- Hi, I'm Gareth Green, and in this video, we're going to be thinking about something called
the rule of the octave. I mean, who needs the rule of the octave? Have you ever heard of it? Is it any use to people these days? Well, I think the rule of the octave is actually a very interesting thing if you kind of distil it to its sort of practical essentials. If you really want to get into this topic, there are plenty of tomes out there that will keep you reading for ages, even possibly cure your insomnia. But I just want to kind
of basically summarise what it's all about and how it
might actually be useful even to composers today, even though this is taking us
right back into Baroque times. Okay, let's have a little think about what it's actually
trying to say to us and why. And let me start by sort of
thinking about this statement. Why we don't harmonise an octave of a scale using root position chords. One thing to bear in mind
is in the Baroque period, composers, even though
they might be writing beautiful melodies, are
fundamentally thinking from the bass up, which is actually quite
an interesting concept because these days, we often think from the melody down, don't we? We get a melody, we get
some chords that fit. They were sort of thinking,
oh, what are the chords? What's the bassline? And how does the melody
kind of fit with that? So when I'm talking about
harmonising an octave of a scale, I'm not talking about
harmonising the scale at the top of the texture
in the way that we might. I'm talking about harmonising
the scale in the bass. Okay, well, if you're going to harmonize a scale in the bass, what's wrong with just
using chords I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, I? Well, at one level you could say I suppose it's all right, but
actually, it's not brilliant because it's full of
consecutives or parallels. If I go I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, I, I've got octaves going all the way up. I've also got fifths going all the way up, and octaves and fifths, if they're perfect intervals especially, we're trying to avoid. So they kind of quickly switched onto this that it didn't sound that great if you were just using
root position chords. So they said, well, does it sound better if you harmonise this scale
with first inversion chords? Which may a first sight seem
a slightly funny thing to do. But of course, if you're
using first inversion chords, this is in figured bass, the way that the Baroque
composers thought, they would think of that
as a 6-3 chord, okay? You've got the sixth and the
third above the bass note. If you've got C in the bass, a sixth above it is A,
a third above it is E. So there's your first inversion chord. The advantage of that is that
you haven't got any parts going in octaves or fifths. You've just got sixths and thirds. So actually, you're not
going to get these parallels, these consecutives. So how about if we just take the scale of C major and we just
do every single chord as a first inversion chord. It throws up this pattern. It means we go VIb, VIIb,
Ib, IIb, IIIb, IVb, Vb, VIb to get back to the beginning. Or where I've got "b",
you might know it as "6". It's a first inversion chord. So you get this 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6. Well, at one level that
sounds better, doesn't it? Having first inversion chords instead of the root position chords, it's a kind of improvement, isn't it? But it's a bit odd, isn't it? Because if it's the scale of C and by using a first inversion chord, we're starting and finishing
on an A minor chord in first inversion. It's sort of not locating
in C major very well, is it? Okay, here's the next step. What you then do is you say, okay, well, I've started off with this principle of first inversion chords
harmonising my octave of a scale in the bass, but now I'm just going to modify that. So instead of starting and finishing on these
first inversion chords, I'm going to start on
the tonic chord, chord, which, of course, is a 5-3 chord and I'm going to finish
on chord I as a 5-3 chord. So we just kind of have
a little bit of variety. Not everything's a first inversion chord. And also, of course, we establish the tonic
at the start and the end, which kind of says yeah, the tonic chord's the most important chord and it's nailing this thing into C major. We're not left thinking, is it in C major or A natural minor or what's going on? By using the tonic chord, we
kind of locate ourselves in C. So the only difference between this and this is that we now have chord I in root position at the beginning and the end of the scale,
which sounds like this. Now, it's amazing. That already sounds a
tonne better, doesn't it? This was the original,
all first inversions, but we're not really
feeling the C major thing. Put the tonic at the beginning of the end in root position and then
use the first inversions. Ah, actually, suddenly, it's sounding a heck of a lot better. Now, the other thing that
some of you watching this will have realised is you're beginning to recognise certain progressions
that you think, oh gosh, you know, we use those kind
of progressions all the time. Like at the end, you know, going from a V in first inversion to a I. That's something we quite often do. Doing progressions like this, going from I to VII in first inversion
to I in first inversion, what we call a replacement passing 6-4. You know, even doing this
progressive first inversions, I in first inversion to
II in first inversion or II in first inversion to III, you know, having progressions like
the last three chords. IV in first inversion,
V in first inversion, I. These are kind of standard
chord progressions. So when you look back to
the rule of the octave, you begin to think, ah, that's where some of
this stuff comes from. Ah, ah, okay. Now then, let's go on another step. Here's another modification. We do what we've just done. We've started with all our
first inversion chords. We've used the tonic in root position at the beginning and the end. This time we're going to,
in the middle of this, put the dominant chord
in root position as well. So we're still going first
inversion for all this stuff but we've got a tonic chord in root position at the start and the end. We've got a dominant chord in
root position in the middle. Now, this is quite interesting as well, because in the hierarchy of chords, the tonic is the most important. It's the homing in chord, isn't it? It brings you back home and the dominant is the
next most important chord. That's why it's called dominant. And so if we highlight the
tonic and the dominant chords, we kind of get this I-V polarity, which soon became established in the Baroque period as
something quite important. And let's face it, we've stuck with that kind of hierarchy
in tonal music ever since. Okay, so what does it sound like if I have that dominant
chord in root position? So here's I, VIIb, Ib, IIb, V, IVb, Vb, I. Ah, you see? So it's an improvement. So we started off everything
in first inversion. Then we said let's use tonics
at the beginning and the end. Now we're saying let's do that and use the dominant in
root position in the middle. You see what's happening now. We're establishing this tonic and dominant as kind of
sort of polar points. And the first inversions are now sounding even more effective because we're not just doing
one after another back to back. We've got three in a row and
then we've got two together. But we've got these root positions. So it's kind of helping us to see why we need a balance in our harmony between root position and
first inversion chords. Second inversion chords need
a bit of special handling and that's a topic for another occasion but actually, this balance of root position and first
inversion is quite important. And also just thinking a little bit about the hierarchy of
chords, and you can see how the the Baroque rule of the octave has helped us with this. And again, you see things like progressions like IIb followed by V. How often we do that. IIb, followed by V. So again, it's just giving us progressions that we sort of think, oh, do you know, I've heard that a lot. You might be using these
progressions if you're writing in a tonal style, or you might
be thinking, oh, actually, I go II-V, but I don't go
II in first inversion, V. Do you go V to IV in first inversion? Yeah, that's quite useful, especially in the progression that it takes you on up to the tonic there. So you see progressions within the rule of the octave that are
really kind of useful. Okay, we're not quite there. Stick with it because
there's another modification that we're now going to make. You can see why I'm just
trying to point out the steps of this to clarify. What we now do is we place a seventh chord before each tonic and
before each dominant chord. All right, so a seventh chord before each tonic and
before each dominant. So that's going to spruce
things up a bit further. Now you notice just by looking at it, we've now only got two chords left that are in the original
first inversion, unadulterated but we've now got a tonic
chord in root position, our dominant chord in root position. And here we're saying this
comes before a tonic chord, so make it a seventh. So make it a V7. This comes before a dominant chord, so make it a seventh,
it's going to be II7. This comes before a tonic chord, so it's going to be a V7. Okay, now then, how does
this actually sound? So we go I. It has to be V7c or V7
in second inversion, otherwise known as a 4-3 chord, Ib or I6. So first inversion tonic. II7b or a 6-5 chord, II7 first
inversion onto the dominant. Then we've got IVb or 4-6. First inversion of chord IV. Then we've got V7b, dominant
seventh first inversion, known as 6-5 in figured bass, onto I. So you see how this has
further modified it. And now we've got a great
harmonisation of the bass. Have a listen to this. So if you ever want to harmonise a bass, you can succeed very comfortably
just using these principles of the rule of the octave. You're now beginning
to see perhaps as well why in Baroque music, when
we get seventh chords, they're often V7's and II7's. You see how they thought
about them functioning here as pre-dominant chords
and as pre-tonic chords. So you've got the tonic,
you've then got D in the bass. That's why it has to be
a V7 in second inversion, onto I in first, lovely
progression, isn't it? You know, to be able to do that. And then II7b, II7 in
first inversion going to V. Baroque music is full
of those progressions, and then onto that first inversion. Then a V7 this time in first inversion because of the bass note, going onto I. So we mix our inversions of sevenths. Two of them are in first inversion, one of them is in second
inversion and we've now modified that original plan to do
something that works really well. So this is where the rule
of the octave is taking us but it has all sorts of implications for understanding
progressions in Baroque music and for understanding progressions that have lasted the whole
stretch of time since and can strengthen your
harmonic progression. Just thinking, how do I use the rule of the octave to help me think, ah, what would be a good chord to
use before this or after that? When is a good time to
use a root position? When's a good time to use an inversion? When's a good time to use the seventh? You see, it's telling us all this stuff. It's remarkably rich pickings here if you live with the rule of the octave. Okay, now just before we leave this, we've dealt with this
so far in a major key but it's useful just
to think in a minor key for a moment. Because we're harmonising the bassline, well, they were thinking of the bassline in terms of melodic minor
because the melody if you like in this concept is in the bass. So in a melodic minor scale,
we use the key signature of the relative major. So A minor's related to C
major, no sharps or flats in the key signature. We raise the sixth and the seventh degrees
by a semitone going up. We follow the key signature coming down. So we get A, B, C, D, E, F-sharp, G-sharp, A, G-natural, F-natural, E, D, C, B, A. Now I'm going to apply
exactly the same principles that we spoke of when we
were talking about major keys but I'm going to apply it to a minor key because you can see that the
implications of this F-sharp, G-sharp, G-natural, F-natural
thing just kind of puts it in a slightly different place
going up as coming down. So we've got chord I. We then get V7c just as before. Okay, so V7 second inversion,
notated as a #6-4-3. This is going on to a
I in first inversion, just as before. This is then going on to a II7b or a II7 in first inversion. So 6-5 in figured bass. Here comes the dominant chord. So that's just in root position. We just have to indicate that sharp in the figured bass to say that the third has been raised. Then we've got a 6 chord. So a first inversion chord,
but F-sharp in the bass. Then we've got V7 in first
inversion just as before because it's preceding the tonic. Then when we come down, we've
got G-natural in the bass. So this time, it's an
ordinary first inversion chord because it's not preceding
the tonic or the dominant. When you go onto the next
chord well you can do this as a II7, it's a II7 in second inversion. Why the seventh? Because it's preceding the dominant chord. Or if you really want to zip it up a bit, you can use a D-sharp, which is rather fun because it turns this into a French sixth, just approaching the dominant chord there. Then we get a dominant seventh,
last inversion this time because it's approaching
I in first inversion. Then we get a dominant
seventh, but this time in second inversion
approaching the final tonic. So there were slight
differences in the minor key. Or using that French sixth. So I hope I've convinced you that there's something really useful about understanding the rule of the octave and I'm hoping that this video will save you reading all
those hundreds of pages of things where you can get
bogged down on the detail without being able to see
the wood for the trees. So I've just tried to kind
of expose the essentials of how to make this
really practical to see how things develop from
those first inversion chords to the finished product. And just to think, it's
quite a useful thing to be able to do actually, to be able to harmonise a
bassline using this kind of chord scheme. And then to lift these chord
progressions and think, actually, do you know what? These are really useful
chord progressions. If you are playing Baroque
music, you'll come across them, you'll see them, you'll
hear them all the time. If you're wanting to write music in a kind of conventional tonal style, well, it really helps you to think about when do I use root position? When do I use first inversion? When do I use the seventh? Which inversion does the
seventh need to be in? You know, how do things resolve? How do things progress from one
neighbouring note to another? So it's full of rich pickings
just to know something about the rule of the octave. So I hope you enjoy doing that. And if you're a keyboard
player, definitely do that under your fingers and
try it in different keys. Get happy in major keys,
get happy in minor keys. And once you've grasped
the principles of the rule of the octave, it's actually
fairly plain sailing. So you'll soon find yourself
getting quite fluent with it. Well, if you've enjoyed this video, let me invite you on a tour
of the Music Matters website, www.mmcourses.co.uk. And if you go there, you'll
find all of our courses. You'll also find something on
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