This week, we're going to be talking about, homophony. What that means is really chords following chords following chords. We won't have a a bass and an accompaniment in the melody. We'll have melody, we'll have a bass voice, but we'll just be working with chords. Following chords and following chords. Now we should, now that we're familiar with the chords that we find in classical music, we need to talk about two things. One is how do we voice those chords? So where do we put the root and the third? And how far away can they be from each other? Okay, these are important questions to ask because they also define the style of a music. The second is, how do we move from one chord to the next chord? And that we call voice leading. We'll talk about that in a future video. But in this one, let's deal specifically with voicing. Well, of course a lot of classical music was, in the early days, was written for voice. And so the idea of voicing comes out, of actual singing and, and voices making music. Which means that a lot of the, the things about voicing are determined by voices. And of course we have to talk about vocal range when we talk about voices. So, when we write a chord, and we're going to be working with four voices at the same time, we're going to always be working with soprano, alto, tenor and bass voices. One note for each vocal part. And so what we have here are the, ranges. Soprano range we see. Soprano is, this middle c. Up, a little bit more than a, than a, twelth above that. Alto starts at fourth below that etc, etc. Always reference this when you are doing any kind of a homophonic writing or writing, four part writing for voices. So we see, if we look at the, the, the largest range that we can go more or less from this e in the bass to this a in the soprano. And we want to fit voices, all four voices inside of that range. Okay, so let's talk about voicing of a chord. Well, first, I should say that there are two kinds of voicing. There's what we call open structure and the other we call close structure. So what's the difference? First, open. Well, this is an example of an open structure. And if we look at it, we still, if we look at the intervals between the voices, we see an octave, a fifth, and a sixth. Now, if we look at just the top three voices, we see a fifth here and a sixth here. We see that these three voices, need more than an octave. They fit more than a one octave space. And when that's the case, we say that it's an open structure. It's important to note that within these three voices, we don't see an interval larger than an octave. That's going to be important later on. We see a fifth and we see a sixth. Well then, what's closed structure? Closed structure is simply when these top three voice fit in the span of less than one octave. So we, here we have a third and a fourth. And the total span is about a sixth. Now [UNKNOWN], it is. It's a minor sixth. Okay. So if we see this kind of construction, then we say that it's closed structure. When should you use open structure, when should you use closed structure? That's really an artistic decision. Generally they say if you start open structure you stay open structure for, at least the length of the phrase. If you start closed structure you stay closed structure. That's probably a good bit of advice to follow, but I wouldn't stay too strictly with that. If the sound required, that you're after, if the sound you're after, requires you to switch from closed structure to open structure, or vice versa, then you should do that. Okay, now just as a little bit of practice, take a look at this one here. Take a second, to determine whether or not it's open structure, or close structure, and then continue on. Okay. So I hope you took a look at this and said hm, well if I look at the intervals I see I have a sixth between these intervals and I have a sixth here. So that's definitely more than an octave. Which means we definitely have an open structure chord and that's the case. Okay, let's move on and talk about things to avoid. While there are probably many things to avoid, but let's look at two very important ones. Put down here that this is a sin. Why? It's a sin. You should avoid it. well, if we look, as I said before when we looked at the top three voices in the previous examples we say that, well you can have a fifth or a sixth between two voices, but you never want more than an octave. Okay, that you should stick to. You should never have more than an octave between voices that are adjacent. So between soprano and alto, or alto and tenor. 'Kay. Avoid a gap of more than one octave between adjacent voices. Why is this? If we, so it's one thing to follow a rule, it's another thing to understand it. So why would they say, don't do this? Okay, we get inside the thinking of a classical composer. Well, the sonority, this is as far as a classical composers can sing. The sonority is jeopardized, jeopardized. The unity of this thing as a chord, as a single sounding entity, is put in jeopardy, when in your upper three voices, they're too far apart. And actually, would be the case here. These things we hear as, one part, and these two, we'd hear as something else. To get them to blend and come together, we'd follow this rule of thumb that says, in the upper three voices, avoid gaps larger than an octave between adjacent voices. Okay, so let's see, let's say you saw this. An, an example, would this be a sin? Is this an example of the sin we just talked about? The answer is no, actually. This is not something you should avoid. Let's talk about why. Well, between the bass and tenor voices you can have larger intervals than an octave. It's very common to find a 10th. It's fairly common to find a 12th. Larger than that, you might find, but pretty rarely. So this is what I'd like to suggest. Any interval up to approximately a 12th is fine between the tenor and the bass. If you get to a 10th, that's usually large enough of an interval between the lower two voices. You can push it a little bit farther, and go to a twelfth, but I would say if you're at a tenth, if you can keep it at a tenth or less, good. If you need to go to a twelfth or something like that, it's okay, but try to get back to a tenth or an octave as soon as you possibly can. Hey, here's our final the, or the second sin we should watch out for. Now, this looks okay, right? I mean, it looks, we've got four voices. And the interval between them doesn't look any larger than an octave. So, it should be okay, right? Well, but let's look. Where's the lowest, of these top three, where's the lowest note. The lowest note isn't in the tenor, as it is in all the other examples we've seen. It's in the alto. And when this happens. When a voice that's higher in register than the other, goes lower than the other voice, we call it voice crossing. So this is something that you'd want to avoid. Now. You can very easily find examples of voice crossing in the raptor, but it's a, it's a good rule of thumb to follow, in general you avoid voice crossing. Okay, so why? Why should we avoid voice crossing. Here's how a classical composer would probably answer. He'd probably say that the independence of each voice is jeopardized. And I think this is kind of interesting. Because if we look at this first one, they're all worried about sonority, right? They're all worried about this thing sounding like a thing. And at the same time, if we look at this, it almost seems like a contradictory answer, yeah? Well, you're worried about independence while you're worried about unity. Okay, this is the case. That on one hand, you want to work to create sonorities. On the other hand, you want to make sure that each of the individual voices can be heard and followed. And when you get this voice crossing, it's hard to tell. Is this now the tenor note, or is it the alto note? So in general please follow these two rules of thumb. And understand where they come from. A desire to create something sonorous, and at the same time, the desire to have four things be independent of each other. Okay. Now, one question that is very reasonable will come up the minute you start doing any kind of voicing's of chords, or voice leading, is. Okay, if I'm working with a triad, I've got three notes, you're telling me I have four voices. So, what happens, does one person not sing? Or, do I double a note, and if so, what note should I double? So at this stage, we're working only with root position chords, or we will be working with only root position chords this week. In that case double the root. So here's an, a nice example, very common kind of voicing of a major triad. Root, root, fifth and third. So two voices are on the root. One voice on the fifth, one voice on the third. Okay so now what happens with a, with a seventh chord. A seventh chord if you've got all four notes then one note has to be in each voice. So here's an example. We just have the root, go up here, the 3rd, the 5th, and the 7th. However, it's very common with 7th chords that you drop a note. Now, which one do we drop. We drop the 5th. Omit the 5th. Why? Okay, let's talk about these notes. What is the root give us? The root tells us what the function of the chord is, right or at least what the inversion of the chord is. The root tells us a lot about the chord. The third also tells us a lot about the chord. It tells us whether it's major or minor, which as we saw earlier, can decide whether or not this is a, is a, you know, a minor seventh chord. Or a dominant seventh chord. And if it's a dominant seventh chord it functions differently. So, we need to have the third, because it gives us a lot of information about the chord. It's very important in classical music whether or not the chord is major or minor, especially with a seventh chord. And, of course, we need the seventh because otherwise we just have a triad, right? So, if you're only using three notes of a dominant seventh chord. Please omit the fifth.
