Dissonant Chords in the Schillinger Diatonic Harmony System: An Overview

[@tristanpaxton51]

Loving your channel!! Thank you

[@FransAbsil]

@Tristan Paxton you're welcome. If you have a particular subject of interest or suggestions for future episodes, let me know.

[@JoelCalebOfficial]

i found your channel really helpfull, but, i just wanna give you a sugesstion, if you can group the videos in individual list will be great, is a little hard to find the order in certain of your courses. Thanks a lot, great job!

[@FransAbsil]

@joelperezofficial5175 Sorry for this late reply but I never got a notification of your comment, as happens occasionally in KZbin. At now over 100 educational videos your suggestion of a more refined playlist setup seems justified. For some tutorial series there is a logical order, other subjects are more standalone episodes. Also I am filling in empty subject spots over time, responding to viewer comments and suggestions. So I am aware that the fresh viewer will not be able to identify a structured course. I have been thinking about the most suitable approach to this problem but have not yet found the answer, since quite a few tutorials would fit in multiple playlists. A text document, spreadsheet or database might be an alternative.

[@christopherheckman7957]

I just got done watching your videos for the Hybrid 5-Part Harmony (H5H), and figured out something (which is probably obvious but not blatantly obvious). In this video, you mention that you can't go from an S9 to an S9 ... but H5H *does* allow you to do this (sort of). This is because (as Schillinger points out) in H5H, the chords consist of an S7 in a "treble" layer, and a note in the "bass" layer. This means a H5H continuity, ignoring the bass layer, can be thought of as a sequence of S7 chords, where the root cycles are R0, R3, R5, and R7. But the actual harmony is not a sequence of these root cycles, because the *actual* roots are not "uniformly far away from" the root of the S7. Example: In a H5H 9th chord, the bass is a third below the root of the S7 on top, whereas in a H5H 11th chord, it's a fifth below that root. It's possible to figure out what the allowed root cycles are for H5H -- for instance, in a 9th chord to an 11th chord, the S7's can be root cycles R0, R3, R5, and R7, but since the root for the 11th chord is a third lower than the root for the 9th chord with the same S7, the allowed root cycles in H5H are R(-3), R0, R3, and R5. Example: You can go from C9 to A11 (R3) in H5H because when you look at the S7's above, they're E7 (of some kind) and E7 (of some kind), which is an R0 (which is on the list of "allowed" root cycles). I could probably figure out the other cases and build a complete chart of which RCs will get you from one type of chord to another, but it's getting late, and I on Sunday, I have to get ready for teaching my math classes on Monday. 8-)

[@FransAbsil]

@Christopher Heckman In the Schillinger book the Hybrid Harmony sections (5- and 4-part) come somewhat as a surprise. Before these sections the 'theory' was fairly strict, in the sense that extended chords S9 and S11 in traditional harmony can only occur as single instances, due to the preparation/resolution requirements. I consider hybrid harmony a (potential) extension/alternative, where indeed the upper layer 4-part structures (the S7s) may occur in strings. And, as you did remark, one may study voice leading and root movement separately for the upper structure, which yields the overview you mention. AFAIK Schillinger does not discuss how to connect traditional 4-part harmony with hybrid 5-part. And, whereas 'traditional' theory is based tonal music analysis, the source of hybrid harmony is harder to identify. One may think of impressionistic or pantonal music, but references in the book are lacking.

[@christopherheckman7957]

(1) 9:42 A very useful diagram; the start of a Markov Chain. (2) 11:02 A S56 isn't an inverted S5; it's an inverted S7. (3) YOO-clidean. (4) Speaking of dissonant chords, it doesn't appear that Schillnger considered diminished triads to be dissonant; I always found that odd.

[@FransAbsil]

@Christopher Heckman (1) Indeed. Also transformation (voice leading) type selection could be modeled as a Markov chain. Instead feed a deep learning network with traditional voice leading examples and one would obtain computer-generated chorales in a specific style. From what I know, these days a decent Bach is doable. (2) Correct, thanks. (3) In school I took Greek lessons. My pronunciation dates back to that tradition, as I do for German and French names. (4) Agreed, study Schoenberg harmony in parallel and there the dissonant dim 5 has to be handled with utmost care.

[@danmcgirr4210]

Thanks so much.