New answers tagged scales
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There are no "compulsory" chords, but if the music is to sound Dorian, then you want to emphasize A and the total progression should have every note in the mode represented, so it could help to add a chord including 'b' in your progression, such as G Major, B minor or E minor.
Depending upon how much you want to follow historical practice, a ...
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The ABRSM 2021–2022 Piano Syllabus applies the following scale speeds for each exam grade, with all scales played in eighth-notes.1
Image source (PDF page 16)
Initial: quarter-note = 54
Grade 1: quarter-note = 60
Grade 2: quarter-note = 66
Grade 3: quarter-note = 80
Grade 4: quarter-note = 100
Grade 5: half-note = 60
Grade 6: half-note = 72
Grade 7: half-...
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You should play whatever speed you can with completely (completely, though!) relaxed hands. Except for the base of the finger being played, there should be no more muscular tension than if the hand was just sitting on a desk.
When you start to speed up, there's a tendency to "try-hard," which interferes with the passing of the thumb and makes ...
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In a comment you ask
Is it correct that a "dominant chord" (without the 7th) is not necessarily always a Major triad but can also be a Minor triad depending on the scale?
Perhaps, but this question has music history a bit backwards. First there were intervals, then chords, then scales and keys.
There is a common misconception that scales and ...
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First some context. Western music began with monophonic Gregorian chant. The most common note sung was the 5th degree, which led to it being named the 'dominant'.
Western music derived it's modal system from the Greeks and others, using a division of the octave into 7 distinct notes using only whole and half steps. Renaissance composers routinely sharped ...
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But in descending motion from the tonic, is it okay for the 7th scale degree to resolve to the 6th (i.e. 8-7-6)?
Not all motion is resolution. It's perfectly fine to have an 8-7-6 melody in which the 7the degree moves to the 6th, but you wouldn't normally say that the 7th degree resolves to the 6th. Either the motion from 7 to 6 is not a resolution or the ...
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I think you want to distinguish progressions that exemplify tendency tone movements from other kinds of harmonic movement and also whether the tones are real chord tones rather than embellishing tones.
Tendency tones like the following are mostly about tonic/dominant progressions...
...^7 the leading tone moves up to the tonic, because the progression is I ...
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Melody trumps everything else. Even in the walled garden of hymn-tune style SATB writing, a strong melodic line excuses a multitude of sins.
In the wider musical world, leading notes regularly go just about anywhere of course.
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The rule of resolving the leading tone upwards concerns the progression V-I and V7-I, vii-I, vii dim7-I (dominant-tonic). Exception: in the middle voices the leading tone may go downwards to the 5th in purpose to have a full chord. (s. example of link user 45266.)
There are other cases where we have other harmonic progressions like iii-IV, V-IV, V7/vi-vi ...
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In particular situations, this 8–7–6 line in either of the outer voices is acceptable.
When harmonizing a melody with I–iii–IV, this 8–7–6 melody line is very common; see "Puff the Magic Dragon." Part of the reason this works is that the 7 here isn't really a leading tone in the same sense that it is when 7 is harmonized with V. The iii chord doesn'...
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Eh... no. Specifically: no, I would not consider that to be a violation of the rule. I don't know about what your learning resources are going to say about this, but back when I learned this stuff, that walkdown from tonic to fifth was a specifically listed exception to the leading tone "rule" in voice-leading. In general, though, leading tone ...
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The first two lines are in the key of C major, then then the song modulates to Eb major. The modulation is unprepared: there is nothing at the end of the second line that makes us anticipate the change. To me the change seemed quite sudden, but there are indeed two factors that glue the two parts togeter.
as ttw and Bennyboy1973 wrote, there is some ...
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Given that the song shifts to E♭ major, and E♭ major shares the same key signature as C minor, I don't think it would be unreasonable to draw a connection.
That being said, motion by 3rds, either minor OR major, is pretty common, because of notes shared between them.
C-A major (share E)
C-A♭ major (share C)
C-E major (share E)
C-E♭ major (share G)
Note that ...
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A C major to Eb major chord succession is very common in classical style music. It's termed a "chromatic mediant." The "strict" definition is two major or two minor chords having roots a third apart. It's a smooth transition in that there is a common tone between the chords. C major and Eb major share the note G. These provide a nice &...
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Since major scale and natural minor scale were the two modes in the modal system, I postulate that the melodic minor scale was accidentally found by lower the 3rd a half step. Take C major scale for example, if you were just only flatting one-note, the E a half step to Eb, you're automatically in the C melodic minor scale ascending (let's just ignore about ...
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Well, we had to call it SOMETHING! It's logical to go for the most common possibility.
'Dominant 7th' has come to mean a particular chord shape, not necessarily a description of harmonic function in any particular context.
In a simple Blues - using C7, F7 and G7 chords - all those chords might be classed as 'dominant 7th' shapes, though only one of them is ...
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The major scale is used as a yardstick in music theory, because there is only ONE form of the major scale. This is convenient, because it leads to consistent labeling: C-A is always a major 6th interval, CEGBb is always a dominant 7th chord , etc. (Edit: I'm talking about the chord structure rather than where it occurs - some will call it a maj/m7 chord if ...
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There must be many,many more times the dominant seventh harmony is used in major rather than minor keys, over several centuries, so it's far more commonplace. And the same harmony works in minor, using the 5 of the key as root, anyway. True, the same harmony can be found from the melodic minor notes (ascending), so common usage made it the 'go to' dominant ...
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The dominant seventh chord got its name from its frequent use as the dominant chord, strongly driving the harmony towards the key's tonic chord. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_seventh_chord
It's not a law of nature, not physics or mathematics. It's about culture, history, people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanities
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Something is telling me you are not an avid listener of jazz and metal, judging by your list of scales that are "outside the Western system"...
You should be very careful with Western approximations of Indian and Arabic scales. Indian and Arabic scales do not fit that snuggly into the Western 12-TET system.
Another side remark: I don't know if it's ...
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It's more the other way round. Any scale is an ordered set of notes which (usually) goes together. True, start anywhere on the whole set (chromatic), and count TTSTTTS (or WWHWWWH), and you end up with a major scale, in the key of whatever note you started/finished on.
Similarly with a minor scale - but only the natural minor, which, if you didn't realise, ...
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