chorale Harmonic texture
Main content: harmony
Pedagogical objectives
- The student is able to merge their own sounds within the ensemble.
- The student who is given direction of the group, is able to create varied harmonic relationships that are musical.
Pedagogical intentions
- Introduce the notion of harmonic “colour”, texture and pedal-tones.
- Improve the students’ abilities to discern pitches and harmonic relationships.
- Help students to improve their ability to better merge (blend) their own sounds into the ensemble.
Tools
Example
(La partition graphique ne suit pas exactement la vidéo).
École Au-Coeur-Des-Monts, Saint-Pie, Québec, Jean-François Senécal, enseignant
Process
IMPORTANT NOTE: The following video shows a version with a very small group, where the conductor, while signalling to one student at a time, was able to manage the harmonic texture without too much trouble. With a larger group, this quickly becomes impossible. For a more successful outcome then, we propose the following:
Setup:
- Divide the group into 6-8 teams.
- The teacher asks each student to load the sound [cosmic] into two tabs and set their volumes to 0.
- The teacher asks each team to agree upon an interesting transposition level of tab-2 (with regards to the original), using the speed-pitch tool. The same setting must be chosen for all members of a team. To assure equal-temperament relations, activate the “magnet”.
Performance:
- The teacher (or chosen student) triggers the successive entries of the original sound (tab-1), keeping it at a low dynamic level of p to mp. This pedal-tone will remain until the end.
- The teacher then points to different teams to initiate slow crescendos of their transposed sounds (volume-tool).
- L'enseignant pointe une autre équipe et dirige un mouvement de crescendo. Et ainsi de suite...
- When the teacher feels it is a good moment, they then begin to raise or lower the volumes of different teams, so as to highlight different harmonic colours they might find interesting, using different combinations of the 2, 3 or 4 different transpositions.
- Assessment: which were the most interesting and least interesting moments? Why? Were the harmonic changes smooth? Explain what is meant by “texture” and “pedal-sound”.
Proposal for a creative activity
A. The creation of a harmonic texture:
- Ask one student from each team to transpose the sound [cosmic] in the tabs 1 and 2.
- Each one of these students then, has the ability to switch freely between two pitches, changing the harmonic texture, while remaining attentive to the sound of the ensemble.
B. The rest of the students, as an ensemble:
- Upon this background texture, imagine and then create a musical narrative with other sounds that either blend well with this harmonic texture, or that contrast with it (i.e. dry, energetic sounds).
