- Hi, I'm Gareth Green, and in this video, we're going to be thinking about an issue that quite a lot of composers
have raised with me. And it's this, well, I've
come up with this idea, I've got a nice chord sequence, but I'm not quite sure
what to do with it in terms of kind of generating a bit
of energy in the rhythm, in terms of generating an
accompaniment that works. Well, here's a tried and tested method that was particularly favoured by 19th-century Romantic composers. But you can use it in any
modern style very happily. So, let's have a look
at what we've got here. I'm starting with a set of block chords. So, just imagine, you know, you might be one of the
composers I'm talking about who's kind of come up
with this chord sequence and you're thinking that's a
pretty cool chord sequence. I like this one. It goes like this. So, what are these chords? Well, there's chord I in G Major, the tonic chord, a G major chord. Then there's a diminished seventh chord. This is a diminished seventh
chord in the key of E minor, which is quite a nice touch because the next chord
is an E minor chord. Now, the key of E minor is
the relative minor of G major. So, it means that we can start in G major and then we can have a couple of chords that take us into E minor momentarily. But we don't really modulate to E minor because this E minor chord is also a chord in the home key of G major; it's chord VI. Then, there's a C major
chord, or a chord IV. Then, there's a G major chord, or a chord I in second inversion. Then, there's a dominant
seventh chord, a V7 chord, a D seven chord in G major. And then we finish with
the tonic chord of G major. So, it's got a little bit of colour in it with this diminished seventh
and then the chord of E minor. But it's a fairly kind of
standard chord sequence. And you might think, well, it
sounds quite nice as it is. It's a bit sort of hymn-like, isn't it? You might imagine a sort of
choir singing that or something. It can be played on the
piano as I have done. It's very kind of peaceful. That's fine. But what happens if you're
looking at that thinking, well, I'm really happy with these chords, but I don't want to just sit there kind of putting two beats on a chord, two beats on a chord,
two beats on a chord. How do I make it more florid? How do I do something with it? Well, hopefully you can see
from what I've written here how relatively straightforward it can be to make something quite transformed. So, all I'm doing here is
holding on to the melody notes that we had in the example above. Holding on to the
bassline, as we had above. With just this one little amendment here where I'm just leaping an
octave, so that's not a big deal. And then in the last
bar, the last measure, doing the same thing, leaping an octave. And then, I'm taking these middle notes of each chord in turn, you
can see how I'm doing this, and then, I'm just arpeggiating them from the bottom to the top. So, that's what this is all about, taking those middle notes,
starting on the bass note and arpeggiating them up like this. Now, you might look at it and think, well, why am I writing this G twice? So, I've got it for two beats here, and also, I've got it
for half a beat there. And doing the same thing here. Well, it's just a way of signifying that this G at one level is
going to be a sustained bassline on to D-sharp, on to E, on
to C, on to D, and so on. But also, this G is the
start of the arpeggiation, or this D-sharp is the
start of that arpeggiation. So, it's just kind of making it clear where it comes from and how it works. So, often, you would see it scored like that in a piece of music. Okay, so, let me now
play the original chords and then play the arpeggiation. And you can hear and
see how well it works. Here it comes with the arpeggiation. You see, it just gives you
plenty of nice rhythmic flow, doesn't it, and breaks up those chords. It allows the line to sing at the top. It allows the bassline to be a kind of, not just a bassline, but almost a sort of
secondary melodic line. So, you feel this kind of duet between the outer parts
with these sustained notes. And then, the middle is the
filling, but nicely broken up. And I've just broken the
arpeggiation at the cadence. You could carry on doing
the arpeggiation here if you wanted to, no problem at all. But I'm just showing that it's possible to do the arpeggiation and then just to break
out of it at the cadence. But when you do break out of it, you don't want too much of a sudden change between all these
quavers, or eighth notes, and then suddenly, stopping for two beats, stopping for four beats. So, I've just broken that
by having this octave leap so we get those crotchets,
those quarter notes, and another octave leap there so we break up the four
beats into two twos. So, it's not too much of a shock going from the eighth notes or the
quavers to those longer notes. Now, of course, you can
change the impact of that by having higher dynamic levels or lower dynamic levels,
changing the speed. So, it could be quite
gentle as I've just done it. Low dynamics, fairly kind of steady tempo. Or you could do something
that's kind of more energetic, you know, faster, louder. Give you a different kind
of character, wouldn't it? But it's just a means of taking
some block chords like that and arpeggiating them in a way that brings an accompaniment to life. And either makes a
slow-moving melody really sing and gives you a bit of a stronger idea of the polarity between
the top and the bottom by separating out the
middle of the texture. Or it can be something
faster and energetic, in which case, those quavers in the middle really propel the music forwards. So, it's a very simple compositional idea, but actually, one that's
got a lot of mileage in it. So, lots of people are
sort of thinking in chords. They're working out how to
put a chord sequence together that they're happy with. And then it's kind of like, yeah, but it doesn't sound very interesting. What can I do with it? There's an idea. Now, it's just one of a
number of possible ideas. I mean, I've written that one down there. You could do it in a different rhythm. You could do it in triplets, you know. That will be a slightly
different way of doing it. You could do some other kind of mixture of quavers and crotchets, or
eighth notes and quarter notes. You could do something like that. You see, lots of possible
variations on this. But it's still the same idea of holding that melody at the
top, the bass at the bottom, enjoying that polarity of movement between the top and the bottom. Having independent rhythmic
movement in the middle just breaking up the chords. So, before you take the
chords that you've written and bin them because, you know, well, what am I going to do with them? Think about this idea:
arpeggiating the chords. I've arpeggiated them from
the bottom to the top. You could arpeggiate them
from the top to the bottom. You could do a little bit of a mixture of ducking and diving, going
up and coming down again. So many different possibilities. But you'll be able to work with that once you get into this way of thinking about converting what we call block chords to this more florid texture. Well, if you've enjoyed this video, you might like to go to
the Music Matters website www.mmcourses.co.uk. When you get there,
have a look at Maestros. It's our international global community. And if you want to join us, that will be absolutely wonderful. Level one is a kind of support level. Nothing to do with ability,
just levels of engagement. Perks come with level one. If you join as level two, then you get all the
level one perks as well but with level two, you
have additional benefits such as access to our monthly livestream where you can join me for an hour of solid teaching every month. And you can ask your questions,
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