Spring Yr 11: GCSE Music Revision: Harmony & Tonality

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Spring Yr 11: GCSE Music Revision: Harmony & Tonality Tonality – the key of the music. The piece will be built mainly from a particular scale. Major – a happy uplifting sound (play C-C to get used to the sound) Minor – a sad, more serious sound (play A-A, replacing the G with a G# to get used to the sound) Harmony – two or more notes of different pitch create harmony. Drone – 2 long held notes, usually in the bass; used in Folk and also Indian music Pedal – 1 long held on note, usually in the bass Cadences – a cadence is formed by the two chords that come at the end of a musical phrase: Perfect cadence V-I. Sounds final and complete. Plagal cadence IV-I. Also sounds complete, but not as strong. Used for the “Amen” at the end of hymns. Imperfect cadence I -V. Unfinished feel to the music. Interrupted cadence V-VI. Your ears expect it to go to the tonic as in a perfect cadence, but instead it goes to the VI chord – so it is the surprise cadence! – usually a STEP UP in the bass, and ends on Minor chord NB don’t forget - ROMAN NUMERALS to describe chords Tonal – will have a sense of key/tonal centre. Atonal – music with no sense of fixed tonality/key. May sound rather ‘random’ Pentatonic – a five note scale. Often used in Chinese, African and Celtic Folk melodies Chromatic - scale made up of semitones (smallest interval e.g. C-C#). Diatonic harmony uses only the notes that belong to the major or minor keys. Discords – harsh, clashing sounding combination of notes. Modulation – to change key/tonality. For example if the piece is in the key of C major you could modulate to the key of G major or A minor… It’s a good way of developing a piece of music. Modal – came before major/minor scales. e.g. play D-D on the white notes-this is the Dorian mode. Often used in early church music, folk and jazz. Whole tone – a scale made up of only whole tones. (Sounds quite mysterious) C, D, E, F#, G#, A# Consonance - music/harmonies that sound nice (consonant). Dissonance – clashing music/harmonies (dissonant). Close harmony – where the notes are close together within the separate parts e.g. Barber shop singing Tierce de Picardie – when a piece in a minor key finishes with a major chord .

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