between that tenth interval there between the base and the alto so here's wrong here's correct and you can hear the difference between the two as a hollow sound again because you have two thirds in the board which is also a no-no to do you don't want to have two thirds in a major chord the first inversion chord you can occasionally but this is a great example of really bad voice leading okay so here's the basic idea now I've given you a couple examples I'm not going to teach you all of tonal harmony in one class here but I've done an arrangement of a Bach chorale it's corel number 249 the actual PDF of it is in my shop at my Rick Beato comm so you can go download it there for free and follow along with it I'll also have the image on the screen but it'll be better if you can download it and use your pencil print it out and then you can make notes on it done a basic harmonic analysis Roman numeral analysis not a figured bass but I want you to go back and watch my video on figured bass so that we can talk about this later because this is gonna come into play being able to understand figure bass to really start understanding tonal harmony we're gonna be analyzing a lot of these box pieces we're gonna be analyzing bike Corral's bike fugues two part and three part inventions and this is gonna teach you about tonal harmony because this is where you start at Bach so here's the arrangement I've done I've actually arranged it for a Chamber Orchestra so I've broken it into four staves now the way that I've done the PDF is not exactly like it is in the music I'll show you this is what the music looks like and this is what its gonna look like with these strings playing it I've put breaks in the music where each phrase where the Fermata czar and so that you can visually look at the sections when you're doing your analysis and you don't have the phrases that are going over the bar or though I've separated them so it's not exactly rhythmically notated like it should be but two measures in between them just to separate each phrase so I want you to look at it and follow along with it so here's Bach chorale number two forty-nine [Music] [Applause] that's all for now please subscribe here to my everything music YouTube channel hit the notification button give me a thumbs up and leave a comment if you're interested in the be out of book go to my website at wwlp.com and you can find it there in the shop also check out the Beato academy of music it's where I have all my latest courses that get into even more depth than they do here that's all for now thanks for watching

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 161,682

Keywords: Rick Beato, Everything Music, Four Part Writing, SATB Writing, SATB Rulle, Music Theory, Bach Chorale, Tonal Harmony, Harmonic Analysis, 17th century counterpoint, counterpoint, bach counterpoint, Fux, writing, part, harmony, theory, music, lesson, doubling, dominant, four-part harmony, figured bass, chorale, leading, subdominant, tonic, four-part, voice leading, root position, roman numerals, Parallel Motion, Oblique, Contrary, Similar Motion

Id: HuSKULck394

Length: 8min 54sec (534 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 17 2017