Lesson 7 - Guided Practice with Alberti Bass

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Write Like Mozart: An Introduction to Classical Music Composition

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National University of Singapore

Write Like Mozart: An Introduction to Classical Music Composition

243 оценки

This course introduces students to strategies for style writing of common practice European art music. The issues of harmonic progression, voice leading, and texture are addressed in addition to relevant compositional concepts like repetition, variation, and elaboration. The course aims to offer a creative space even within the restrictions of stylistic emulation.

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Module Six

This final module starts with an introduction to what I call “progressions within progressions”. Often a composer uses V-I progressions that are in keys related to the original key but not actually in it. So in the key of C major, for instance, it is quite common to see a progression that has a D major chord going to a G major chord. Well, up to now, we haven’t seen this and we wouldn’t have a way to describe it. That D major chord isn’t in the key of C, it’s not a Neapolitan or Augmented 6. It’s not a borrowed chord because neither C major nor c minor has a D major as the chord on the second scale degree. However, this D major is a fifth above the G major chord, which means that there is a dominant-tonic relationship between the D major chord that’s not in the key and the G major chord that is. This sounds more confusing than it is, so I won’t continue to describe it here. Instead, I encourage you to check out the videos on this concept, which I think make it quite clear what these are and how to use them. For those who have studied harmony before, you might be familiar with the much more common term “secondary dominant”. That’s what these progressions within progressions are. We will also look at a technique that is crucial to the musical style under examination in this course: the Alberti bass. This is the familiar arpeggiated chordal pattern that you frequently encounter in music from this era. They are easy to write, but there are a few things that need to be kept in mind when composing them. There are also some videos that aim to bring course concepts together for you. The first is a video on elaborating progressions. While the basic progressions presented in the first week aren’t extensive, we learned how to significantly alter them via chord inversion and diatonic and/or chromatic substitution. But we haven’t looked too much at how to take all of these strategies and put them together to create a unique progression. This video aims to offer that. Finally, we take a close look at a theme from one of Mozart’s very famous theme and variations, part of the K. 331 piano sonata. This is important not simply because it brings together the concepts presented in this class. More importantly, the work can function as a model for you in composing your final project. It is an excellent example of rounded binary form - the form you need to use for the final project composition.

Lesson 7 - Guided Practice with Alberti Bass17:43

Познакомьтесь с преподавателями

Peter Edwards
Associate Professor
Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music

So our goal in this Guided Practice, is to start with a

basic harmonic progression well not so basic, but basic none the less.

Add in secondary dominance where it seems like a, a good place to add it in.

And then from there, voice the chords that

we come up with, and make an Alberti baseline.

Now when we voice the chords, we're going to

be thinking about what inversion they should be in

because we'll want a really smooth bass line, which

will be, is kind of an important thing to have.

Well not always, but in many instances without birdie bass,

so we're going to practice that here. So, first step is here.

So write in whole notes the bass line for the following

harmonic progression in F major and it is here so write in.

Now the, what the base notes are for

this harmonic progression here in this base Clef.

Once you have that come back, and check your work.

Okay, so if I'm in the key of F.

I know that this is one, and we could leave

it up here, that's fine I, in my, in my own

realization of this I put it down there, but if

you happen to put it the octave above, there's no problem.

Then we go four, five would be the C chord, and

six is a step above that ii, six. Well, that has the fourth scale degree in

the bass, right?

It's a ii chord, and the third is in the bass,

so two, three, four, so fourth's gotta be in the bass.

V, and then back to I and

again, it could be up here or down here, I'm going to leave mine there.

Next stage, is to add in

secondary dominance between the first four chords so we have I, IV, V, VI.

And between each of these, we can insert a secondary dominant.

We can also insert a Cadential 6/4 chord, I won't

tell you where that can be, because you should know.

So go ahead and do that now and what you want to do is you know

you want to keep these things, these chords happen

exactly where they are happening for these first four ones.

We just want to insert here, on beat three.

So we have this for two beats and then on beat

three and four we have the secondary dominant here for two beats.

We have the four chord, and then the secondary dominant there

and then here for two beats and a secondary

dominant here, and then we get the six chord.

And then somewhere around here we add in

the one-six-four, and remember the one-six-four inserts before

the chord is supposed to come to so its going to cause the other one that its

inserting in front of to shift to the right And the other thing is once

you put in that what you should do is put in a bass line just a bass line and

the Roman numeral analysis.

We'll add the chords in later, and we'll voice lead that later.

But just right now, the bass note, and the Roman numeral analysis.

Do that, come back and check your work. Okay, well, the first thing I'm going to

do is Copy and Paste. because I cheat as often as possible.

And then [SOUND] I know I need to make these half notes so I do that.

And okay, one of four that means this becomes the pacific.

This is the one chord and I'll put in my.

As I go along, I'll put in my

Roman numeral analysis.

So I've got 1, I've got

4, I've got 5,

6, 2-6, going to have 5, and then 1. Okay,

so the fifth above the four chord is the one

chord and that's where we're going to get our secondary dominance.

So we're just going to keep this, and we're going to

need to add the seven so ' kay, so.

[SOUND] We're going to keep that the same

and, we're going to write in five, seven, whoops, of four.

[SOUND]

Now, we may not end up with this as the actual bass note once we

go to voice it, but for right now we're just putting in these in root position.

The next one, okay so we have, we're going to the five chord.

And the five the you know five steps above the five chord is the two chord

so we've did this in a couple examples previously so it might be fairly

familiar to you now. So let's put two in the bass and

then name our chord which are B 5-7 of 5 and

then we want the 5-7 of 6. Again, a

fifth above or a fourth below give us the 3 chord so we're

going to, put this on the third scale of the read five seven of six.

Okay, third scale degree would be A. [SOUND] So, you get that.

Good, so we've placed in our secondary dominance between the first

four chords and now we need to insert the Cadential six four.

While the Cadential

six four comes around the cadence the Cadential six four is another

sort of a modified version of the V chord. So it goes

here, and we are inserting it, as always before

the V chord. So what we have to do here is go I,

6/4, V, like that

and if you have something that looks like that, then then, very well.

Otherwise I'd hope that going through this helps clarify

things for you, let's look at the next stage.

Here, we have a, given the melody and

harmonic progression, so we have our harmonic progression here.

We have a melody that I am giving you, write in 3-note chords

in the bass with inversions that allow for a smooth baseline.

So, we look at these chords and we want to make it so its as smooth as possible.

I'm going to give you a couple hints the first hint,

is that this six chord here will be in root position.

So I'll just make it a bit clearer, that means bass node should be there

and, the second hand obviously these are going to stay in root position.

[SOUND]

Like that.

So we just have to fill this in, and, and this is going to start.

[SOUND]

So now,

add in three note chords in the left hand, where will

you move down smoothly here and then, once you get here

actually this is not, we just, I'll add this in it

for you because, again, we're just going to be smoothly going like that.

So

it's really just these chords where you have to

figure out inversions, and then add in a three

note chords and so you say, what, well, where

can I add in four note chords, or whatever.

We're going to make an Alberti bass, so we're

just want to have three notes in the left hand.

And remember in some cases like these dominant 7's,

secondary dominance for instance, they have, the 4 note chords.

So you want to look at the note that's on the right hand, and see if you can

just keep that note in the right hand as one of the chord

tones, and then the other 3 chord tones, go on the left hand.

Do that, come back, check your work.

Okay, so pretty easy if we

[MUSIC]

just start like that. And I see I already have this C and I need

to get a five seven chord, a four, five or four but I need a seventh chord.

So, that will be my fifth so I got root third, fifth,

and then maybe I can change this and make it into a seventh.

[MUSIC]

Of couse, that's

[MUSIC]

should be that note and then we go to the four chord.

And the thing here is I, I think I want to do pedal six four

because I want to keep the bass note as smooth as possible.

[MUSIC]

So if I do that.

[MUSIC]

I get my 4 chord, but it's in second inversion, and I keep this bass here.

The 5-7-5 that would be a G Dominant Seventh Chord.

I've got the G here.

That G Dominant seventh also has an F in it, so that's

also common tone, so I think I want to keep that common tone.

Not feeling the need to add another G because I want to try to get in the B

natural and the D well those are basically already here.

This is a B flat and then D so, I just switch to.

[SOUND] That and you say, well what's

that? What kind of inversion is that?

That's a five four two, which is going to force our base to go

down which means when we get to this five chord we're not going

to be in root position any-more, which is fine, there's no problem

with that [SOUND] into something like that I think makes a lot of sense.

And now, well we could

keep this we could keep this E natural here but we're going

to a five, seven its a four note chord. Its a Dominant Seventh Chord.

We already have that E in the melody so let's not double that.

It seems like it makes it a little bit

unsmooth, but I think it will be nice actually.

This very this consistent line here step down and then why don't we

go to first inversion like that and then fill in the remaining notes.

So this is an A Dominant Seventh Chord.

So we have the third and we have the fifth,

so we need a seventh and we need the root.

Like that, and then we resolve here.

To a D Minor cord, which is.

[MUSIC]

Our sixth cord.

[MUSIC]

You go first version.

[MUSIC]

Two, one, six, four.

[MUSIC]

Five and then one, [SOUND], this one I won't even fill in.

I should have probably said, that before because you may

have been trying to figure out how to do it.

You might have done something like this [SOUND],

something like that wouldn't be a bad solution.

If you did something like this, [SOUND], that's a

very bad solution because we get all this Parallel motion.

But something like that's also fine if you said oh, well it

doesn't really work out to use three notes but two notes is okay.

That's okay, as well.

I'm just going to leave it at this one note here

we get root and third and that's fine for now.

There's one other thing that I want to add in

that I didn't mention but I want added in here.

Noticed we have bassline that moves by step.

I wonder if we couldn't somehow get, a V 7 of something in here

or a 5, and it looks like we can because we're going

to if, if this was a tonic, this is a V chord, right.

Let me put in the Roman numeral analysis so it's a little bit clearer.

We have I, we have V 7 of, whoops, of IV, we have IV

6-4, we have 5-4-2,

5 going to 5, and first inversion. Going

to 5-6-5 of 6, going to

6, going to two

six, going to one six four, going to five. Whoops,

and I, there's a seventh there, so now it's going to five seven and going to one.

So I want to see if I can get this kind of more smoothly and

chromatically moving there, so that I would get a bass note like that.

[MUSIC]

So does that make sense. So this is the five chord, but if we found

the fifth above that, that's a G chord. To make it Dominant, it has to be Major.

So this is a leading tone of that, this is the third of

the, of the G Major chord so yeah, we could do this.

[MUSIC]

Something like that, which will give us an

additional, it's a V 6 of V, like that.

Now I have something quite elaborate, maybe we should play this

little bit back so that we can hear the harmonic progression.

[MUSIC]

And now, last but not least, of course, is

to apply the Alberti bass pattern to this left hand.

What we get in the end, will be something quite nice.

Now, I'm going to fill in a couple of bars first

because, the main task here is to fill in the Alberti bass pattern.

But that doesn't really, work out great when you get here nor here.

So I'm going to write in, for instance what I came up with for the left hand.

This isn't the only solution, but it's just what I came up with.

[MUSIC]

Just use something like that. Everything else here, every

other chord that we have here, in these first three bars, and then bar five

and six of this passage apply the Alberti bass pattern.

And now I remember what the Alberti bass pattern is?

It's lowest, highest, middle, highest, Just like

that just use the classic Alberti bass pattern.

Once you finished, come back, and check your work.

Okay, I'm going to go ahead and do a couple of

these, but it should be pretty clear what's, what's going to happen

[MUSIC]

[MUSIC]

So we take lowest, highest, middle,

highest, lowest, highest, middle, highest, like that.

[MUSIC]

[SOUND] Like that lowest highs, middle highs.

So, this is really all you have to do.

I'm going to fill this, complet, this thing in I'm going to fill it in, in its

entirety then fade back in, and play it back for you.

Okay, so now we're back with this completed Alberti-based pattern.

And let me play here what we've got so,

you can hear it.

[MUSIC]

[MUSIC]

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