Room for improvement
Of the three elements in music (melody, rhythm & harmony), the one which most colleagues confess they wish they understood better is harmony. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that they don’t understand the language but there’s a difference between knowing the language and being a poet. Analysing harmony is one thing, writing it is tougher and the ability to improvise it fetchingly (in any key) is relatively rare. What are the features that people would like effortlessly to include?
- Added notes - those outside the standard triad - and perhaps something a little more exciting than 7ths (0:42 and also at 1:02 - 1:20)
- well placed inversions -where the naming note of the chord is not always the lowest note - as this can sound a little lead-footed - (0:36 & 0:51)
- suspensions - where notes from the previous chord are allowed to stay on so that they clash with the notes of the following chord - (0:39)
- chords built over pedals - unchanging note - usually in the bass - which don’t sound simply lost or unimaginative (2:28 - 2:34)
- in short anything which adds colour to what might otherwise be a merely functional harmonisation
This clip demonstrates that kind of harmonic language. It’s of Chopin’s Etude Op 10 No 1. There are more professional performances of this on YouTube but many are so fast that the detail is lost. This one, although not entirely error-free, does have a certain tenderness about it.
The other thing many music-teaching colleagues confess is that they wish they could access YouTube in class for illustrative purposes such as this.
By the way, did you know that Chopin had a connection with Mid Calder?
