Lesson video

Hi everyone, I'm Ms. Friar and welcome to your music lesson today.

We are going to spend quite a lot of time in today's lesson exploring two really important musical elements tonality, and harmony.

They're quite tricky ones but I think we're up for the challenge.

Let's go and explore how those two elements are used in film music.

The first activity we're going to do in this lesson is a listening task.

We're going to watch a clip of a movie trailer from two minutes to two minutes 25.

To do that you're going to go to the worksheet for this lesson.

The video is on slide two.

While watching those 25 seconds, I want you to answer these three questions.

One, what tonality is the music in this film clip? Two, how do you know? So how do you know what the tonality is? And three, is there any diegetic music in this clip? So these are a few recap questions and to see how much you know about tonality already.

Pause the video now, click next activity to access the worksheet come back and we'll go through the answers.

Welcome back.

I hope you enjoyed watching that little clip of the Peanuts movie with Snoopy and Charlie Brown.

Let's have a look at the answer for those three questions.

So the tonality for that part of the film clip is a major tonality.

And the reason we know that is because the chords in the music played by the guitar and by the piano sounds, they sound major which means they sound upbeat and they sound positive.

They sound quite bright.

There is a section in that clip where there is diegetic music.

That is a key word we have looked at in previous lessons.

This means it's music that both the characters and the audience can hear in the films. So when Snoopy is dancing, you can hear Flamenco music which both the audience and the characters can hear.

If you've got those answers well done give yourself three big ticks, if not pause the video and write those down.

So you've got really important key words for revision.

Well done.

Okay, so now we've warmed up with that listening activity what we need to do now is make sure you have everything you need for the rest of the lesson.

Hopefully by now you've got a piece of paper or an exercise book to write notes and to write your answers.

You're going to need something to write with so a pen or a pencil, and then a pen in a different colour to help you with your marking and annotation.

For our practical music making today you're going to need an instrument, certainly a keyboard or a keyboard app, because when we're working with tonality and harmony, we're going to look at lots of different patterns of notes and chords and things like that.

Pause the video now, if you need to go and get anything on that list and then come back and we'll carry on.

Okay, our plan for today.

The first thing we're going to do is make sure that it's really clear what the difference is between tonality and harmony.

Then we're going to have a look at how tonality can be used in an underscore for film music.

We're going to do the same for harmony, how harmony can be used for underscores.

And then you're going to have a go at composing your own music for a film clip.

Okay, tonality versus harmony.

The reason we spend so much time looking at these two musical elements is it because it is the bread and butter of composing music.

There's often quite a lot of crossover with the words that we use in music to describe these two musical elements.

And so we have to make sure it's really clear that everyone understands exactly what these two are and actually they're closely linked.

The tonality that you choose, the key that you choose for a piece of music will then decide what harmony and chords and pitches you're going to play within the piece.

It happens that works vice versa.

If you change some of the chords within a piece of music in the harmony, that can also mean that your tonality has changed.

So they're very closely linked together.

Let's look at the two separately in a bit more detail.

Tonality is, so just quick answer for me.

Tonality is? The key the music is in and harmony? Is the pictures chords and patterns chosen within that key of music.

So that's the main difference to keep in your mind as we go through today's lesson Okay, tonalities, tonality refers to the key which creates the mood or emotion of the music.

There are four types of tonality there on the screen.

Let's go through them and see what you know, already.

What does major mean? If you are in a major tonality, what does it mean? Write it down a new piece of paper, 20 seconds.

So a major tonality is often described as bright or joyful sounding.

It can make a piece of music sound really positive and exciting.

Well done if you got that.

Now write your definition for minor.

Hopefully you remembered that often people think of major and minor as two opposite types of keys.

If major is really bright and joyful minor is often described as quite dark or mysterious sounding.

Modal, have a go at writing an answer for a modal tonality.

So modal tonalities, aren't heard as often in music that we listened to for sorts of pop and charts and things like that.

It's an older form of tonality.

You can hear it in other genres, especially ones from around the world.

So modal is a series of notes that don't quite fit in to major or minor.

It is one of the oldest forms of systems of putting notes together even before major and minor were defined in musical history.

Atonal, have a go at writing answer for atonal.

What tonality do you think atonal is? Atonal means that there's no obvious key.

So not a particular pitch is dominant.

It's constantly changing.

Let me show you what each four of these tonalities sound like.

Okay I'm going to to pay you now those four examples of different forms of tonality and I'm going to show you them through keys and through scales, cause once you've decided your key and your scale, then you know which notes you're going to build your harmony upon.

So major, I'm going to pick the pitch A and I'm going to show you the different versions of those tonalities, but in A.

So A major remember it sounds quite joyful and quite positive.

Make sure you can see, so scale of A major.

And the chord.

Okay quite positive, quite joyful sounding.

But A minor it will have a more mysterious, dark tone.

There's the chord.

And the scale.

Okay, very different tone hence tonality.

For modal it sounds like this.

Doesn't quite fit to major or minor and has a kind of slightly older, I think feel they've been around for longer the systems of notes in modes.

And finally for atonal, the best way to demonstrate that is okay so if we pick A, it shouldn't sound major or minor.

In fact it shouldn't quite sound like any key.

So it's about an unusual combination.

of notes.

So you're not quite sure what key you're in and that is the point of atonal it's supposed to create uncertainty.

So what I want you to have a go at doing now is grabbing your keyboard app piano or keyboard and I would like you to have a play around with playing either major or minor tonalities.

I suggest you pick C, F or G.

Okay they're quite easy ones to use they're quite easy ones to make major or minor.

So C, E, G for major.

C, E flat G for C minor.

F, A, C for F major.

F, A flat C for F minor.

G B D for G major G, hopefully you're getting this pattern by now.

B flat D.

So here's three cords or three tonalities in major.

C F G major.

C F G minor, see very different tones.

So jump onto your keyboard or your piano, or if you want to use an app, that's obviously fine.

I'm sure you can get your fingers around some of these chords and tonalities and have a go at playing in major and minor tonalities.

So quick pause point here.

I want you to have a go at okay quick pause point here.

What I want you to do is to have a go at playing around on your keyboard or piano with different major and minor sounding tonalities.

The formal definition is, harmony is the pictures chords and patterns chosen within the key of music.

You can usually hear it in the accompaniment of music.

So if you've got somebody singing with a piano the person singing will be singing their melody.

And that is one note at a time, sequence of pitches the piano underneath will be playing the accompaniment, will be playing chords and patterns within the same key as the singer, but will be playing the other harmony notes underneath them.

That's always a good way of thinking about it.

So let's just recap what these four elements of harmony are.

Chords, 30 seconds, write down what are chords.

Hopefully, you know from previous lessons and units, that chords are two or more notes played at the same time.

And you get different types of chords and we're going to spend a bit of time exploring them today.

But the two main ones to be aware of are something called diatonic which is where you use the pitches that you would expect to hear in the key.

Then sometimes you will hear dissonant or chromatic chords where pitches of chords that sound clashing because they aren't in the key.

So you will hear other notes that don't belong to that key in the chord, which makes it sound like it's clashing or chromatic.

Cadences, if you have heard of what a cadence is before write it down now, 20 seconds.

So Cadences often come at the end of phrases or sections of music, and you can get lots of different types of cadences.

A perfect cadence, which is called five to one and hopefully you've seen those chord symbols before it gives the feeling that the phrase has ended.

The end.

An imperfect cadence called one to five, the other way round, this gives the feeling that the phrase should continue.

So like the music is going to carry on.

Well done if you recognised what cadences were and actually you managed to name a few and actually you managed to name some.

If you didn't, please do write this information down.

You can pause the video if you need to, but we are really looking at some deeper understanding of harmony and certain techniques.

And it would be brilliant to know this now.

Texture is another way that a composer will play around with harmony.

What is texture in a music? Write your answer down.

So texture is how many parts you can hear.

So a bit like when we look at the choir singing, it all started off is as homophonic is unison.

So there's the choir who were singing a homophonic texture 'cause they were all singing one part unison.

Then they split, and the texture became chordal homophonic because they were singing different pitches.

If they sang melody and accompaniment or melody dominated homophony, you would have heard one person singing the main tune over the top of everybody else singing as a backing track, singing as backing vocals.

So that's how you can tell the difference between melody and accompaniment or homophonic.

Well then if you recognise those textures, or if you wrote down that it's the parts in the music again if you didn't have that, please take the time to write these keywords down.

We're doing some brilliant work around musical elements and devices here.

The final one in harmony is something called a pedal.

We've spoke about this quite a lot before but maybe not used the word pedal.

We definitely did it when we were analysing, diegetic and non-diegetic music.

Right your answer down, what is a pedal? Pedal means notes or pitches that are held throughout a piece of music.

And you can get two types in film music, and in other forms the first one is a drone and that's when you get pitches or intervals heard throughout, and it can be on any pitch and on any sound.

A pedal note is often a sustained pitch, typically heard in the base, but you can often hear some high pedal notes in film music as well.

So if you hear a pitch that's being held throughout a piece of music or a section of music that is a pedal.

Let me play you those four types of harmony now so you can recognise them and maybe use them yourself.

Right now that we fully understand all the different harmonic ideas that composers can use.

Let me demonstrate them so that you can recognise them when hearing them.

So the first one that we spoke about was chords, chords are sort of like the bread and butter of harmony.

The pitches that you choose between those chords will define what kind of harmony you're using.

So we had diatonic chords ones that sound harmonious with the key because they use the pitches that are in the scale.

So I'm going to take C Okay, C major.

And let me show you just chords that sound diatonic so notes that fit within the key.

So just blend quite nicely.

So they're, diatonic they harmonise and they sound like they belong to the key.

If I wanted to use dissonant or clashing or more chromatic chords I would need to add notes that don't belong to those whites notes.

So play similar pattern but I'm going to add some sharps and flats within it so it sounds chromatic or dissonant.

Very different tone when you use those kinds of harmonies within chords, there's diatonic and chromatic and dissonant chords.

We also had a look at cadences.

Cadences come at the ends of phrases and they mark, or they're an indicator to the listener, whether the piece is going to end or if the piece is going to carry on, we had a perfect cadence, five to one, sounds like this.

Again in C.

Five.

Sounds finished, five to one.

We do the other way round, an imperfect cadence one to five.

♪ Not quite done ♪ Okay it sounds like the piece is definitely going to carry on.

It doesn't sound like it's finished.

We've not returned to our dominant pitch.

Our tonic, we've not returned to our tonic.

That's our first note, our main pitch which is C, which is why it doesn't sound finished.

So there's cadences.

The other harmonic idea that composers use to show parts is the use of texture.

And we looked at homophonic which is where you either in unison or in chords but you're travelling together.

So for instance like this.

Again C.

So I had four notes at the same time then two hands go in, but they are in chords but moving together, homophonic.

Most perfect cadence.

Melody and accompaniment so it's when you have chords.

and then a tune in the right hand.

That's when you let the one, melodies tend to go for a lot longer but for my demonstration, melody in the right hand chords the left fall quite nice and diatonic major.

Okay, so that's one other way that you could show harmony through texture.

The final one was pedal notes.

Do you remember what a pedal note is? Yes.

It's when we have the pitch that sustained throughout a piece of music, whether that be in the base whether that be high it's often used as a drone in film music, but we hear it in lots of other styles as well.

So you can have a drone.

In the base.

So high pedal and then low pedal.

Say we change to minor and keep this going all the way through a drone.

Just by changing the chords, to a minor chord with a centre in the base, completely changes the mood or underscore, okay? And that's exactly what composers do with harmony.

So what I want you to do now is I want you to have a play around with using some of those harmonic ideas.

Choose the key that you were playing with when we were looking at tonality, either C, F or G major or minor, whichever one you decided and just like I've shown you pick two harmonic ideas and play around with them.

So say you picked F.

And I'm going to to put a high pedal in F.

And I've put some chromatic chords in the left hand, over the top of my pedal.

Why don't you have a go at playing a pedal high or low with either some dissonant chords or perhaps you want to have a go at writing a melody whichever harmonic idea you want to play around with.

Enjoy, off you go.

So what I'd like you to do is now have a play around with harmony.

Pick one of the keys you were playing with before C, F or G decide whether you're going to do a major or minor key C minor F minor or G minor, or maybe major C major, F major, G major.

Now have a go of holding a pedal in that key and then try putting some dissonant or chromatic chords over the top of that pedal.

Great work so far on tonality and harmony.

I know there's a lot of information we're going through now, but having this understanding is so good for us as musicians.

Next one, how can tonality be used in an underscore? So let's look specifically at film music now.

Here's our second listening task for today, all around tonality.

You're going to watch a video on slide three of the worksheet and answer these two questions.

What is the tonality of this piece of film music? Does it change? And why do you think the composer chose this tonality? Click next activity to access the worksheet.

Pause the video, off you go.

Welcome back.

I'm hoping that you enjoyed listening to that orchestra play the rendition of Mission Impossible.

Let's go through the answer for those three questions.

The first one is that the key is minor, more specifically A minor but don't worry if you've got the specific A key, if you recognised it was minor well done.

The piece does modulate.

Modulate is another word for change, but in relation to keys.

So the composer modulates from A minor to D minor, and then back again to A minor in the main theme or tune that you can hear.

The minor keys remember sound quite mysterious which is why it really suits a spy themed action film.

So it's really relevant to the genre of Mission Impossible.

Well done if you've got those answers or something similar if you need to pause the video to write these down in your notes, please do so, otherwise let's carry on.

Great, well done.

Let's do the same activity again, but this time focusing on harmony.

So we're going to do a listening task all around how harmony can be used in an underscore.

This time we're going to go to slide four of the worksheet and watch a piece of music being performed by an orchestra from Star Wars.

You need to answer these two questions on your piece of paper.

How would you describe the harmony in this piece? Try and remember some of those devices we looked at earlier on in the lesson and what's harmonic ideas, can you hear the composer has used? Pause the video now, click next activity to access the worksheet come back and we'll go through answers together.

Well done.

Welcome back.

Let's go through the answers for that together.

I hope you enjoyed listening to the Imperial March played by the orchestra, which is taken from the film Star Wars.

The answers to the questions around the harmonic devices that the composer used are.

Well, first of all, we need to establish what the key is and it is a minor key.

In fact, it's G minor.

Don't worry again, if you didn't know that it was in G if you recognised that it was in a minor key, well done.

The chords are taken from the G minor key, as well as some out of the G minor key.

So there are some clashing chords over the top of a G pedal in that rhythm.

There's a main melody that you can hear over the top in the brass section, that melody uses lots of chromatic notes, especially when the tune is descending at the end of the phrase, before the melody starts again.

Earlier on we had a look at texture and how that could be used to define harmony.

This piece is definitely melody dominated homophony.

So we had the tune over the top and then underneath were really thick full chords where lots of the orchestra were playing together at the same time.

Well done if you've got those answers, give yourselves big ticks.

If you didn't get those, do write them down.

There are some really important keywords there around harmony and devices used in film music.

Well done.

Great, okay, we are on the final parts of our lesson and where you are going to spend the most time composing music for a film clip, but we're really going to focus today around the tonality that you're going to choose and the harmonic devices over the top.

So your composition challenge is this.

You are going to use harmony and tonality to compose the music for the film clip from the Peanuts movie.

You're going to use the first 25 seconds of the clip, and the music needs to set the scene.

And the theme is imagination and adventure for Charlie Brown.

I suggest that you base your composition around one key and I've given you the chords and the scale from E minor to support you with that.

I want you to choose two harmonic ideas which we've discussed to include in your music.

And I want you to make a creative decision with your tonality the key is going to change.

The clip is on slide six of the worksheet.

You're going to pause the video click next activity, to access the worksheet and have a go at composing your own music.

Here are the chords and scale of E minor.

Well done today everyone.

I am sure that your underscore for that little action packed clip from the Peanuts movie is sounding great.

Really good work on harmony and tonality today.

That is so much to understand so make sure you go back to your notes and revise through all of it, but you should be really chuffed.

It was some challenging stuff we tackle today.

Please make sure you go and take the quiz so you can show me everything you've learned about harmony and tonality.

And I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson of our film unit.

Take care.

Bye.