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There is a rather more fundamental, physical reason for this than so far mentioned: the bass fills not only the bass frequency range, but its harmonics actually reach well into the midrange where all other voices have their fundamentals! In fact, since the bass has typically the strongest amplitude1 of all tuned instruments (save perhaps trumpets, lead ...
31
Just to expand on Pat's answer, there is a figured bass symbols for all type of inversion including root position.
The picture above shows the complete figured bass symbol and how it will be denoted in analysis. As you can see root position triads and 7th chords have their own complete figured bass symbols, but reduce drastically because how common they ...
27
I don't think I can improve on this "answer" of Dudley Moore's one bit:
Although it is obviously a parody, and a very funny one, if you study carefully all of the devices that Moore uses to tinker with the simple melody, you'll get a lot of ideas about how to write in Beethoven's style. Part of the reason that it's so ...
26
The fact that you are in A minor without G# (or F# and G#) means that you are in A natural minor. What defines a scale as minor or major, is the third of the scale, not the accidentals. If you have A as the root of your scale and the third is a C, then the scale is a minor one.
There are 3 different types of minor scales:
A harmonic minor (it has G#)
A ...
22
There are at least two options:
Option 1: You can slow down the video by changing the Playback Speed setting
Browser instructions (this link for further alternatives)
Click on the Settings menu icon.
Select Playback speed
Select the speed you want
Option 2: Go frame by frame
You can progress frame by frame using the ,
(backward) and . (forward) keys. (...
20
I'd probably recommend starting with the built-in YouTube controls. But for the sake of completeness here's another workflow that makes use of 3rd party software called a "phrase trainer" or "slow downer". Here's a list of them.
Typically, you'd download or otherwise record the audio from the video so that you have it locally. There are a ...
18
Normally, we're told that 5/4 is really 3/4 + 2/4 or 2/4 + 3/4.
Well, I have to ask "told by who?" It is not the case that 5/4 has to be interpreted as either 3/4 + 2/4 or 2/4 + 3/4. It is perfectly valid to use groups of 5 crotchet beats as the overall rhythmic template of a piece of music, without having to have the same sub-groupings in different parts.
...
17
First let's not look at it as a ♯V chord, but a ♭VI chord. This chord naturally occurs in the parallel minor and can easily be borrowed.
Let's look at how the notes move with a sample progression in the key of C:
IV F - A - C
♭VI(7) A♭ - C - E♭ - (G)
I C - E - G
If you look at this progression without the 7th, you'll notice a few ...
17
To answer the question of whether the C chord is "really" V of V, you need to remember one simple fact about music.
When you listen to music, you hear it progressing in time.
Therefore, analysing any chord in terms of "what comes after it" by looking at the score is just an intellectual exercise, if it has no relationship to what the music actually sounds ...
14
Typically, in traditional classical music, non-harmonic tones like suspensions are not indicated in the Roman numeral analysis. You would simply notate the numeral and inversion for the chord to which you are resolving.
Here's an example:
In jazz and pop music, on the other hand, you may find the chord analyzed as IVsus or IVsus4, for instance. This is ...
14
I'm just going to answer the question "What about tangent, or other functions", since the rest seems to have been fairly well handled.
All sounds that we hear as having a definite pitch or note can be represented by a periodic function. As I wrote in my comment, any repeated shape represents a periodic function. Most periodic functions, both in the real ...
14
The "Moonlight" Sonata is just one of many pieces with the title "Sonata". The title "sonata" is descriptive of how the music is constructed; a basic description can be found in What is “Sonata-Allegro form” and what other similar forms should I be aware of?.
The core idea of a sonata is of musical contrast. For example, @...
13
That's Coltrane changes (before Coltrane actually used them in Giant Steps etc.), where the roots of the tonal centers move in (enharmonic) major thirds (either up or down):
[Bb] -> (down M3) [Gb] -> (down M3) [D] -> (up M3) [Gb]
Returning to the key of F is not part of the cycle anymore, it's just going back to the original key.
This is what the ...
12
First let me make this remark: as always when analyzing, know what key you are in and look for accidentals outside the key. If there are no accidentals outside the key then you can't be dealing with a secondary dominant.
Now let's look at the chords in the key of C major:
ii: D F A
V/V: D F# A
ii7: D F A C
V7/V: D F# A C
As you can see the ...
12
We call this text painting (or word painting), and it's a clever compositional tactic that dates back centuries. In short, text painting occurs when a composer does something in the music that is a direct reference to something in the text.
Text painting can be very literal, like when the text uses words like "rising" or "higher" and the melody ascends. But ...
12
Before I answer, we should note that Schenker himself was not the best at expressing his own theories. His treatises are at various times rambling, political, polemical, and utterly contradictory. Furthermore, his theories developed throughout his life, so the theories expressed in a 1910 publication are not the same as those in a 1935 publication.
Partly ...
12
I would argue that this E7 is still a secondary dominant, just one that resolves deceptively.
This E7 is V7/vi in the key of C, and it resolves to F, thus VI/vi. In other words, we have a V–VI progression in the temporary key of A minor (vi of C major).
If we're in C major and we have a G7 that resolves to A minor, do we still call this G7 a dominant? I ...
11
They are figured bass numbers, as used under bass lines in (primarily) the Baroque era to indicate harmonic content to be improvised by continuo players such as the harpsichordist. The numbers refer to the diatonic intervals above the bass. Look at your 6/4 example above. The two distinct notes above the bass note are a sixth and a 4th above, hence 6/4. This ...
11
You might almost say they didn't "work" in terms of sounding good as much as those transitions help make the music sound whimsical. It's not like they fit inside some sacred rules of harmony as much as they broke the rules in a certain way that makes that theme effective in setting the tone for the show.
Also the main motive is repeated (more or less) in ...
11
Not every rondo is the exact same form. There are many different types of rondos with the most popular variations being A-B-A, A-B-A-C-A, and A-B-A-C-A-B'-A (the last one being comparable to your definition).
A rondo is defined by repetition (the A section in most cases) and you start with one musical idea go somewhere else (typically refereed to as an ...
11
Sine and cosine are the same, just offset by 90 degree. They form a "quadrature pair": if you add their squares, you get a constant. When you draw a sine wave as a representation of audio, it represents either pressure (compared to neutral) at some "listening" point, or an impulse density. Both together form a quadrature pair again: if you square and add ...
11
First of all, you're reading a very good book from which you'll learn a lot about jazz harmony. One important thing to realize when analyzing jazz progressions is that there is no right and wrong. Nobody can disagree with your analysis if you hear it the way you say you do. The problem with beginners (and I don't say that you are one) is that often they just ...
11
Coda means tail, ending. Most pieces will (obviously) have an ending, and it's usually the point where the music comes down to its final resting place - using a cadence that indicates this.
Here, there's a perfect cadence (V>I) so it feels like it's the ending. A coda is often a separate part of a piece, several bars long, that gets played after repeats ...
10
Hmmm, this is a little off the cuff, but I think it's probably easiest to look at mm. 12-13 (primarily 13) as a viio/ii or V7/ii in the new Bb key. That is to say, the B-nat is part of a secondary leading-tone or secondary dominant chord. I suppose it could just as easily be a viio/iv or V7/iv in the old key, and then you could call the iv a pivot chord like ...
10
Definitely sounds like a chord sequence in D Minor to me. Particularly because it starts on D Minor, and the A Minor chords at the end have a dominant function, despite not being major. (An A Major chord at the end would create a strong perfect cadence, A - Dm, when it repeats, which I presume it is supposed to...)
These chords are all found in D Natural ...
10
The song could be on G# major; It would be easier to say it's in Ab major scale. These two are the same scale and they are called Enharmonic scales. (I'm using Ab because it is more common and easier to understand).
Here is how:
Ab (G#) -> 1st chord of your scale.
Ebm (D#m) -> 4th of the minor scale with the same name (Ab or G# minor) -- you are allowed to ...
10
The other chords get Roman numerals based on the key you are in. For example in the key of D major you would have the following Roman numerals map to the following chords:
D Em F#m G A Bm C#dim
I ii iii IV V vi viio
This comes from how chords are built in major keys.
When you don't have a key try and figure out what key fits the chords best. ...
10
You list G major and E minor as possible tonics, but I'm going to go a different direction: I hear this in A! As such, with one sharp in the key signature, it's really more of an A Dorian. Thus the progression is i v VII IV.
(Perhaps the very ambiguity of tonic was intentional, considering what takes place in the movie and the title of the piece.)
The i ...
10
Wow, really terrific musical example!
There are two necessary aspects to acknowledge that help us understand this section. First is that these chords alternate between something and B7 (or the B-major triad). This is important because, since the excerpt is in E minor, the chords in question alternate between something and V7. This is a big clue that we can ...
9
I agree, these are somewhat dubious designations, but there's a possible justification for looking at them more or less as analyzed in your example, in increasing order of dubiousness.
The first example is actually just a deceptive resolution of the secondary dominant, akin to a primary V7 going to vi. V7/vi in C major is an E7 chord that wants to go to A ...
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