Lesson video

Hello, my name is Miss Charatan! Welcome to my lesson on "How is a Ground Bass Related to Chords?" Let's begin with a warmup.

This one is a bit of a brain-teaser.

So what I'm going to ask you to do is to clap my rhythm, but clap it backwards.

So for example, a rhythm like this.

Would be.

Okay, so let's see, let's have a go at doing three or four of these.

Your turn.

Should be your answer.

Let's have a go at this one.

Clap it back.

And your answer should sound like this.

Okay, oh no, I think I've got that wrong.

It's easy to forget.

Let's do one more.

I'll make it really, really tricky, and maybe you can even catch me out and get it correct and I will not, who knows? Let's try this one.

Okay, it should sound like this.

Well done if you got that one correct.

Do you try this one out on your friends and family at home; I'm sure it will entertain them.

Let's now get on with the lesson.

In this lesson, you will need a piece of paper or something to write on, a pencil or pen or something to write with, as well as a voice, instrument, or app.

An app I really like for my phone is called Virtual Piano.

You can find very similar things across all sorts of devices by typing that into a search bar.

Pause the video, get those things that you need, and come back when you're ready.

Great, we're ready to go! We are going to begin today's lesson by recapping our knowledge of the basso continuo.

We're then going to go on to learn about primary and secondary triads.

We will learn what inversions are and how to play them, and we will learn how to play the continuo, the basso continuo, musically.

Finally, you're going to perform the basso continuo with a virtual baroque ensemble.

Let's get started with recapping our knowledge of the basso continuo.

We're now going to have a quick recap.

Write down everything you know about the basso continuo.

You might need to look at some notes from last time.

Here are some pictures to help you.

The type of music, the instruments, and the role.

Pause the video and resume when you're ready.

Great, let's check our answers.

So change coloured pens, give yourself a tick for everything correct you wrote down, and in that colour, write down anything you missed off.

So the type of music was Baroque music.

It was often used in canons.

And also, we had composers like Pachelbel and Bach writing for basso continuo, and basso continuo was used in their pieces of music.

In terms of the instruments, we had a harpsichord, bass viol or cello, they were the basso continuo.

And what was its role? It played the accompaniment.

It played the ground bass, a repeated bass line, and it played the chords.

So the accompaniment is made up of ground bass and chords.

So who plays what in the basso continuo? We said we've got these two instruments.

The basso continuo is the group that play the ground bass in chords, as well as the ground bass in chords itself.

So that might be a bit confusing.

So when I say "basso continuo," I'm referring to either the instruments that play it or the accompaniment itself.

The two instruments, we had the harpsichord, and can you remember the other instrument that was featuring in the basso continuo? That is the cello or the bass viol.

The picture here is of a bass viol.

What did they play? Who played the chords, who played the ground bass? The harpsichord played the chords.

It also played the ground bass, and the bass viol played the ground bass, too.

The harpsichord can play two things because there are two hands, so they can play two things at once.

Let's have a quick recap.

What is a ground bass? If you put a bass line that repeats over and over again, you were correct! Well done.

How long are the notes in the ground bass, half a beat, one beat, or two beats? I'm talking about the ground bass in Pachelbel's "Canon." The correct answer was two beats.

Well done if you got that one correct.

Not all ground basses were two beats long for each note, but Pachelbel's was.

We're going to have a quick recap of playing the ground bass.

Before we start, think about what hand you need to use for it if you're playing on the keyboard, and what fingers.

So you should be using the left hand 'cause it's in the bass clef.

The fingers below, I'm suggesting 1, 2, 1, 2, but there are some other ways you can do it, as well.

If you're on another instrument, what part of the instrument will you play it in? Yes, you would do it very low down in the instrument.

So you're now going to pause the video to complete your task.

You are going to recap the ground bass by playing it on your instrument.

If you can't remember how to play it, I'm going to show you how to now, on the keyboard.

Okay, I'm now going to show you how to play the ground bass.

So you need to make sure you're using your left hand and start with your thumb on D.

So you need to be doing a D quite low down your keyboard, I suggest.

Here's my middle C, and you go for the D below that one here.

So it should sound like this.

So my keyboard is curved, that's because of this webcam.

Don't worry, it's not curved in real life.

So I'm going to start with my D on 1, I'm going to move to A on 2, and B on 1, F# on 2, G on 1, D on 2, and G on 1 again, and A on 2.

If you want to play it with me now, go ahead.

I'm going to count you in.

One, two, three, four.

That leads us back to the beginning, so get in the habit of repeating this over and over again, because you don't want to just play it once and stop.

Remember to have two beats on each note.

Pause the video now, if you haven't already, to complete the task of recapping the ground bass.

Resume once you are finished.

So we have recapped our knowledge of the basso continuo and played it, and we're now going to learn about primary and secondary triads.

So let's have another quick recap about major and minor keys.

How can you tell the difference in a major and minor key, and what are they? And for your stretch, what key is Pachelbel's "Canon" in, and what sharps does it have? Think about your answers now before I share them.

Great, so a major key is a piece of music that sounds bright, joyful, and happy.

A minor key for you might sound dark, it might sound mysterious or sad.

You can interpret it in different ways.

So what key is Pachelbel's "Canon" in, and what sharps does it have? Pachelbel's "Canon" is in D major, which is why it's called Pachelbel's "Canon in D." There are two sharps, F# and C# in D major.

Another quick recap, what is this and what does it tell us? So this is a key signature.

It has two sharps, F# and C#.

And this key signature tells us the piece of music is either in D major or B minor.

In our case, it's Pachelbel's "Canon in D," it is a major key, so we know it's D major.

And then a quick recap, what is a chord? And for your stretch, what is a triad? Think about your answer now.

Okay, a chord is more than one note played at the same time.

A triad is, can we guess how many notes are in the triad? Yes, three! The root, the 3rd and the 5th.

We're now going to look at the ground bass and the chords.

Look at the score below.

What do you notice about how the ground bass and chords relate to each other? You will see the top line, there are the chords written out.

They're not written out in full.

The names of the chords are there.

So the D means D major.

When there's an m next to the chord name, that means minor, so that's B minor.

Take a look now, decide how they relate, and then resume when you're ready.

Great, so we can see that the name of the chord is the same as the notes, the pitch, in the ground bass.

And that goes all the way through.

So under a D chord, there's a D in the ground bass, under the A chord, there is an A in the ground bass.

So the ground bass is taking the root of the chord.

So let's have a quick recap.

How do we label the pictures on the scale? So this is a D major scale here.

Yes, we label them from 1 to 8, so number 1 is our D, and that is our, number 3 is our F#, number 5 is our A, and yeah, the octave, so we have the root, the 3rd, and the 5th.

So the root of a D major chord or a D major scale is D.

The triad is made up of three notes, the root, the 3rd, and the 5th, as we can see here.

I'm now going to show you how you can make triads from a scale.

We can see my useful grid here has the scale at the bottom, which is the same as the root, and the triads for each chord.

But how do we work them out on the keyboard? Watch below.

To make triads from a scale, the first thing you need to do is actually make sure we know what scale we're playing.

So we're playing D major, which has an F# and a C# in the key signature.

And so for these triads, we use the root, the 3rd, and the 5th from each note.

So let's start with D.

I use the root, one, two, three, the 3rd, and the 5th to make my triad.

If I want to make a triad it on E, I do the same, so I count from one, two, three, four, five! Then from the F#, I do the same.

So I need to count one, two, three, one, two, three, so I don't do a C, I do a C# because we know we've got a C# in the D major key signature.

Then I do the same with G, root, 3rd, 5th, A, B, root, 3rd, 5th, and then back to D.

So, you are now going to play the triads on your instrument or app.

As you play them, you are going to work out which are major, which sound bright, and which are minor, which sound dark and mysterious, and how do you know? Then I'd like you to choose three triads that are more important.

Pause the video now to complete this task and resume when you are ready.

Lovely, so you may have seen that some of the triads were major and some were minor.

So we start with D major.

It sounds bright, then we go to E minor, which sounds darker.

There are three triads, which are probably more important than the others.

These are called primary triads.

You may have noticed that D, G, and A are more important.

These are also all major triads in a major key.

Our secondary triads are E minor, F# minor, and B minor.

You may notice that these are all minor triads in the major key.

So we're in D major, but the secondary triads are minor.

Our C# at the bottom, it's C# diminished, in the light blue box.

And diminished means that it's not a major or a minor triad 'cause it sounds quite crunchy, like this.

We don't need to worry about that one too much in this music, because it's not actually used very much in Pachelbel's "Canon," and we will not be playing it.

So to clarify, the primary triads are I, IV, and V.

So these are written in Roman numerals.

The I means one and the V means five, and IV means four, because it's one less than five.

And our secondary triads are ii, iii, and vi.

These are all minor in a major key.

Let's now look at the triads in Pachelbel's "Canon." We can see that we start off with a primary triad, which is D.

Pause the video and take a moment to circle the primary and the secondary triads in different colours, and then we will check our answers.

Pause the video now.

Lovely, let's check.

So we start with a primary triad, as I said, and we have another primary one, A, followed by two secondary triads and then four primary triads.

So we can see that Pachelbel used a mixture of primary and secondary triads in Pachelbel's "Canon." So, let's have a quick quiz.

What is a triad? Choose your answer now.

And the correct answer is a chord with three notes, the root, the 3rd, and the 5th.

What are the primary triads? Are they I, IV, V, ii, iii, vi, or I, iii, V? Choose your answer now.

The correct answer is I, IV, and V.

I, iii, and V are the notes to create a triad from the scale.

The primary triads themselves are called I, so in D, that's D, chord IV, which is G, and chord V, which is A.

Which are the secondary triads? Look now.

I, IV, V, ii, iii, vi, or I, iii, V? The correct answer is ii, iii, vi.

Well done if you got those ones correct.

And the secondary triads in a major key, are they major or minor? If you said "minor," that was correct.

Well done.

So we're now going to look at what inversions are and how to play them.

And that's going to really help us broaden our knowledge of chords.

I'm now going to play Pachelbel's "Canon" in two ways, way one, and then way two.

You're going to tell me which way do you prefer, and why.

Let's watch me now.

So I hope you preferred the second time I played it.

That is because I used inversions to make it sound much smoother, so we didn't jump around.

An inversion is playing the notes of the chord in a different order.

That doesn't change the chord itself, but it changes how you play it.

So all my chords start with the left hand with the root notes.

However, my right hand, I changed up the order I played them in.

A normal D major triad in root position is D, F#, and A.

However, in my right hand, I chose to play the A on the bottom, so A, D, and F#.

That meant I didn't have to jump around quite as much, so I didn't have to jump really far to the A chord.

So here I played C#, E, and A.

It doesn't matter what order I play this in, because my root note is on the very bottom in my left hand.

So then again, B minor, I actually missed out the B, 'cause it's already in my left hand, I didn't need it.

And F# minor, I didn't have the F# on the bottom.

It's on the bottom of my left hand.

In my right hand, I played it A, C#, and F# to make it smooth.

So rather than having something like this where I jump around, so I have my D chords, jump up to A, jump up to B minor, jump down to F#, I had something much smoother.

I could have made it even smoother if I wanted to.

I could have done something like this.

Something like that would've been even smoother.

So, you are now going to have a go at practising these inversions, so on the page, I have written out the ground bass at the bottom, which we know how to play already, and at the top, the inversions.

So you read them from top to bottom.

So in your right hand, your first chord would have A at the bottom, then D, then F#.

The second chord will have C# at the bottom, C#, E, and A.

I'm now going to show you on the keyboard how to play all of the inversions, and you could even have a go at playing along with me.

You are now going to pause the video to complete this task, learning the chord inversions using your voice, your instrument, or technology.

If you're on the keyboard, make sure you're using your right hand and trying not to jump around.

You could even experiment by playing them in different inversions, so having the notes in a different order.

If you're on an instrument that doesn't have chords, you can try and play on an app, because that will give you the satisfaction of playing more than one note at the same time.

Resume the video once you're finished.

Great, so we've learned what inversions are and how to play them.

We're now going to learn how to play the continuo more musically.

So we can see we've got these ripple things next to the chords, like a squiggly line.

Do you know what that means? That means it's a spread chord.

So you play the notes one after another really, really quickly from low to high.

So you don't play it like this, you play it like this.

You don't play it like this, you play it like this.

You can maybe experiment by playing them a little bit more slowly, and really, really quickly.

That creates a much more musical way of playing these inversions.

And it would sound much more like a real harpsichord.

I'm now going to show you how to play these inversions with spread chords on the piano.

Pause the video to complete your task.

Play the chords musically in a way stylistic to the Baroque period.

So if you're on the keyboard, make sure you're spreading those chords.

If you're finding it challenging to do on your instrument, don't worry, just do your best.

You could also try adding ornaments, for example, trills and mordents, and even passing notes between the chords.

If you're still finding it too easy, play it with the ground bass or one of the other melodies.

Resume the video once you're finished.

So, now is your chance to reflect.

How did you play the chords musically? What difference did it make, playing the spread chords? Did you play the chords in the same way every time? And why did you make those choices? Pause the video now to think about those answers.

Resume when you're ready.

Great, let's now recap some work.

What is an inversion? Choose the correct answer now.

Lovely.

It is playing the notes of the chords in a different order.

We played them just now.

What does this mean, the wiggly line? That wiggly line tells us to spread the notes of the chord from low to high like this, rather than this.

We have done so well this lesson.

We have done so many things already.

We've learned how to play the continuo musically, and now is your chance to perform the whole basso continuo.

Let's recap.

What is the basso continuo? If you said, "The basso continuo is the group that plays the ground bass and the chords, and the ground bass and chords in Baroque music," you are correct.

What two instruments are found in the basso continuo? Yes, the harpsichord and the bass viol or cello.

What do they play? The harpsichord plays the chords and the ground bass with its left hand, and the bass viol or cello plays the ground bass.

Well done if you remembered all of that.

So you're now going to perform the basso continuo.

You have two, or you have various options.

You can perform both of the parts yourself.

So if you're a keyboardist, you can play it with both hands, you can perform one part and I will play the other part, or you could perform with a member of your household.

If you're going to perform both parts by yourself, pause the video now and complete the task.

If you're playing with me along with the backing track, get ready now.

You can play both parts, so the ground bass and the chords, you can maybe just perform the ground bass, you could just perform the chords, or you could do a mixture of both, as long as you keep going.

The track is a minute and a half long, so do your best, and off we go.

Great work on your basso continuo.

Read the questions on the screen, think about your answers, and resume the video when you're ready.

Lovely, so when you were playing the chords, I hope you spread them to make them sound stylistic.

And the chords and the ground bass fit together because the ground bass is the root note of the chords.

So, let's go back to our key question.

How is a ground bass related to chords? Pause the video, choose the correct sentences to describe and answer this question.

Resume the video when you're ready.

Okay, let's go through these answers.

So, you should have got rid of "the ground bass is a repeated melody." That's not true.

How could we correct that sentence? The ground bass is a repeated bass line, so that disappears.

The ground bass is the root note of the chord, so that is correct.

The chords are improvised, made up on the spot, that's not really true, because the chords need to follow the ground bass.

The inversions can be improvised, but the chords themselves are not, bye-bye.

The chords are played in inversions, that is correct, in the purple box.

The chords are played after the ground bass.

That is not true, they're played at the same time, maybe a fraction after if you were spreading them.

The chords can be two or three notes.

That is correct, because remember, that B minor chord only had a D and an F# on the right hand.

The ground bass is a repeated bass line, that is correct.

And the chords are played at the same time as the ground bass, that is also correct.

So you should have chosen these five sentences.

And that brings us to the end of today's lesson.

Well done for your great work.

If you'd like to, please ask your parents or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging Oak National and using the #LearnwithOak.

Don't forget to click onto the quiz to show us what great things you've learned and how much knowledge you have accumulated over this lesson.

All that's left to say is take care, well done, keep being musical, and see you next time.