Bezifferung (‘figur’d Bass / Thorough Bass) refers to numbers plac’d under the baseline - in order to tell the keyboard player how to fill out ‘the right hand’ with full chords. If C-major is your bass-key and a dominant 7th (G-7) is written in Bezifferung (G-B-D-Fnatural) it allows for 4 possible combinations : the first has the Root G in the Bass (mark’d as 7 in figur’d bass) if the 3rd (B) is in the bass in any 7th chord it is mark’d as 6/5; if the 5th (D) occurs in the Bass, it is mark’d in figur’d bass as 4/3 under the bass note; if the 7th (= F-natural) occurs in the Bass it is written as a 2- All easy to remember since the Bezifferung thorough bass numerals all descend in a clear sequence (7 6/5 4/3 2) which immediately tell the keyboard player that they’re dealing with some form of a 7th chord
wow it was very insightful for me! even enlightening in almost a literal way, since it helped me clear things i didn’t see in harmony and it was like in the dark. thank you so much!
Thank you very much for this lesson. Is this what musicians on "The Lawrence Welk" show learn? Since the Pandemic which is thankfully over, we have been listening to those musicians, and they are fascinating in their work.
Definitely a possibility, especially for those starting to experiment with extensions. It's a great way to teach extensions or get people started with progressions.
Thanks for another informative video! - Speaking of chords, I've looked through your video repertoire and notice you don't have one yet on spelling chords. Key chord notation etc... I'm trying to teach my daughter. She is at the Fø9/D stage if she builds her own chords etc... I would love for her to be able to analyze most pieces from the notes given in the measures and starting with the usual triad and building up, know that it might be a F7(sus2) if those were the notes etc... You don't have to go to 11 or 13 or (add b9) etc... just enough basics so that she can see patterns that will help her when composing. If you think it sounds fun, I would love to see a video that teaches how to build chords from the bottom up. - Thanks! 😊
Okay. Will think about that. We have quite a number of videos that unpack chords in terms of Roman Numerals. You’re asking for the same thing lead sheet style?
@@MusicMattersGB Yep. I didn't really realize it was a 'jazz' thing so to speak. I have been using the info more to analyze a Bach prelude. Learning the order of triad + 7th + dim + slash if inverted, blah blah. It was very interesting once I knew what to do and how to break down the individual notes in one measure and figure out how to turn them into the proper chords (1,3,5,7) in order to know what they actually were without knowing their place in the chord progression etc... I'm sure it could be made into a sort of primer with a (first you do) and (then you do) and it would help us to know why the composer decided to use that exact note in the chord, what he was trying to accomplish etc... ok, enough yapping. - Love your channel. Have a lot of your theory/composition videos in a playlist. 🙂
this is a concept i've been toying with for around a year now - i call it "downwards extension" and i'm currently working on fitting it into a larger, codified theoretical framework! really cool to see someone else arrive at essentially the same thing independently, even though i think about it in a slightly different way. hopefully i'll remember to come back here and share my Google doc whenever i get it in a presentable state.
Great video! Very interesting concept. I wish I’d used that idea in some of my previous compositions. I’ll definitely keep in mind on my current projects. Thanks!
I like what you are doing here. Often I feel, when learning "the rules", that these reflect a simpler underlying theory. For example, the basic tonic-predominant-dominant-tonic progression that underlies so many satisfying chord progressions. But there is another aspect I feel that is important, and that is that when moving from one chord to another, it sounds much better if there are as many common tones as possible. And I think that's the lesson you are showing here. It doesnt matter if you add a third above or below, so long as you are keeping the central three constant. I'm sure some theorist could come up with a new set of rules for adding a third below, as if its a different thing altogether, but I like that you present it just as a simple variant of the existing addition of a third above. PS, when you are playing the C major-D minor 7th, in my head, I feel a strong pull to ACDF# then D,BDG Whatever they are. inversions of some sort.
Hopping over to relative minor like this is a nice way to add extra movement without disrupting the mode. Either as a way to subdivide the movement, or just repeating a whole harmony down a third to connect phrases with just enough movement. Never really thought of it as a backward extension before but it makes sense.
From the title, I thought the video would be about using 7ths in fourth inversion. It made me think that a similar though more static progression is to add a sixth for your upside down 7th putting it in first inversion. I am not so sure how useful this would be, but I can see that on chords I, IV and V a tendency for the bottom note to rise a semitone and the possibility of a modulation.
I don't why it's taken me so long to realise, this is kind of the principle Brahms was onto with his intermezzo in B minor that you did the interpretation on. It may not be a theory he had but he built a triad and extended it upside down.
When I saw the title, I thought you were just going to add the seventh into the bass, which I've seen happen. I think it's just as valid and as versatile.
when I can Master! ....it would be interesting to make a short video about the golden zone...for example in...! Bartok !!.., and to be able to observe,.. if it is! objective or subjective! .. the zone of structural balance.... a hug !!
That was quite interesting. I'd never thought about that. When you first wrote out the VI-7 on the second staff, I immediately thought, "Well, that's an Am7." But I hadn't considered how it would vary the choices of how to progress from there.
Some are major 7ths and some are minor 7ths. The underlying triads also vary. It doesn’t change the principle under discussion. How you use them then depends on the context.
@@MusicMattersGB Thank you for your response. What I meant is that for example IV7 have a seventh that is half-step higher above the chord root than V7's seventh is above its chord root. So IV7 and V7 have a different "character". So reversing it has in this video should have different effects. Thank you very much. Excellent video!
@@MusicMattersGB You are an academic resource. I'm learning how you guys communicate notes to melody and structure. It's becoming clearer to me how the language you use related to many songs. I'm not sure chords are a necessary line to communicate all emotions. Thanks for your efforts.
