I can’t say enough about how many steps I’ve taken in understanding music theory and concepts thanks to this one channel. I have new holiday sale plug-ins and hardly touched them...can’t pull myself away from this channel! Thank you Seth.
I concur! I am holding onto this channel and your dulcet tones like life rafts :) Hoping to do well in my exams and you are helping me immensely! Thank you so much@@SethMonahan
Professor Monahan, you are consistently fantastic at teaching these concepts. I'm a theory major in my senior year and every video helps me understand the material at a deeper, more complete, and more intuitive level. Thank you for all the hard work!! I've been trying to come up with some presentations but each time I feel like I can't be complete without being really wordy. I end up with topic creep and feel like I have to cover everything to be able to cover anything. Do you have any feedback or teaching resources that I can put to use?
Hi enterrupt! I'm so grateful for the kind comments, and I feel like I very much understand the threat of wordiness and "topic creep." I taught music theory pedagogy at Eastman for many years. And new theory teachers-particularly those who have a propensity to geek out about these things (like me)-often had a hard time zeroing in on their specific topic. They would often veer off into side issues or re-explaining things the students ostensibly already knew. I certainly had the same issues when I started teaching many years ago. For me, things started turning around when I stopped improvising in the classroom and started planning things down to the last detail in advance. My undergrad classes at Eastman were built around Keynote slideshows that looked pretty much identical to the ones you see in these videos. I found that when I started planning every move in advance, and really thinking through the language I was using to engage my students, I could navigate the turns without flying off the road. This got even more intense when I started making my videos, because I decided that the most effective strategy was to (1) script every single sentence ahead of time, but also (2) to keep the language as colloquial as possible, to make it sound fresh and spontaneous and (above all) very distinct from the kind of overwrought, verbose language of academia. One other thing: "topic creep" is a special risk when new teachers are devising lessons in the abstract, outside the context of a real class and real students. In theory ped class, I would have students do short teaching demonstrations. But I would urge them repeatedly to really, really think through what their imaginary students already "knew." Like, to even write down the content of the imaginary classes leading up to their simulation. Because otherwise, there was a strong tendency to swerve around and start reteaching old topics; it's like they couldn't feel confident that they'd already taught their imaginary students something concrete-maybe because they had no real-life experience training students day after day, month after month. Anyway, good luck! I hope your senior year goes splendidly!
Loving these videos as a refresher course - 20 years since I majored in composition and never really understood figured bass. At about 19 minutes I hear your ii(4/2) as a predominant - underlined for me by the way the F in the bass sounds again with a new crotchet rather than a dotted minim on beat one.
Thanks for the kind words! (As for 19:00: you're of course free to hear Beethoven op. 2/1 however you like. But you should know that that interpretation puts an unresolved chordal seventh in the bass of the ii4/2, which is an actual contrapuntal mistake that Beethoven probably wouldn't make. ii4/2 really only has one proper resolution in this style, which is V6/5. [Think for instance of the opening of the first prelude in the Well-Tempered Clavier: I-ii4/2-V6/5-I.])
Maestro: first I would like to state with gratitude sharing your genius with an amateur like me. Atim 4:58 Time Set I understand the I (9 / 7/ 4) connection, however, can you explain or direct me to what note for example the 9 is the F Note in the Bass to G Note and so forth. Now we go from 9 to 8 from 7 to 8 to 4 to 3 can you tell me how do you get to the second row (8 8 3). Thank you much, R
How should I analyze the harmony when I come across pedal points? I have came across a few situations where the bass note is a pedal point and also the root of the starting harmony. 2 pieces where I come across this several times are both in the Classical Style and are both in G major with G as the pedal point. 1) Rondo a Cappriccio, Opening theme 2) Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, starting at measure 5 I analyzed the Rondo a Cappriccio example as being alternations between I and V7, with a non-chordal bass note G. I recently looked at a harmonic analysis of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and the analyst analyzed it as a single harmony with a tonic pedal point. So now I'm confused. When I come across a pedal point in a piece I am analyzing, should I do what I have done in the past, which is to ignore the bass note pedal point and treat it as more than a single harmony? Or should I treat it as a single harmony rooted on the pedal point and track the changing notes with figured bass, even if it sounds like an alternation between I and V7?
Hi Carrots. Your timing is uncanny; I was just teaching this topic to one of my classes on Wednesday. Here's my take on it: for more than a generation, largely thanks to Schenkerian theory, analysts have been taught to treat many kinds of harmonic events as "not real chord progressions." Instead, we're told, they're merely "embellishments" of some underlying harmony. I'm certainly sympathetic; see Videos 22-24, for instance. But only to a point. Too often, I find it to be an arbitrary and counterintuitive way of analyzing. And this is especially true where tonic pedals are concerned. Whatever happens above a tonic pedal point, the Schenkerian will tell you that it's all "really" just tonic-and hence the analysis of "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" you encountered. My rule of thumb is this: if it sounds and feels like a chord progression, with actual changes of harmonic function, then you need to take seriously the idea that it might BE a chord progression. And I absolutely feel like the alternating I's and V7's at m. 5 are true harmonic events-worthy of recognition-and not just a tonic embellished with neighbor tones. Those V7s *feel* like V7s to me, and I'll indicate as much in my analysis. Usually, I'd just put V7 under every other chord and then "Tonic ped.-------" or something like that under the whole passage. Of course the tonic pedal gives the progression a different sound, and it also serves as a formal marker: it says "you are now at the very beginning or very ending of a section." But I don't see why we need to throw the V7s out the window altogether. (Dominant pedals are a different story for me, though. There, I often *don't* feel a change of function when the upper voices move to new sonorities. When I hear V-I/64-V-I6/4-etc., it sounds like a continuous dominant function, and thus I don't treat those as "real" chord progressions.)
@@SethMonahan So you're basically saying that I should do this: Dominant pedal point: Write it as a single harmony and track the upper voices using figured bass Tonic pedal point: Write it as alternations between tonic and dominant with the dominant chords having a non-chord tone in the bass Pedal point on a different scale degree: Depends on what the constituent harmonies are. If for example the pedal point is on the leading tone and you have this: vii°7 -- iii6/4 -- vii°7 -- V6, treat it as a single harmony, a diminished seventh, tracking that iii chord using figured bass, until you reach V6, and then treat that as a harmonic change, so vii°7 -- iii6/4 -- vii°7 -- V6 simplifies to vii°7/5/3 -- 6/4 -- 7/5/3 -- V6
Hi seth, at 9:28 you explain that there is a PAC at the end of the passage, but this PAC has non chord tones above the dominant chord. My question is, does this mean that only the bass note is required to determine each function of each chord in a cadence? and you can freely play any notes over the top of that bass note and it will still perfom as a cadence in the songs key signature? Thanks again.
Hi Romyn! Yes-pretty much exactly this. It's extremely common for the bass note to "get to the cadence first," followed by the upper voices, which need to resolve several non-chord tones. That being said, composers in this style tend to use only specific combinations of NCTs at cadences. At half cadences, you'll usually have either the notes of the tonic triad or viio7 of V over the dominant bass note. At authentic cadences, you'll always have the notes of some dominant harmony (V7, viio, viio7).
Hello Again: You have to be a genius to figure this out; my question the last measure on the lower Staff with the note on the Staff D and B on the bottom Bass we have A and G then we have I (9 7 4) the A Note bottom not to B is the 9 - than you go from the A to the D note that is a 4 - than from G to the D note is 5 - but I see in the Figured Bass 9 7 4 what am I misreading; please help. thank you much, R
Hey Seth ! Can you please help me ? You're talking about suspensions and harmonies that don't "feel" like harmonies but rather like appoggiaturas to the next chord. I found one in the Beethoven 8th piano Sonata at the end of the very first measure (mvmt 1). It goes like F#dim7 => G. I feel just like you that I should note this as a compound V (with the dashes you've explained) because I hear a compound V with NCTs rather than a vii°/V before a V. BUT the bass is not stationary ! So I'm completely blocked on the figured bass notation ! The notes resolve "Eb and C to D, A natural to B natural, and the bass F# to G".. How would you write it if you want to extend the V harmony and not as a basic "vii°/V V" ?
Hi Guillaume! I'm looking at the end of the "Pathetique" first movement, but I'm not seeing the chord you're describing. 5-6 measures from the end, there are two big F#o7 chords. But they resolve into a cadential six-four, not a G major triad. Can you help me find the spot?
@@guillaumelavigne2054 Ack! I saw the word "end" and just jumped to the end of a the movement. Sorry about that! I think you raise a really cool point here. But for me, what's interesting is not so much the analytical notation itself. If you wanted to analyze that bar as two beats of tonic and two beats of dominant (which I like, FWIW), you could just write "i-------------V----------" underneath it, perhaps including the more specific chord names (like "viio7 of V") above that. It's common to see multi-layer analyses where the lower layers "filter out" more superficial features from the top layers. (My Video 22 talks about this.) What's cool for me is the way you're actually hearing the passage. In this style, it's really common for viio7 of V to appear over a dominant pedal point, particularly at the ends of phrases. When this happens, F#, A, C, and Eb are all really appoggiaturas. (See, for instance, m. 9 of Schubert's C-major string quintet.) You could easily re-write the Beethoven to do that; just drop in a low G in the bass staff underneath the F#ACEb chord. It sounds really great. The fact that you heard an underlying dominant there, with the F#/A/C/Eb notes as appoggiaturas, tells me that you probably know this style pretty well and have that common sound in your ears.
@@SethMonahan Oh my gosh I feel so bad asking you this without knowing you've already provided an answer in a separate video ! Thank you so much. About the hearing, it's probably because of the response in m2 of this sentence. It's actually a suspension that perfectly illustrates what you've said in that video (an Eb in the bass sustaining from a vii°7 to a i ) ! And as this measure is a mirror of the first (i V, V i), that's why I needed this explanation you just gave me. And indeed, adding a low G sounds really nice too ! Anyway thank you so much for the work you do, you have no idea how helpful it is !
@@guillaumelavigne2054 Glad to help! (I'm actually going to use that wonderful set of suspensions in m. 2 next time I teach this topic. It's less common to find a big cluster of suspensions like that embellishing a first-inversion tonic. I put it in my "examples for class" file!)
I can’t say enough about how many steps I’ve taken in understanding music theory and concepts thanks to this one channel. I have new holiday sale plug-ins and hardly touched them...can’t pull myself away from this channel! Thank you Seth.
Thank you so much! I can't tell you how much this kind of feedback means to me. You made my day. :)
I concur! I am holding onto this channel and your dulcet tones like life rafts :) Hoping to do well in my exams and you are helping me immensely! Thank you so much@@SethMonahan
WOW!! Great lesson! I'm learning a lot! 😊
Absolutely brilliant and fascinating explanations. Thank you so much
Professor Monahan, you are consistently fantastic at teaching these concepts. I'm a theory major in my senior year and every video helps me understand the material at a deeper, more complete, and more intuitive level. Thank you for all the hard work!!
I've been trying to come up with some presentations but each time I feel like I can't be complete without being really wordy. I end up with topic creep and feel like I have to cover everything to be able to cover anything. Do you have any feedback or teaching resources that I can put to use?
Hi enterrupt! I'm so grateful for the kind comments, and I feel like I very much understand the threat of wordiness and "topic creep." I taught music theory pedagogy at Eastman for many years. And new theory teachers-particularly those who have a propensity to geek out about these things (like me)-often had a hard time zeroing in on their specific topic. They would often veer off into side issues or re-explaining things the students ostensibly already knew. I certainly had the same issues when I started teaching many years ago.
For me, things started turning around when I stopped improvising in the classroom and started planning things down to the last detail in advance. My undergrad classes at Eastman were built around Keynote slideshows that looked pretty much identical to the ones you see in these videos. I found that when I started planning every move in advance, and really thinking through the language I was using to engage my students, I could navigate the turns without flying off the road. This got even more intense when I started making my videos, because I decided that the most effective strategy was to (1) script every single sentence ahead of time, but also (2) to keep the language as colloquial as possible, to make it sound fresh and spontaneous and (above all) very distinct from the kind of overwrought, verbose language of academia.
One other thing: "topic creep" is a special risk when new teachers are devising lessons in the abstract, outside the context of a real class and real students. In theory ped class, I would have students do short teaching demonstrations. But I would urge them repeatedly to really, really think through what their imaginary students already "knew." Like, to even write down the content of the imaginary classes leading up to their simulation. Because otherwise, there was a strong tendency to swerve around and start reteaching old topics; it's like they couldn't feel confident that they'd already taught their imaginary students something concrete-maybe because they had no real-life experience training students day after day, month after month.
Anyway, good luck! I hope your senior year goes splendidly!
Loving these videos as a refresher course - 20 years since I majored in composition and never really understood figured bass. At about 19 minutes I hear your ii(4/2) as a predominant - underlined for me by the way the F in the bass sounds again with a new crotchet rather than a dotted minim on beat one.
at the beethoven example in minute 19:00 I hear it as a I ii42 V64--53. Great video, as always!
Thanks for the kind words! (As for 19:00: you're of course free to hear Beethoven op. 2/1 however you like. But you should know that that interpretation puts an unresolved chordal seventh in the bass of the ii4/2, which is an actual contrapuntal mistake that Beethoven probably wouldn't make. ii4/2 really only has one proper resolution in this style, which is V6/5. [Think for instance of the opening of the first prelude in the Well-Tempered Clavier: I-ii4/2-V6/5-I.])
thank you so much. This video helps me a lot.
Barry Harris would be proud
Maestro: first I would like to state with gratitude sharing your genius with an amateur like me. Atim 4:58 Time Set I understand the I (9 / 7/ 4) connection, however, can you explain or direct me to what note for example the 9 is the F Note in the Bass to G Note and so forth. Now we go from 9 to 8 from 7 to 8 to 4 to 3 can you tell me how do you get to the second row (8 8 3). Thank you much, R
How should I analyze the harmony when I come across pedal points? I have came across a few situations where the bass note is a pedal point and also the root of the starting harmony. 2 pieces where I come across this several times are both in the Classical Style and are both in G major with G as the pedal point.
1) Rondo a Cappriccio, Opening theme
2) Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, starting at measure 5
I analyzed the Rondo a Cappriccio example as being alternations between I and V7, with a non-chordal bass note G.
I recently looked at a harmonic analysis of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and the analyst analyzed it as a single harmony with a tonic pedal point.
So now I'm confused. When I come across a pedal point in a piece I am analyzing, should I do what I have done in the past, which is to ignore the bass note pedal point and treat it as more than a single harmony? Or should I treat it as a single harmony rooted on the pedal point and track the changing notes with figured bass, even if it sounds like an alternation between I and V7?
Hi Carrots. Your timing is uncanny; I was just teaching this topic to one of my classes on Wednesday. Here's my take on it: for more than a generation, largely thanks to Schenkerian theory, analysts have been taught to treat many kinds of harmonic events as "not real chord progressions." Instead, we're told, they're merely "embellishments" of some underlying harmony. I'm certainly sympathetic; see Videos 22-24, for instance. But only to a point. Too often, I find it to be an arbitrary and counterintuitive way of analyzing. And this is especially true where tonic pedals are concerned. Whatever happens above a tonic pedal point, the Schenkerian will tell you that it's all "really" just tonic-and hence the analysis of "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" you encountered. My rule of thumb is this: if it sounds and feels like a chord progression, with actual changes of harmonic function, then you need to take seriously the idea that it might BE a chord progression. And I absolutely feel like the alternating I's and V7's at m. 5 are true harmonic events-worthy of recognition-and not just a tonic embellished with neighbor tones. Those V7s *feel* like V7s to me, and I'll indicate as much in my analysis. Usually, I'd just put V7 under every other chord and then "Tonic ped.-------" or something like that under the whole passage. Of course the tonic pedal gives the progression a different sound, and it also serves as a formal marker: it says "you are now at the very beginning or very ending of a section." But I don't see why we need to throw the V7s out the window altogether.
(Dominant pedals are a different story for me, though. There, I often *don't* feel a change of function when the upper voices move to new sonorities. When I hear V-I/64-V-I6/4-etc., it sounds like a continuous dominant function, and thus I don't treat those as "real" chord progressions.)
@@SethMonahan So you're basically saying that I should do this:
Dominant pedal point: Write it as a single harmony and track the upper voices using figured bass
Tonic pedal point: Write it as alternations between tonic and dominant with the dominant chords having a non-chord tone in the bass
Pedal point on a different scale degree: Depends on what the constituent harmonies are. If for example the pedal point is on the leading tone and you have this: vii°7 -- iii6/4 -- vii°7 -- V6, treat it as a single harmony, a diminished seventh, tracking that iii chord using figured bass, until you reach V6, and then treat that as a harmonic change, so vii°7 -- iii6/4 -- vii°7 -- V6 simplifies to vii°7/5/3 -- 6/4 -- 7/5/3 -- V6
Hi seth, at 9:28 you explain that there is a PAC at the end of the passage, but this PAC has non chord tones above the dominant chord.
My question is, does this mean that only the bass note is required to determine each function of each chord in a cadence? and you can freely play any notes over the top of that bass note and it will still perfom as a cadence in the songs key signature?
Thanks again.
Hi Romyn! Yes-pretty much exactly this. It's extremely common for the bass note to "get to the cadence first," followed by the upper voices, which need to resolve several non-chord tones. That being said, composers in this style tend to use only specific combinations of NCTs at cadences. At half cadences, you'll usually have either the notes of the tonic triad or viio7 of V over the dominant bass note. At authentic cadences, you'll always have the notes of some dominant harmony (V7, viio, viio7).
@@SethMonahan This seems like it will be really useful to know! thanks again
Hello Again: You have to be a genius to figure this out; my question the last measure on the lower Staff with the note on the Staff D and B on the bottom Bass we have A and G then we have I (9 7 4) the A Note bottom not to B is the 9 - than you go from the A to the D note that is a 4 - than from G to the D note is 5 - but I see in the Figured Bass 9 7 4 what am I misreading; please help. thank you much, R
Hey Seth ! Can you please help me ? You're talking about suspensions and harmonies that don't "feel" like harmonies but rather like appoggiaturas to the next chord. I found one in the Beethoven 8th piano Sonata at the end of the very first measure (mvmt 1). It goes like F#dim7 => G. I feel just like you that I should note this as a compound V (with the dashes you've explained) because I hear a compound V with NCTs rather than a vii°/V before a V. BUT the bass is not stationary ! So I'm completely blocked on the figured bass notation ! The notes resolve "Eb and C to D, A natural to B natural, and the bass F# to G".. How would you write it if you want to extend the V harmony and not as a basic "vii°/V V" ?
Hi Guillaume! I'm looking at the end of the "Pathetique" first movement, but I'm not seeing the chord you're describing. 5-6 measures from the end, there are two big F#o7 chords. But they resolve into a cadential six-four, not a G major triad. Can you help me find the spot?
@@SethMonahan Hey Seth ! It's in the first measure of the piece ! :)
@@guillaumelavigne2054 Ack! I saw the word "end" and just jumped to the end of a the movement. Sorry about that! I think you raise a really cool point here. But for me, what's interesting is not so much the analytical notation itself. If you wanted to analyze that bar as two beats of tonic and two beats of dominant (which I like, FWIW), you could just write "i-------------V----------" underneath it, perhaps including the more specific chord names (like "viio7 of V") above that. It's common to see multi-layer analyses where the lower layers "filter out" more superficial features from the top layers. (My Video 22 talks about this.) What's cool for me is the way you're actually hearing the passage. In this style, it's really common for viio7 of V to appear over a dominant pedal point, particularly at the ends of phrases. When this happens, F#, A, C, and Eb are all really appoggiaturas. (See, for instance, m. 9 of Schubert's C-major string quintet.) You could easily re-write the Beethoven to do that; just drop in a low G in the bass staff underneath the F#ACEb chord. It sounds really great. The fact that you heard an underlying dominant there, with the F#/A/C/Eb notes as appoggiaturas, tells me that you probably know this style pretty well and have that common sound in your ears.
@@SethMonahan Oh my gosh I feel so bad asking you this without knowing you've already provided an answer in a separate video ! Thank you so much.
About the hearing, it's probably because of the response in m2 of this sentence. It's actually a suspension that perfectly illustrates what you've said in that video (an Eb in the bass sustaining from a vii°7 to a i ) ! And as this measure is a mirror of the first (i V, V i), that's why I needed this explanation you just gave me.
And indeed, adding a low G sounds really nice too !
Anyway thank you so much for the work you do, you have no idea how helpful it is !
@@guillaumelavigne2054 Glad to help! (I'm actually going to use that wonderful set of suspensions in m. 2 next time I teach this topic. It's less common to find a big cluster of suspensions like that embellishing a first-inversion tonic. I put it in my "examples for class" file!)