How To Arrange Chords into BEAUTIFUL 4-PART HARMONIES [Music Theory - Voice Leading]
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Published 2022-02-14
My Pro Songwriting+Theory Course: bit.ly/3uJ9HJi
My Patreon: bit.ly/3gE4sSL
Writing a 4 part harmony can be very difficult if you don't understand the basic principles behind voice leading and arrangement. There are countless rules one must follow to emulate the stylings of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. But these rules are not needed just to arrange a simple progression! This video goes through the fundamental concepts of harmony and arrangment without getting into the weeds of clefs, notation, and actual "rules".
By the end of the lesson, you should be able to arrange any chord progression for other instruments, and hopefully get new insight into the sorts of complex harmonies that can exist within a chord progression.
Thank you to my Patreon Supporters for all their help and kind words. They deserve as much credit for this channel as I do!
TAKE NOTE:
The arrangement I make in this video at the end violates several golden rules. For one, it includes parallel fifths (parallel motion that occurs a perfect fifth apart). As a teacher who lives in the year 2022, I don't want you to burden yourself with these rules unless you're trying to sound like music from the "common practice era", or unless you're trying to pass tests in music school (or if you're just really curious).
On Parallel Motion: If both voices are moving together in the same interval class, it's parallel. If one voice moves up a m3 while the other moves up a M3, those are both THIRDS. The motion is parallel. If one voice moves up a m3 while the other moves up a fourth, those are no longer the same interval class (thirds and fourths), and would not be called parallel motion, but instead would be called similar motion.
Professional arrangement and orchestration takes many more skills than just learning to voice lead. A real arranger/composer will keep in mind the range of the instrument and has to notate music in different clefs. Arrangers also take note of the tonal qualities of instruments and exploit their frequency spectrum to either blend well together or clash and sound juxtaposed.
So this lesson won't turn you into a pro arranger - but it WILL get you writing your first 3 and 4 part harmonies and I think it's a great start to composing more advanced harmony. I highly advise you combine this lesson with my last lesson on harmony, found here • How to Write Harmonies for Guitar / P...
I also suggest you consider how many more options you will have when writing your voices if you are comfortable with your diatonic seventh chords, inversions, and secondary dominants.
Seventh Chords: • How To Write Progressions using min7,...
Inverted Chords: • How Inversions and Slash Chords Creat...
Secondary Dominants: • Secondary Dominants- Write Better Cho...
If you know all this stuff, you'll know exactly how I wrote this arrangement!
• How To Produce PITCH PERFECT Acapella...
Also, I said at 17:50ish that there is only one way to play that E7 on guitar. But there is another....
00:00 Intro
01:51 Basic Concepts
06:15 Arranging in 3 voices
10:50 Why the V become V7
13:10 Arranging in 4 voices
16:20 Make It Into MUSIC!
19:41 Outro
All Comments (21)
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Music degree here: neighbor tones don’t have to be half steps. The neighbor tones for C are B, Bb, Db, and D. In the key of C major B and D are diatonic neighbor tones and Bb and Db are chromatic neighbor tones. They all sound great but definitely have a different flavor. Also I’m definitely not trying to “um actually” you just want to add a little information so that if people are trying make neighbor tones work but the half steps aren’t giving them what they want they can try whole steps.
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So sad about lack of new content on this channel, he makes really cool stuff, one of my favourites…
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Jake we DEFINITELY need more videos about voice leading. You are the best teacher on Youtube. Cheers!
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Where are you Jake? Are you ok? You’ve helped many people, we, I look forward to more musical knowledge from you. Hope you are well….
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Quick update for anyone who's interested in where he disappeared to: He's currently working on his book on chords and focused on Patreon content it seems (live lessons and such).
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I’m 69 years old. I’ve made my living as a musician all my life. When I studied music in College it was interesting but dry. I could never find ways to apply the theory. The way you teach brings it to life plus you break down your material in a logical and practical way. You cover a good chunk of what would be a full quarter or semister class in 20 min. Really well done. I remember getting an F any time I used parallel 5ths in composition class although I used them all night onstage. Lol. Very very first class site.
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For anyone like me, trying to figure out if Jake is OK/where he's been, he's been posting on Patreon!
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Man, that removing the 5th from chords trick really is great. I especially like it on power chords. I can easily play any progression that way!
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So that's why there's so many violinists in an orchestra. To play chords. You answered a question I hadn't thought of yet.
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"The truth is, a lot of composing is like engineering". As an engineer trying to learn this stuff, that was very encouraging to hear! All your videos are amazing but this was one of your best.
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Where did you go? You're the best music channel on YouTube!
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Why did you stop making videos? We need more!
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Love the video as usual. A violinist would have trouble playing the F below middle C though 😂
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In my opinion you are the best music educator on YouTube. As a “composer” I really enjoy the mathematical problem solving aspects of arranging.
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Please upload again someday, we miss you.
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Jake idk where you are but i hope youre doing really well. U are the best
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As a guitar player, using triad shapes up and down the neck really starts to help with voice leading
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That was a beautiful & accessible presentation of the fundamentals of voice leading. Why didn’t you make it dry, boring, and overly complicated? You’ll never get tenured this way! 🤔 Awesome. ✊☕️🎩
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7 months. Miss this dude.
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Where you been???
