- Hi, I'm Gareth Green, and in this video we're going to be trying to answer the question:
Why learn figured bass? Figured bass, of course,
is a baroque thing used in baroque music between
1600 and 1750, approximately. And at one level, it's a
kind of musical shorthand. Often, the composer of a piece of music would also play the keyboard instrument, often the harpsichord,
sometimes the organ, particularly if it was church music. And because the composer
had written the piece, well, he or she kind of knew
how the piece went, I suppose, so why bother writing out all the notes of the keyboard part? It was just more writing to
do when you could kind of do a musical shorthand
like the piece of music that I've just put together
to be used for this video. It's much quicker. You just write the bassline
and then you put some numbers below the bass notes that
tell you what the chords are. Now later on, we kind of moved on to this Roman numeral system, but that was really more
kind of musical analysts wanting to label chords and do
something slightly different like tell us which chord we're using in a particular key and show us when the music modulates
from one key to another. What you've got with figured bass is something much more practical. They're not trying to analyse the music. This is just so that people could play it. And if you understand the figured bass and you are a keyboard player, it's great fun actually
to play figured bass from the original. Just look at the bassline,
look at the numbers, and work out how you want
to organise the chords and ultimately how you
can kind of embellish those chords a bit and
make the music sound quite stylish and exciting. But let's start at a
slightly more basic level and see if we can understand
how all this works. And also, so that even if
you are not a keyboard player but you may be somebody who's involved in baroque music a bit, at
least you can understand what the figured bass is telling you, which might be quite a
useful thing to know about. I think the other thing about figured bass is that it helps us to
think in terms of chords as intervals above a bass note. We tend to think of chords
in a Roman numeral system, you know, I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII. We think of them as triads and how those chords are kind of laid out. Or we think of chords
kind of lead sheet style, you know, it's a chord of C or an F seven chord or something. But actually, figured bass
is helping us to think about, well, what are the notes of the chords in terms of intervals above the bass, so it's another very useful
way of thinking about chords. And my little theory on all of this stuff, for what it's worth, is if
you can read your chords from Roman numerals and
you can read your chords in terms of lead sheet presentation, and you can read your chords
in terms of figured bass, actually that's the best way to really get a grip on reading chords. So once you start thinking that way, doesn't even matter if
you're not a keyboard player or even if you're not into baroque music, it's a third way of understanding chords so that you become really fluent in them. Anyway, brief explanation of how this figured bass system works, because you'll notice just
looking at this piece of music that sometimes we've got numbers and sometimes we've got nothing at all. It's just kind of blank. So when we see a blank, what do we do? Just play the bass note? No. Because figured bass also uses a kind of shorthand system. The basic figured bass system
is dead straightforward. If we look at this first note, C, and say we had the numbers 5-3 under that, all that's telling me
is play the fifth note above C and the third note
above C, all as a chord. So play C in the chord,
a fifth above it is G, a third above it is E. Ah, now then, we might know
that as chord I in the key of C, or we might simply know
it as a chord of C. Once you've got your basic triad, well, you don't have to play it like that. You can say, well, those
are the notes of the chord. And even though I must
have C at the bottom because that's what
the music's telling me, I can organise this C,
E, G in any way I want to and in any number of parts. I could just say, well, I'm
just going to play two C's and the E and the G are implied. Or I could say, I'll play those two C's and I'll put an E in there, because I don't necessarily
have to play the G, or maybe somebody else is playing the G. Or I could put all the
notes of the chord in. Or I could space it in some other way. You get the point. So as long as I'm using C, E, and G in some kind of formation
and I'm using the written C as the lowest note of the
chord, well, I'm away. Okay, now, if we put numbers
under every single note, as a player, you'd go bit kind
of cross-eyed, wouldn't you? Just looking at numbers coming
at you all over the place. And that's why we've got into
this very ingenious system of abbreviations, and we'll
come back to those in a minute. But let's just go through what's going on. In figured bass, any 5-3 chord is always a root position chord. So that's what we've just
been looking at, isn't it? We've been thinking about C in the bass with 3 and 5 above it. Well, that's a C major
chord in its root position. Any 6-3 chord is a first inversion chord. Okay, let's have a little think
about what that might mean. Okay, so instead of having C in the bass, say I've got E in the bass. Okay, so if I put 6-3 above E, well a sixth above E is
C and three above E is G. Oh, so still a C major chord, isn't it? But now it's in first inversion. Okay, if I have 6-4, a 6-4 chord is always in second inversion. Let's have a little think about that. So say I've got G in the bass and I put six and four above it. Well there's G, six above
it is E, four above is C. Oh, it's C major again, but this time it's in second inversion. So any 5-3 chord is a root position. Any 6-3 chord is a first inversion. Any 6-4 chord is a second inversion. Now I think that's quite useful generally to think actually in terms of
intervals above a bass note. A fifth and a third, always root position. A sixth and a third,
always first inversion. A sixth and a fourth,
always second inversion. So even if you're not the
blindest bit interested in figured bass baroque music and playing a keyboard instrument,
actually this is all still quite useful, isn't it, because it's making you
think ah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, now because these
chords come up so much, there's a certain amount of
abbreviation that goes on. So 5-3, root position, well there are more root position chords than anything else in the universe, so we abbreviate that to nothing at all. So if it's completely
blank, no numbers at all, it's a 5-3 chord. So that's why that is a 5-3 chord, that's a 5-3 chord, that's a 5-3 chord. You see how many of these
there are in a piece of music. So anything that's got no numbers at all, is just left blank, is a 5-3 chord. After the 5-3 chord, the root position, the first inversion chord is
the next most common thing. So what do we do then? We write 6. So 6 is the abbreviation of 6-3. So we can immediately
see that that means 6-3. It's a first inversion chord. That means 6-3, it's a
first inversion chord. So you see how that goes. When it comes to second inversions, they are the least common. You'll get many root position chords. You get quite a lot of
first inversion chords. You get far fewer second inversion chords, so that one we write in full. You see, because it's
a less regular visitor, well, we can afford to
write that one in full without blinding people with numbers. And you notice in the eight
bars that I've presented here, actually, we've got lots
of root position chords, we've got a few first inversion chords, we haven't actually got any
second inversion chords. So that's not completely untypical. In baroque music, you tend
to get your basic chords that we've talked about, the triads in root position, first inversion, and second inversion, and then the other main
thing you need to know about are the seventh chords. So if you have a seventh,
a dominant seventh or a supertonic seventh or something, well, you'll find that
that works out as 7-5-3. Let's think about that for a moment. Say I've got G in the bass, I'm in the key of C, and I see 7-5-3. Well, there's G, three above that is B, five above that is D, and seven above that is F, so that is a seventh chord. It could be any seventh, but it's a seventh chord in root position. And guess what? It comes with an abbreviation. Its abbreviation is 7. Now, why do I do that? There's logic in this. 5-3 we leave blank, don't we? So 7-5-3 is kind of 7 blank. Much easier just to see 7 and think that's a 7-5-3 than to
look at three numbers, 7-5-3, you know, it's like trying to memorise phone numbers or something. You know, you haven't got time to do it in a hurry, have you? So that's what a 7-5-3 does, it's always a seventh
chord in root position and you just abbreviate it by writing a 7. So you can see we've got
an example of that here where we've got D in the bass. So you take that D and
you think three is F, five is A, C is seven. So that's a supertonic seventh in C major, or a II7, or a D minor seven, whichever way you want to think about it. Okay, well let's now
think about what happens with the inversion of
these seventh chords. Okay, so what happens if I
want to write a seventh chord in first inversion? Now then, what does that work out? You can probably work out the numbers just by thinking this through, but it works out as 6-5-3. What's the abbreviation for 6-5-3? 6-5. Okay, there's a kind of
logic in it, isn't there? You can't call it 5-3 because 5-3 means something else. It means a root position chord. You can't call it 6 because
6 means a first inversion. So if you're going to abbreviate 6-5-3, the only sensible
abbreviation is to go for 6-5. Okay, what happens if
I put a seventh chord in the second inversion? Well, again, if you think about the chord, you can probably work out what
the numbers are going to be. Well, if I say put it on D, I put a 5-7, a G seven in the second inversion, D, F, G, B, well that's giving me a 6. You see that B is a 6, the G is a 4, the F is a 3. And so how am I going to abbreviate this? I'm going to abbreviate it 4-3. Again, you can see the logic. You can't abbreviate it 6, because that means ordinary
triad, first inversion. You can't abbreviate 6-4 because that's ordinary
triad, second inversion. So 4-3, that's the only place
you can go isn't it, really? And then we can also have a seventh chord in the third inversion. There's an extra inversion
because there are four notes in a seventh chord. So if I go F, G, B, D, that's the third inversion
of that G seven chord. So what have I got above the F now? Well, I've got a 6, I've
got a 4, I've got a 2, so this abbreviates 4-2. Okay, so it's just a question
of sort of knowing your way around those chords and knowing your way around the abbreviations. But I don't think they're
too bad, are they really? And then that sort of tells you basically what you need to know
about particular chords. Now, of course, there are
other things that happen along the way. For example, say you want to have a chord but you want a note to be sharp or a flat. Well, it's quite easy just to
put a flat alongside a number. So say when we come to this chord, you didn't really want it to be E, G, C, which is what that 6 is telling you because it is telling you it's this, which is this, so it's E, G, C. But say you wanted to
have a B-flat in there. So you wanted to put a
5 in there with a flat. Well, you know know you can add a 5 and call it 5-flat or flat-5. You see either of those
things written as well. So if you have a sharp or
a flat alongside a number, it's telling you that that number, that interval above the bass, is sharp, or flat, or
natural, or whatever it is. If you just see an accidental on its own, it's not that the composer's
forgotten to write the number. An accidental on its own always refers to the third of a chord. So when we come to this
point in the music, we've got E in the bass, and it's effectively blank, isn't it? So it must be a 5-3. So five above E is B, three above E is G. But because we see that sharp sign, it's not alongside a number, so it's always the third. So it's G-sharp, so it's E, G-sharp, B. And that's particularly useful
when the music changes key, which is what's happening here. So there are things like that going on. You sometimes find things
like suspensions going on. So what about this? 4-3. Often suspensions are indicated
by little dash, as well, and it's just saying in one of the parts, we're going to go 4 above that written G to 3 above the written G. The fact that the bass jumps
an octave doesn't matter. They're still both G's. So that's what we call a suspension. So if you're familiar with
suspensions, that's great. If you're not, you might just
want to mug up on suspensions. But they basically have three stages: prepare, sound, resolve, so P, S, R. P must be a note that's
consonant with the first chord. R must be a note that's
consonant with the last move, the third move of this. S is dissonant with the chord. So there are two chords,
one for P, one for R. S is a dissonant note. The note for P must be the
same as the note for S. So if S in this case is 4 above G, well that's the note C. So you have to have the note C on the previous chord
where you've got P there. So C must be sounding
as part of that P chord. And you'll think, well, hang on a minute. If that's 7, 7-5-3 above
D, well the seventh is C. So then you'll play the C
again when you come to S for the 4. And then that C steps down one note to B, which is the 3 above the G, hence 4-3. So that's telling us about a suspension. It's a baroque way of
kind of ornamenting notes. Sometimes we know those
as sus chords these days, but the sus chord
effectively in the baroque was always prepared. The note of the sus always
came on the previous note. So there's an indication
of a suspension there. And here you'll see we've got
some of these seventh chords. You see that 6-5? Well, that's this one, isn't it? So it's a 6-5-3, seventh first inversion, and a 4-3 is another seventh
chord in second inversion. So you see how we get on with that. So the thing is to kind of
get used to what these numbers are telling you and then see
if you can work out the chord. So you might start by
doing something very basic. So you might start with
the first chord and think, all right, that's 5-3, C, E, G, great. This one's 5-3, so G,
B, D, and that's great. This one's A, so 5-3, A, C, E. So you can kind of get
the first three chords. Once you've got the first three chords, you won't particularly want
to play them like that, so then you could experiment and think how can I kind of play those? Or. Find different ways of doing it. And often it works quite
well to put three notes in the right hand and just play
the bass with the left hand. You don't have to do that, but it's sort of better than having lots of clunky notes close to
each other in the left hand and then maybe one note octaves
above in the right hand. So think three plus one, or
sometimes two plus two maybe, but three plus one is much
better than one plus three. So you can kind of work
out what you're doing with those first three chords. And then you think, ah,
now then, I've got to think about a first inversion chord. That 6 is a 6-3, so
I've got E in the bass, so E, G, C, that's my
first inversion chord. Then I'm back to a root position, F, A, C, so that's all right. Then I've got another
first inversion chord, so D, F, B, that's my 6-3. And then I've got this
chord with a raised third, so it's a 5-3, but the third is raised. So E, G-sharp, B. And then you start to think, oh, looks like we might have modulated from C major to A minor,
the relative minor. So you kind of see things that we perhaps already know and love
about how harmony works in modulation and so on. We go on to the next note,
it's a 5-3, so A, C, E. Then we've got this
rather nice seventh chord. So remember it's this
one, so it's a 7-5-3, a seventh in root position, so D, F, A, C. So you see what's happening there? And then we've got to
deal with this 4-3 thing. Well, it might be easier to think about this one first because the 3 is only there because the 4 is progressing to 3. Otherwise, that's a 5-3 chord. So it's a G, B, D chord, isn't it? But we've got this fourth here, so it's part of the 5-3 thing, but the 4 is going to 3. So you can hear that 4
being dissonant, resolving. So remember we had this P, S, R situation, so we've got to have C
there, C there, B there. So you could go. That would work, or. However you want to organise
it, as long as it's going C, C, B, in the same part, you're in business. And then we're going on
to our seventh chords in these different inversions. We've got 6-5, so that's this one, 6-5-3, seventh in first inversion. So B, D, that's the 3, F is the 5, G is the 6. Then we're going on to
4-3, which is this one, 6-4-3, seventh chord second inversion. So we've got the D, F, G, B and then we're back to a 5-3, C, E, G. And you can see we've gone
from C major to A minor and then we've come back to C major again. Now, once you've kind of got used to, oh, can I work out what
all these notes are, then it's a question of sort of trying to string it together. So you could just kind of think, okay, what would be the best way to
present each of these chords? It's another really good
thing about figured bass. Not only do you get
equipped with figured bass, but it makes you think what's
the best way to space a chord, and can I get a feel for how
many parts would be good to use or what the texture might be? And that's kind of useful in all sorts of musical
endeavour, isn't it? Improvisation, composing,
and all the rest of it. And just seeing how composers
lay out chords in a score. So if we start trying to
put this together then, let's work through this piece of music. We've got 5-3, 5-3, 5-3, 6-3, 5-3 with a raised third, 5-3, 7-5-3, a 4-3 suspension, 6-5-3, 6-4-3, 5-3. That gives me the chords. And so then you are sort
of trying to think, okay, is my right hand leaping
all over the place? I mean, you don't
particularly want to do this. Something like that, because we're leaping all over the landscape then aren't we? So it's kind of thinking,
are there common notes? In other words, is there
a note in this chord that also comes in the next chord? Can I keep that in the same part? Can I keep parts moving by step as I go from one chord to the next so it doesn't sound too disconnected? Then of course you can
embellish it a little bit. You can use passing
notes, neighbour tones. You can use auxiliary
notes, passing tones, all these things. So, I mean, anything
that's going to decorate the whole thing a little bit. You see? So just a little bit of decoration there and we started to bring it to life. Then you can think, well
if it's a baroque piece, try to get a bit more baroque figuration, a bit more baroque style. One thing I've always loved
about playing figured bass in baroque pieces is that
normally you're playing in some kind of orchestra or playing with a choir or something. You can see other things
going on in the score and hear other things going on. And maybe you've got an oboe melody that comes to an end and then
there's nothing much happening but you are playing a chord and you can kind of echo
the end of the oboe melody in the way you decorate the chord. So things like this, or
kind of preempt the start of the next phrase so you can kind of join things together a bit. And then you think, I bet Handel or Bach, whoever wrote this, did this kind of thing
when they were realising, as we use that word
realising, the figured bass. So I think it's great fun
actually playing figured bass, but I think it's also incredibly useful for the reasons that I've described. So I hope you find that a helpful way of engaging with figured
bass and it kind of gets you into figured bass,
whether you are interested in baroque music or not, whether you're a keyboard player or not, and as another way of
thinking about chords. Well, if you've enjoyed this video, please go to our website, www.mmcourses.co.uk. Loads of resources for you there. If you click on Courses, you'll discover all sorts of courses on music theory, on harmony, composition, analysis, orchestration,
a whole load of things going on there, so that might
well be of interest to you. If you go back to the homepage, you can click on Maestros,
and that will tell you all about our international community of Music Matters Maestros. You can become a member with
other people who may well be on a very similar journey to your own. There are three levels of engagement. It's nothing to do with level of ability, just level of engagement. Each level comes with perks. And of course those perks
increase as you go up the levels. By the time you are a level two member, you'll have access to
a monthly live stream where I'm putting in an
hour's teaching every month, going into a bit more detail than we've got time to in these videos. And also there's a live chat running. You can ask your questions. You'll kind of see what
other people are asking. You'll connect with
other people who've got very similar interests. Wonderful friendships are forming through this Maestros group, I must say. Or you might want to go a step further and engage with us at level three. And you get all the perks
of level one and level two, but level three gives access to an additional livestream every month, and that's really for one-to-one feedback. You can submit your own
composition, your own arrangement, your own harmony exercise,
your own bit of figured bass, whatever it happens to be,
your own recorded performance, and I'll give you one-to-one feedback. We'll share that in the whole
group so everybody learns from each other, and they're
amazingly supportive, I'll tell you that. A wonderful crowd of people. We all learn from each other
and it's a fantastic way of thinking, ah, that's interesting. Somebody's written a guitar piece. I've never written a guitar piece. How do they do that? Oh, I've learned something
about how to do that. Or I write in a classical style. Here's somebody writing in a kind of modern atonal
style or in a jazz style. Oh, I've learned something
about how to do that. Maybe I'll have a go at doing that. You get the idea. Or, as I say, sharing performances. So lots to gain from being
a Music Matters Maestro, so have a look at that. Anyway, it's all there with
lots of other stuff, as well, www.mmcourses.co.uk
