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It’s cool- I’m not sure if it sounds super romantic era to me. Try putting it in a waltz?
Originally Posted by joe2758
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07-23-2025 05:34 PM
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So, I know it's not a proper waltz. do you know what this rhythm could be called? stress on 3 and 1?
https://youtube.com/shorts/M1mMI8rDI...HXEi6r_9jHPBOM
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Apropos of basically nothing, here's how I would use the more maj6-dim type sounds in a Romantic (pseudo-Merz) style:
I'm using a V7b9 into I and also the b6 becomes a #5 to push me towards the IV in a move that's all over the standards.
I'm also using a #IVo7 to prepare the V6/4 and a Chopin Sixth (we'd call it a V13) which don't come from the BH scale, but are classic features of music of this era.
Notice that I got my boilerplate chromatic pivot lick in. (Grant Green likes that one too.)
Nothing crazy, but it does help get the harmonic style.
This is fun! I don't do it much but romantic style improvisation and it is pretty freeing after a bunch of baroque stuff. Sorry about the audio.
EDIT: whoops it's Rimsky-Kosarkov, not Liszt.Last edited by Christian Miller; 07-24-2025 at 06:29 AM.
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That's more like it... I think an idea like that would work well as a linking phrase Originally Posted by joe2758
EDIT: I'm playing around with it. You can also put the dissonances on the strong stresses.Last edited by Christian Miller; 07-24-2025 at 06:45 AM.
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i dig it ... it has been dug ... i find it worthy of digging. Originally Posted by joe2758
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OK so I took your thing put a cadence in at the end
Your pattern is kind of a chromatic embellishment of a "fauxbourdon" (parallel 6 3 chords) - at least the way I played it lol.
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OK Joe, quiet day so I'm starting to look at your analysis. It's interesting the differences in how we've written out the chord symbols. I don't like some of mine, so take them with a pinch of salt.
My interpretation of the first few bars goes
Em/G | F#-7 F#o7 | F7#11 Dm6/F Fm6 | E7
I made a mistake with the F6 - that should be labelled Dm6/F or Bm7b5/F
And you have
Em | F#o7 | Dm6 Fm6 | G6
Now you've chosen to interpret the notes on the strong stresses often as suspensions from the previous chords and I hear you, that's a good way to look at them. Chord symbols are always an imperfect analytical tool.
Anyway the way you look at is not the way I look at it, but I do understand your logic and I think it works.
For me it relates to things like the Rule of the Octave in various keys. The analysis follows from the bass and the chords are the obvious ones you would pair with those bass degrees if you know your RO. The first few bars are moving from Em to Am. You have degrees 3 and 2 in Em (G and F#) and b6 and 5 in A minor (F and E). The symbols I wrote out above are mostly the standard ones you'd use for those scale degrees.
It's the sort of basic stuff you'd have deep in your ears and muscle memory if you'd been improvising Western music from an early age.Last edited by Christian Miller; 07-24-2025 at 08:59 AM.
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Thanks Christian! The example you posted is a lot like what I ultimately want to do. I am using parallel shell voicings (like I think you said?) and I practice adding embellishments methodically .
The example I posted is practicing passing tones on the top voice, then I practice them in the other voices. Then I practice accented passing tones on each voice, then escape tones and so on. All on one chord for now, then I will start adding in some actual harmony based on what I discover in my Chopin analyses. I am basically making loops like my video that I can practice to get the moves in my fingers. They are unmusical, but it seems necessary to do.
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This is my attempt to make my analysis of the first half clear - not sure if this will be successful haha
The links between the keys are mostly done with some sort of chromatic interpolation or voice leading. So we have
1. The half step move from the 2 of Em to the b6b of Am
2. We chromatically interpolate V and I, using a common tone diminished - which I thin you had (bIIIo7?)
3. As you said - taking the root of the dim7 down by a half step to get a Dom 7 (D#o7 to D7 in this case) - also the way the Devil's Mill thing that I posted above works
4. Move from F# to F to get from D7 to Dm7/Dm6
5. 'Harmonic pun' to use Cmaj7 as b3 of Am and the b6 of Em.
EDIT: nope changed my mind again. I'm hearing that D#o7 as pointing back to Em now.Last edited by Christian Miller; 07-24-2025 at 09:15 AM.
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It's also tempting to look at the Fm6 as a sort of Fo7 with a funny note going to E7 isn't it? which I think is similar to what you said.
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Originally Posted by joe2758
Parallel 6/3 chords are chords that have a 6th and a 3rd in. So you might think of them as "shell voicings" of 6th chords (Barry Harris) but in classical theory they are usually considered first inversion spread triads.
Doesn't matter too much, so long as you have a 6 and 3.
You do need to be a little bit careful of parallel fifths with the voicing with the 10th on top and the 6th in the middle but the Barry Harris scale takes care of that.
The example I posted is practicing passing tones on the top voice, then I practice them in the other voices. Then I practice accented passing tones on each voice, then escape tones and so on. All on one chord for now, then I will start adding in some actual harmony based on what I discover in my Chopin analyses. I am basically making loops like my video that I can practice to get the moves in my fingers. They are unmusical, but it seems necessary to do.
If you are interested in classical improv, you might want to have a look at the more diatonic options as well.
An important one I don't mention is the 7-6. In this we move from a seventh chord shell to a sixth. It's very similar to the Barry Harris exercise going up the scale with the middle voice borrowed if you know the one, but done diatonically. It should be pretty familiar. That's a suspended version of the parallel 6/3s.
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Thanks again. Can you edit your post to reference the measure numbers in your analysis? Just the ones in post #60. does a tritone to perfect 5th count as parallel?
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I will at some point… Originally Posted by joe2758
Tritone to perfect fifth doesn’t count as a parallel fifth. Is not amazing counterpoint but I think it’s ok for stuff like this
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One step at a time!
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Like I mentioned earlier in the thread I basically base everything off 3rds, 6ths, and 10ths. (Fernando Sor said 3rds and 6ths are his personal entire secret of creating harmony, which happens to work well for the 6th diminished scale.)
Most commonly I play a 3rd and a 6th on top (CEA) or a 6th with a 10th on top (CAE).
With these two voicings, I should be able to improvise passable voice leading by keeping it as simple as possible.
Unfortunately, using them haphazardly doesn't work, so I made some rules for myself to allow quick thinking in real time.
The rule is: close to open up, open to close down.
This means, when I am going from a close voice to an open voicing, the bass note goes down a step and my melody leaps up in contrary motion. Additionally I can leap down in the bass, and my melody steps up.
When going from an open voice to close voice, I step up in the bass to leap down in the melody, or leap up in the bass to step down in the melody.
The picture should clear it up
I also noticed:
1. If you play these in a pattern up the scale, it trends in the direction of the "leap"
2. In a pattern the diminished chords will be one voicing, and the the 6th the opposite.
I recorded the example
https://youtube.com/shorts/pq5xwg8us...pQ0BPaCqWvrCGuLast edited by joe2758; 07-30-2025 at 03:57 PM.
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One of the principal themes of Liszt's Faust Symphony is a twelve-tone row (at least technically) - four augmented triads descending chromatically. Originally Posted by joe2758
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thanks James, that is AWESOME. I literally just deleted that post because I thought it might be irrelevant bleh. I'll definitely listen to that whole piece.
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Yeah I noticed that, seems I got there in the nick of time! Originally Posted by joe2758
It's a great piece. I find particularly some passages from the Gretchen movement (the second) just astonishing.
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Sounds good. Originally Posted by joe2758
Thoughts, probably loosely relevant lol -
You may be asking more of yourself than the old masters did.
- Species counterpoint is an academic discipline, it seems, not a practical one. Fux is a funny one. According to Derek Remes there's no evidence Bach's students ever looked into Fux for example, despite popular belief. Fux himself was writing to recreate a sixteenth century practice in the eighteenth century - as Peter Schubert notes. As I understand it Schubert sees Renaissance style as instead emerging from a repertoire of improvisational and quasi-improvisational practices.
Which is not to say, Fux style exercises aren't good for your technique. But improvisation is based on a highly embodied repertoire of moves and ideas, and their creative variation and application not real time computation of theoretical axioms (this is also where a lot of beginners jazz tuition gets it wrong IMO).
(If I had to teach one thing to anyone, it would be that. But you'd be amazed how little people believe it haha.)
- Beyond raw musicality - repertoire is what makes the musician. Even the improviser/composer.
So Sor's statement is a rule to live by where conventional Western music is concerned. You will produce useful, invertable counterpoint that way. A tremendous amount of Bach and even Renaissance counterpoint is basically that. Imperfect consonances, decorated.
Not to say a vast number of the standard formulae used to generate counterpoint by musicians in the 18th and early 19th centuries, including various harmonic sequences, canons, closing phrases, etc etc. (Which Sor apparently studied, and are conveniently collected in books like Fenaroli's Book III.) Creativity often comes in interesting and artful variations of familiar material.
- The exception are - cadences. In cadences we head in general towards a perfect consonance, fifths and most finally, octaves. This isn't just Palestrina, but Chopin and beyond. Look at jazz standards - even bebop heads. They STILL do this. There is such a thing as a distinction between a cadential melody and sequential melody in jazz standards. Most finish on the octave. A few, such as Stella by Starlight (itself originally highly Romantic in style) finishes on the fifth.
- Don't underestimate the value of parallel motion, especially in 10ths and 13ths. That stuff is all over.. well... everything. Bach. Chopin. Monk.
- Pace Barry himself TBH I don't really like analyses of baroque and classical stuff using the eight note scales. I think it may be useful in some cases, especially romantic music, but if I had to pin it down, I would say is that the Barry stuff is really conceptualised over a basic chord, such creating movements on a Bb6 or a D7, say, while the diatonic/classical stuff generates a flow of chords moving through a tonality, an obvious example being the cycle of fourths. So BH stuff is great for embellishing a single harmony in time, and connecting to another that is pre-written (great for playing on a pre existing chord sequence or tune) but in solo classical improv, the form is something you have a shaping role in, and the harmony is created through it and the melodic/counterpoint structure you use.
To sum up, Jazzers tend to think of prearranged 'chord progressions' - the feeling I get from the classical/historical approach is harmony is somewhat emergent from counterpoint/melody and FORM. But for us guys, we still have to play Embraceable You or whatever, I'm not getting paid to improvise Sonatas, so I do ultimately need things I can use with a pre-existing tune. Barry is obviously great for that, as are many other things out there.
As a result I feel the classical stuff is better for describing the composition process (unsurpisingly) than dealing with changes. But not 100%. There's useful overspill. Reharmonising melodies or example. Which overlaps with the domain of the BH stuff. And there's also the (neglected) approach of soloing based on melodic variation where this approach again has some relevance.
- As I mentioned above there's a distinct set of basic frameworks called variously Moti di Bassi, Schemata or Remes's Voice Leading patterns which form a basic repertoire of the composing/improvising musician of that era. This goes back a ways - as I say, Peter Schubert has done amazing work on the improvisational roots of Renaissance polyphony which includes analogous things. And in a wider sense we can relate it to the practices of jazz and other modern musicians.
How all of this meets up in the middle I have no idea. I've made my first attempt with my counterpoint for solo improv course on MGH which touches on these areas.Last edited by Christian Miller; 07-30-2025 at 06:08 PM.
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Thanks again!
There's a lot there, but I do want to maybe clarify I probably know more (and definitely play better) classical than jazz. I have an associates degree in classical guitar, so I do know the generalities of classical composition (although the particulars you offer are very interesting!) and repertoire etc.
"Barry stuff is really conceptualised over a basic chord, such creating movements on a Bb6 or a D7, say, while the diatonic/classical stuff generates a flow of chords moving through a tonality, an obvious example being the cycle of fourths. So BH stuff is great for embellishing a single harmony in time, and connecting to another that is pre-written (great for playing on a pre existing chord sequence or tune) but in solo classical improv, the form is something you have a shaping role in, and the harmony is created through it and the melodic/counterpoint structure you use."
I guess this is the only part I don't really understand. So if the classical guy creates the flow of chords C F G7 C, the BH guy isn't replacing it with C6 Ddim C6 D dim. The BH guy plays C6 F6 G7 C6 with the diminished stuff available in between.
I'm not sure I really see how it's more suited to pre-established chord progressions. I might be missing something. It just seems to me I can go anywhere I want to harmonically, and I'm analyzing the Chopin so figure out where I want to go
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It’s really hard to put into words. They are interrelated things. Barry does a lot of the same stuff that this old school training does. It's all practical, for one thing. Originally Posted by joe2758
I think you actually explained it. You have a chord progression and you put the diminished stuff on it. That’s a jazz way to think.
The classical stuff is more like - here is a ground plan of a piece of music and ways to realise and embellish it.
The chord progressions that one might write are a development of form and quite often the bass movement. Which is actually basically what the first half of the Chopin is - descending (mostly) chromatic bass going into a cadence. The bass line is in a sense the most important structural element of the composition - even more so than the melody perhaps. Thoroughbass* remained important in music education long after it faded away in actual performance.
Whereas in (modern) jazz you most often start with the chord progression most often and derive basslines and alternative changes based on the chords.
Which makes sense.
*I don't say 'figured bass' because often the basses have no figures.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkLast edited by Christian Miller; 07-31-2025 at 05:25 AM.
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If just write the Chopin out as a figured bass, it looks quite neat:
If you realise this as arpeggios for example, you still have a lot of the sound of the piece in it.
In case this seems like a mad thing to do for romantic music … they still taught ‘Generalbaß’ (or figured bass)… for instance it looks quite a bit like Stanislao Mattei's exercises for bass realisation, around the same era (BTW Mattei taught Christian Theodor Weinlig, who taught Wagner and Schumann). This is from an 1891 edition of his 1824 book, so you can see how long this type of instruction stuck around:
(I might be wrong but AFIAK it was Schoenberg made the big break with this type of thing as ‘outmoded.’ He was very influential and terms like ‘period and sentence’ in musical form come from him.)
Not the same, but it's hopefully possible to see at a glance that it's spiritually very similar. Practice that sort of thing in all keys and you're good to go, as the Open Studio guys say haha. Mattei helpfully writes them out in all keys. These examples sound very Romantic, not baroque, when you play them.
This is why I think studying the methods of the masters as much as we can, is so important - it's literally one of the things they practiced - there's more of this material around than you might think, reams of it on IDSLP. As it was the music of the ruling classes, there’s a fair bit of documentary evidence about in a way that there isn’t for folk musics - even bebop. But you do have to learn figured bass . Worth it, I think, if you are serious about finding out more about this stuff because you can engage with the primary sources.
Assuming you aren’t fluent in figures (sorry if you are) -I would say that as you are already comfortable working out counterpoint on the guitar, you’re basically there, and it’s just a matter of leaning the shorthand.Last edited by Christian Miller; 07-31-2025 at 06:29 AM.
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Phewph! Knowing my goals and vibe, what couple books do I need? I mean you sort of fired off a lifetime of study lol!
I have to admit though, I am still sort of clinging to this BH/Chopin thing just because it seems to be working. Even though of course I know that's not how Chopin thought, and I'm looking at things backward, I still think it's cool how I am almost automatically am adding harmony that would be considered complicated from a classical perspective.
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I did find this https://a.co/d/bjggdSR but it says about "Schenkerian structural analyses" which does not sound fun or interesting lol. Can you read the book and summarize for me?
Edit: Damn, maybe I should tough it out; there is one in the series for Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn!
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I haven't followed the thread closely, but this book might interest you - Originally Posted by joe2758
Continuo Playing According to Handel: His Figured Bass Exercises (Oxford Early Music Series): His Figured Bass Exercises. With a Commentary: 12: Amazon.co.uk: Ledbetter, David: 9780193184336: Books
Also, these days many harmony textbooks have a bit of a Schenkerian vibe about them. I have a few. One good one is The Complete Musician by Steve Laitz, it is expensive but it covers common practice harmony and to an extent counterpoint, and gives an introduction to post-tonal harmony. It's a big book (I have a few others but they appear to be out of print). I'm not going to lie, it is quite a challenging book, it has years worth of study in it. I've gone through about maybe a third of the way through it.
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