Let's get started.

Here we go again.

Going to have some fun again today.

Notice, of course, we have the sign-in sheet when

you come in every morning, a great thing to do.

As we say, this is not Yale's most demanding class,

but one thing we do ask you to do is come to the lectures and

come to section.

You may know if some day you are in fact ill that you'll get

an e-mail message from me about a half hour after class is over:

"So sorry to hear that you were sick this morning.

Hope you're feeling better very soon."

So we do look after these things.

Such an e-mail went out last time, but I'm preaching to the

converted because you're--you guys are already here so good

for you.

Let's continue with the discussion of the elements of

music.

We're going to be working today with harmony.

So far we've had two sessions specifically on rhythm,

two sessions specifically on melody, and today we come to

harmony.

Harmony is one of the two things that really distinguishes

the music of Western civilization--Western classical

music, Western pop music.

What are the two things?

Well, as mentioned before, this dependence upon heavy

usage of written musical notation--

not so much in the pop music but certainly in the classical

music-- writing it all down,

being able to manipulate it in that fashion,

so that's one thing that distinguishes Western classical

music.

Another aspect that we're talking about today is harmony.

Stop and think about it.

Think about the melodies of China and Japan,

virtually every--and Islamic countries--

virtually every musical civilization around the world

has more sophisticated melodies than we do in the West.

Ours are very blunt in a way.

They go from one discrete frequency to another discrete

frequency to another discrete frequency,

and they're not making use of all of the material in between

in any sort of nuanced way.

Maybe it's because we're so dependent on the keyboard here.

So that's important to keep in mind.

Then let's talk about rhythm for a moment.

Is Western rhythm particularly sophisticated?

I was listening as I was coming in this morning--WMNR.

They had a Strauss waltz playing there,

>.

How sophisticated is that rhythmically?

Think of African music where you have one downbeat and one

pattern working against another downbeat and another pattern.

Caribbean music--African influence, the same kind of

thing.

It's worlds ahead in terms of sophistication with regard to

rhythm.

But the one thing that's distinguished Western music is

this idea of harmony, this concept of superimposing

multiple pitches.

Interesting idea that you have this sound <<plays

piano>>

, then you put another one with it, >

, then put another one with it, another one,

>

, something like that, and you can play with these and

manipulate these in interesting kinds of ways.

So piling up sounds simultaneously--

this idea of harmony--is what makes Western music very

special, and what we end up with here--I

just reached for anything in my office--

here is the overture to a score of a Mozart opera.

And look here, how many parts we have playing

simultaneously.

Some of them may be repeating pitch names so somebody may be

playing a C here and somebody else a C up there,

that sort of thing.

They may be duplicating pitch names,

but you could have anywhere up to ten--

well, in this case about fifteen--different sounds going

at once, and you don't get that in other

musical cultures.

Let's talk for a moment about chords.

What's a chord?

Well, a chord is just a simultaneous sounding of two or

more pitches.

And that's a very basic general definition of a chord.

And a chord can be, of course, consonant

>

or it can be <<plays piano>>

dissonant.

So let's stick with >

just consonant chords.

We'll be working with consonant chords today and the most

fundamental of the consonant chords is this idea of the

triad-- this figure that we call the

triad.

It's the building block, really, of all our harmonies,

whether it's pop or classical.

And we're going to use a lot of pop music today and there'll

be--we'll be pointing out triads there in this pop music.

So what's a triad?

Well, obviously you get the idea of three pitches.

How does it work?

Let's go over to the keyboard and the staff here.

Let's say we've got a scale and we do have a scale,

>

C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, and I wanted to

construct a triad above each of these notes of the scale.

Well, I take-- well, this happens to be a C,

middle C here, so a triad is going to have

three pitches.

You--and it spans five letter names--and we go one letter

name, two letter names, three letter names,

four letter names, five letter names.

We take one, three, and five.

Here I'm taking C, skipping D, taking E,

skipping F and taking G, and it gives me this three-note

aggregate.

Take one, skip, take one, skip,

take one, >

and we can do the same thing >

and so on right up the scale in that fashion.

Notice, as we've said before, we've got the scale,

we've got some notes rather important in the scale.

Tonic is very important, we've said, the--

>

the leading tone is important so with chords and triads.

Some are very important.

The tonic is very important and this dominant--what we call the

dominant.

It's not really the most important.

It sort of leads into, pulls into--particularly

important setting up the tonic.

It's the next important.

Right below that is the sub-dominant.

It often pulls into the dominant which then pulls into

the tonic in that fashion.

So we would get this idea of here is a chord here,

>

there is the tonic, here is the dominant,

>

there's the sub-dominant, >

and there's the tonic.

We can flip this just a little bit.

We can say, "All right.

Here's our tonic up here" >

and go that way.

Tonic, sub-dominant, dominant, tonic,

>

>

that way.

So we could go--come up from the tonic or go down from the

tonic.

Generally speaking, composers are more likely to go

down from the tonic and then come back up to the tonic and

then they aren't likely to go the other way.

So we've got these three basic chords that we're going to talk

about.

There are others there that we've built on the second and

the seventh degree of the scale, but these are the most

important.

And it's surprising how much music these three basic chords

can accommodate and all of the things-- <<plays

piano>>

dominant, tonic, dominant, tonic,

finally sub-dominant, tonic, dominant,

tonic.

So a lot of music is made in that fashion.

One of my favorite pieces, and I thought it was because

it's a good teaching piece and I thought it was known just to me

and other old codgers, is an old cowboy song called

"Streets of Laredo," but last night I looked it up

on You-- not on YouTube,

on iTunes, and there are one hundred thirty-nine recordings

of that that you can buy now-- Johnny Cash,

Arlo Guthrie, but I'm interested--

>

anybody ever heard that before?

Raise your hand if you've heard that.

One, two, three--well, a few people.

So it's a cowboy song.

>

>

"As I walked out in the streets of Laredo,

as I walked out in Laredo one day, I spied a cowpoke who was

dressed in white linens, dressed in white linens as cold

as the clay."

And as I was singing that all I was doing underneath was playing

the basic harmony, the chords, and they consist

just of two chords.

>

>

As I--dominant, tonic, dominant,

tonic, dominant, in that fashion.

Why do chords have--why do we do that?

Why do we have to change these chords?

Any ideas?

Why do we--why don't we just say, >

>

"As I walked out in the streets of--"

Why do we change chords?

Yeah.

Student: The melody changes.

Prof: The melody changes >

and because the melody changes and you keep banging that same

aggregate against it it's going to create what?

A dissonance and we don't want--we don't like dissonances.

If we're going to have dissonances, we got to control

them.

>

If--unless I change that chord underneath when I get up here,

>

that's very dissonant.

It doesn't sound very silent for "Silent Night"

there, so I need to switch to another chord <<plays

piano>>

and then switch back to the original.

And so we change chords to make the harmony consonant or to make

the harmony harmonious.

All right.

So that's something that we need to keep in mind.

Here's something else that's--we're going to ask you

to focus on and that is the rate of harmonic change.

We're really going to be asking you two things.

Is the harmony changing? Okay?

Can you--is the harmony changing or is it static?

And if it is changing, is it changing at a regular or

irregular rate?

By regular rate, every time a chord sounds it

will be holding for exactly the same amount of time.

Let's go back to "Streets of Laredo."

>

Conduct.

--three, one, two, three

>.

What do you think?

Regular or irregular?

Regular. Okay?

But no--well, okay.

So that's regular.

Let's go on to another one.

>

Okay.

I'm doing a lot there in the bass to make it more

interesting, but let's strip that down just

to the fundamental chord that's underneath of that so we're--

_>.

We're sitting here on the tonic chord and we'll go

>

>

, and we could even count it out: >

>

one-two, two-two, three-two, four-two,

one-two, one-two, one-two, two-two,

one-two, two-two, three-two, four-two,

one-two, two-two, one-two, one-two.

So some chords there are holding for--

I guess four measures--four bars--and some for two and some