Lesson video

Hello.

Welcome to today's lesson entitled Harmony and Tonality in Western Classical Music.

My name is Mr. Norris.

Today we're gonna be deepening our understanding of harmony and tonality, looking at the way that they've been used through the different periods of the Western classical tradition.

And hopefully giving you a better understanding so that when you're composing, performing, or just listening to music, you understand how the harmony and tonality is functioning even better.

Our outcome is I can explain the fundamentals of harmony and tonality and how they're used in Western classical music.

Some key words.

First we've got tonality.

This is the type of notes and chords that a piece of music is based on, for example, minor, major, or atonal.

Then we've got harmony.

This is the way that notes combine to create chords, and the way that those chords are used in composition.

Key.

This is the specific set of notes that a piece of music is based on.

So for example, C minor might be a key.

Then we've got key signature, which is which sharps or flats should be used in a particular key.

And this is always written at the start of each stave.

Finally, we've got cadence.

This is a combination of two chords at the end of a phrase or resection.

So we'll get into all these concepts as we go.

And for the first part of our lesson we're gonna be looking at tonality and keys.

Tonality refers to the type of notes and chords that a piece of music is based on.

In Baroque, Classical and Romantic music, the two fundamental tonalities are major and minor.

The main difference is the mood that they create.

Major tonality tends to create a positive mood, whereas minor tonality creates a more serious or more negative mood.

Have a listen to this clip.

What do you think the tonality is here? (Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) Hopefully you identified there that that had major tonality.

It creates that more positive, uplifting mood than it would if it was in a minor key.

Every piece of music in the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods has a key.

This is the specific set of notes that the music uses.

Whereas the major or minor tonality tells us what kind of notes are used, the key tells us specifically which notes that piece is based on.

Every key has a tonic note.

This is the home note and the most important note in the key.

The key is named after the tonic note.

So the tonic in the key of C major is the note C.

The tonic in the key of G minor would be the note G.

Beethoven's Ode to Joy, which is a very famous melody from the classical period, has a major tonality, and it is specifically in the key of C major.

So we've got these two pieces of information, major tonality, and then narrate down specifically to the key of C major.

This means that C is the tonic note, and that the piece uses the white notes on the piano because the key of C major uses only what would be the white notes on the piano.

Have a quick listen to Ode to Joy, see if you can hear that major tonality.

(Ode to Joy begins) (Ode to Joy ends) The key signature tells the performer which notes are in the key.

This is the key signature for the key of G major.

So if our piece was in the key of G major, we would have this at the start of the stave.

It has a sharp symbol on the line for the note F, that's that top line.

And this means that the performer plays F sharp every time they see the note F.

We would say that this key has one sharp because there's one note that has to be changed to become a sharp.

In this case it's the note F.

Have a look at this example of a key signature here.

What information does this tell the performer? What would the performer have to do when they were playing this piece of music with this key signature? Pause my video and have a think.

(silence) And in this case then the performer would have to play a B flat every time there is a B notated.

And that's because there's that flat symbol on the line for the note B.

Well done if you got that one.

Let's check our understanding.

What is a key? Is it the type of notes that are used, the specific set of notes that are used, or a symbol at the start of the stave? I'll give you a few seconds.

And the correct answer here is a key is the specific set of notes that are used.

So if we're in the key of C major, we would specifically be using only what are the white notes on the piano.

What is a key signature? Is it the type of notes used, the specific set of notes used, or a symbol at the start of the stave? I'll give you a few seconds.

And the correct answer here is a key signature is the symbol at the start of the stave which tells the performer which notes are in the key and which notes need to be changed to become sharps and flats.

In total, there are 24 possible keys in Western music.

Every note has two different keys, a major key and a minor key.

And this applies to each of the 12 notes.

So 12 times two gives us 24 possible keys.

For example, the note C could have a C major key based on it and a C minor key.

C sharp has C sharp major and C sharp minor.

So each of the 12 notes has a major and a minor key that can be based on it.

There are methods for working out key signatures, but most musicians learn them through memorization and practice.

And eventually as an experienced musician you will just automatically know the key signatures.

Just like you learnt the pattern of the alphabet when you were learning to read and write.

We're going to learn the major key signatures that have up to four sharps and four flats.

So there are other key signatures that we're not gonna learn today, but these are the ones that we're gonna focus on.

And these are the most common ones that you will come across.

The key with no sharps or flats is C major.

So if you just see the clef at the start of the stave with no sharps or flats, that means we're in C major.

G major has one sharp, we've already come across that one earlier in the lesson.

D major would have two sharps.

A major has three.

And E major has four sharps.

We can use this phrase, "greedy dogs always eat," to remember the order of these keys.

G has one, D has two, A as three, E as four.

And there are lots of other phrases you could think of if you wanted to help you memorize that pattern of sharp keys.

Let's check your understanding.

Which is the correct order of key signatures with sharps, starting with one sharp and ending with four? Is it D-A-G-E, A-D-E-G, G-D-A-E or E-G-D-A? Pause my video while you work this one out.

(silence) And the correct answer here is G-D-A-E, greedy dogs always eat.

Well done if you remembered that one.

Each key signature keeps the same sharps as the previous key signature, but it adds one more.

So that's our G major key signature.

Then we add one and keep the original sharp from G major, that's our D major key signature now.

Then we add another one for A major, and add another one for E major.

So you can see each time the original sharps are staying the same, and we're just adding an extra one to what was there before.

This is the same for the keys with flat, so we're focused on sharp so far, let's have a look at the keys with flat ones.

The first key signature would have one flat.

The next one has two, keeping the first one.

The next one would have three, again keeping the first two, and so on up to four flats there.

So it's the same idea that you keep the original flat and just add extra ones for each new key.

F major is the key that has one flat.

B flat major has two.

E flat major has three.

And A flat major has four flats.

And you could say flats bring emotion always to remember these.

Flats, that's F has one flat.

Bring, that's B flat, has two flats.

Emotion, that's E flat, has three flats.

And Always, that's A flat, has four flats.

The key when you're doing this is to remember that B, E and A here are flattened, so it's not the keys of B, E and A, it's B flat, E flat, and A flat.

That's a really key difference to remember there.

Which key signature has one flat? Is it F major, B flat major, E flat major, or A flat major? I'll give you a few seconds to work out this one.

(silence) Well done then if you remembered that the key signature with one flat is F major.

That's our first from flats bring emotion always.

So far we're focused on the major keys, but we can also use this information to help us work out minor keys.

Each major key has something called a relative minor key.

The relative minor uses the same notes as the major key, but it has a different tonic which creates a minor sound and a minor tonality.

I'd like to compare these two scales.

We've got C major, which uses only the white notes on the piano.

So there's no sharps or flats.

And then we've got A minor, which uses exactly the same notes but starts on A instead of C.

So if we compare those notes, we'll see they're exactly the same notes, there are no different notes in there, but it starts on A instead of C.

So A minor, the key of A minor, is the relative minor of C major because they have the same notes, just starting in a different place.

Let's listen to both of those scales, start with C major.

Can you hear that they use the same notes that create different tonality? Here's the C major scale.

(soft piano music) And here's the A minor scale.

Try and notice how it's exactly the same notes that I used, but it's just starting on a different note creating that different minor tonality.

(soft piano music) So working out the relative minor key is actually quite straightforward.

You take the major key; so we could take the key of G major that's got one sharp, that's one we've seen a few times now.

And we identify the tonic note.

And in this case the G major tonic is G, because that's the tonic note of that key.

Then we count down three semitones from that note.

So if we count down three from G, we get to that note there which is E.

And this new note is the tonic of the minor key.

So the relative minor of G major is E minor.

That's how the keys relate.

We count down three semi turns from the major tonic, and that helps us work out what the relative minor key would be.

That relative minor key is gonna have the identical key signature to the relative major key because it uses the same notes.

Try these two examples.

Can you work out the relative minor of these two keys by counting down three semitones from the tonic note of each? So count down three semitones from F major to work out the relative minor of F major.

And count down three semitones from the tonic of D major to work out the relative minor of D major.

You can pause my video while you have a go at this.

So well done there if you managed to identify that the three semitones below F is D.

So that means that the relative minor of F major is D minor.

They would have the same key signature and use the same notes, but starting on D instead of F and creating that minor tonality instead of the major tonality.

For D major, three semitones below D is B.

So we count down three from there we get to B, which means that the relative minor or D major is B minor.

Again, the same key signature as D major, so that's two sharps using exactly the same notes but starting on B with a tonic as B instead of D.

If we reverse the process, we can work out the relative major from the minor key.

So say we're given a minor key, we can then work out its relative major by just flipping that process on its head.

All we need to do is count up three semitones from the tonic of the minor key.

So we're doing what we just did but backwards, going up instead of down.

This is the key signature for G minor, we've got two flats.

If we count up three semitones from G, we get to B flat.

And that is the relative major of G minor.

So the key signature is the same in B flat major as it is in G minor, but it has that major tonality instead and it starts on B flat as the tonic rather than G.

So we're just flipping the process that we just did for working out the relative minor.

Let's check your understanding.

What is the link between a major key and its relative minor? Is it that they have the same starting note, they use the same notes and key signature, or they sound identical? I'll give you a few seconds to write this one out.

(silence) And the correct answer here is that they use the same notes and key signature.

They do not have the same starting note, that is a key difference.

They have different tonic notes, different starting notes.

And they don't sound identical because they start on a different note and they create a different tonality, a major tonality and a minor tonality.

But they do use the same notes and they do have the same key signature.

How do you work out the relative major of a minor key? Just check the order that we're doing this here is we're trying to work out the major key from the minor key.

Do you count down three semitones from the minor tonic? Do you count down four semitones from the minor tonic? Do you count up three semitones from the minor tonic? Or do you count up four semitones from the minor tonic? Pause my video while you have a read through those and choose the correct answer.

(silence) The correct answer here is you count up three semitones from the minor tonic.

If we're going from minor to major, we count up three.

If we're going from major to minor, we count down three.

There's nothing where we count up or down four, so well done if you've got that one correct there.

So task A; to begin with I'd like to complete the tables to name the missing key signatures.

Remember the phrases that we've used? Greedy dogs always eat for the sharps, and flats bring emotion always for the flats.

These are the major keys we're using here so we're not thinking about relative minors at this point.

Once you've done that, I'd like to move on to these listening questions.

I'd like you to listen to this extract in the key of G minor.

First question is what type of tonality does this have? Then what is the relative major of G minor? Making sure you're getting that question the right way round.

Thinking carefully about which way you're moving up or down the keyboard.

And then which is the correct key signature for G minor and its relative major? Remember they have the same key signature.

So you can pause my video now, have a go at this whole task, give this your best shot.

(silence) Let's review this task.

So to add in the missing key signatures; for the sharps, the first one would be C major.

That's the key that has no sharps in their flats.

For two sharps we've got D major, and for four sharps we've got E major.

Remember we've got that phrase, GDAE, greedy dogs always eat.

And then for the flat keys, one flat is F major, and three flats is E flat major.

Remember the phrase for the flats is flats bring emotion always.

F, B flat, E flat, A flat.

Well done if you start to get your head around these keys.

And don't worry if you didn't get all of those answers correct, learning these just takes practice and experience.

And the more you learn them or practice them, the more it will just become automatic to know, for example, that A major has three sharps.

It will just eventually become something that you know.

The listening questions.

Question one; the type of tonality was minor.

Remember, the type of tonality is just telling us is it minor or is it major, for example.

There are other tonalities, but in the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods we're really focused on minor and major.

The relative major of G minor is B flat major.

We work that out by taking three steps up the keyboard from G to get to B flat, which is the tonic of that.

If you took three steps down and ended up on E, you were just going in the wrong direction.

You would only do that if you were going from major and trying to work out the relative minor.

And then the correct key signature for G minor and its relative major is two flats.

Remember that B flat major has two flats.

Flats bring a motion always, it's the one with two flats.

And has the same key signature as G minor, so they both have that key signature.

Really well done if you got those questions correct.

When you're first learning about keys, key signatures, and tonality, it can take a little bit of getting your head round it, it can be quite intimidating, but if you stick to the processes we've looked at so far and you just get lots of practice in and learning these, it will eventually become automatic.

Now we're gonna move on to look at chords and cadences.

Harmony and tonality are separate things, and sometimes people mix up the two but they are different concepts.

Tonality is the type of notes that are used in a piece of music.

For example, major or minor.

Whereas harmony refers to the way that those notes are combined into chords, and the way that those chords are used.

So tonality describes the bigger picture of a piece of music, whereas harmony hones in specifically on particular chords, moments, and how the chords are combined together.

Despite the musical changes that happened through the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods, there are some fundamental conventions that underpin the use of harmony throughout all of these three periods.

In all three periods, harmony is dominated by the primary chords.

These are the three most important chords in a key which chords one, four, and five.

And you might have seen them written with the Roman numerals before.

They're I meaning one, IV meaning four, and V meaning five.

Chord one is the tonic chord.

It's the home chord of a key.

And when it's played the music feels resolved and complete.

It feels like we've gone home, and it feels like the music could finish there.

Chord five is what's called the dominant chord.

So we got tonic and dominant.

Chord five feels unresolved and like it needs to resolve back to the tonic.

So if we end on chord five, it feels like it still needs to go somewhere to get back to that home chord, to that tonic chord one.

Chord four is called the subdominant chord.

So we've got tonic one, dominant five, subdominant four.

This also feels unresolved because it's not gone back to chord one.

Chord one is the chord that feels resolved, but chord four can be used in different ways to chord five.

So it has a slightly different role in harmony to chord five.

Let's listen to each of these phrases.

Can you work out which one of these finishes on chord one and therefore feels resolved? And can you work out which finishes on chord five, feeling like it needs to resolve back to chord one? So we're listening for that feeling at the end.

Which one feels complete and finished? Chord one.

And which one feels incomplete and unfinished? Chord five.

Let's have a listen to the first one.

(Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) Let me play that one more time.

So does that feel resolved and finished or unfinished like it needs to resolve? (Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) Now let's hear the second clip.

How does this one feel at the end? (Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) Let's hear it one more time.

(Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) Hopefully there you managed to identify the difference between the first one that feels incomplete and unfinished at the end.

It finished on chord five, the dominant chord.

And the second one, which feels much more resolved and finished at the end because it finishes on chord one, that tonic chord.

Let's check your understanding.

What is the tonic chord? Is it one, four, or five? I'll give you a few seconds to work this one out.

And the correct answer is chord one is the tonic.

Well done if you remember that one, that's a key point to remember.

Secondary chords are also used in all three periods.

These contrast with the primary chords that we've just looked at of one, four, and five.

These are the remaining chords which are chord two, three, and six.

Chord seven is rarely used, especially in major keys.

So when we're thinking about secondary chords, we're really focusing on two, three, and six most of the time.

In the Baroque and Classical periods, these are most often used to link primary chords or substitutes for them.

Most phrases still start and end with primary chords.

So primary chords are the most common ones, the most important ones that form the foundation of the harmony.

And then the secondary chords are used to add some color, add some variety, or link between those primary chords.

A typical classical chord sequence might look like this.

We've got one, four, one, five, one, two, five, and one.

And we can see there's only one secondary chord used here, which is that chord two.

And that's quite typical.

Most of the chords are gonna be primary chords.

One misconception you might have is that the lowercase letters in the chord, so you can see that chord two has lowercase i's because it is a secondary chord, that's not the case.

Chords use uppercase if they are major chords, and lowercase if they are minor chords.

And it just happens that in a major key, chord two is a minor chord.

Chromatic harmony is where notes from outside of the key signature are used as well as notes from inside the key signature.

It creates more complex colorful harmony which composers explored particularly in the romantic period.

So they were experimenting more with secondary chords and other chords, and using chromatic notes as well.

The harmony became more complex.

Compare these two examples; can you identify which one uses chromatic notes? And the key here is you're looking for the melody and the notes that sound a bit less simple, more complex like it's using notes from outside of the key.

Let's listen to the first one.

(Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) And here's the second one.

(Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) And hopefully there you spotted that the first one is the one that uses chromatic notes.

It sounds a bit more complex and uses notes from outside of the key.

Let's just hear that one more time and try and notice how it uses notes that don't quite sound like they would fit in the key.

(Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) Now, music that uses chromatic notes often looks complex in notation.

And that's because it has extra sharps and flats written.

However, it isn't necessarily harder to play, it might just look more complex on paper.

Look at these two melodies.

Can you identify which two of these is chromatic using notes from outside of the key signature? Pause my video, pick which one you think is chromatic.

And well done then if you identified that the second one is the chromatic one.

We know that because there are extra sharps, flats, and naturals written, meaning that the performer would have to play notes that don't fit with that key signature, in this case, D major.

So well done if you identified that.

And when you are looking at notation, you can identify chromatic movement really easily just by looking for those extra accidentals, those extra sharps, flats, and naturals.

Let's check your understanding.

What is a chromatic note? Is it a sharp or a flat? A note from outside the key? The home note of a key? Or a note that uses a sharp or flat within the key? I'll give you a few seconds.

(silence) And the correct answer is it's a note from outside the key.

The reason when you are looking at notation that you'll see those extra sharps or flats written is because they have to be written to tell the performer to play those notes from outside the key.

So chromatic means from outside the key.

The final aspect of harmony that we're gonna look at is cadences.

Now, these are crucial aspects of harmony in all three of the periods, the baroque, classical and romantic periods.

A cadence is a combination of two chords at the end of a phrase or section.

There are four main types of cadence, all of which have a different musical effect.

I'm gonna look at these now.

I'd like to listen to these two clips.

How would you describe the feeling created at the end of each clip? Thinking about how it feels resolved or the emotions that it creates.

Let's have a listen to the first one.

(Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) And now the second one.

(Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) So the first example there felt resolved and complete.

And that's because it is what we call a perfect cadence.

A perfect cadence is when the chords at the end of a section are chord five, that's the dominant chord.

And then chord one, that's the tonic chord.

It always goes five, one, in a perfect cadence.

And it feels resolved because it finishes on the tonic chord.

That's the home chord, chord one.

That creates this feeling of completeness and resolution.

And that notation you can see there is an example of a perfect cadence in the key of C major.

We've got chord five, which is a G major chord.

And then we've got chord one, which is a C major chord.

Let's check your understanding of that.

A perfect cadence sounds what? Fill in the blank please.

I'll give you a few seconds.

(silence) And the correct answer here is it sounds resolved or you might have said complete or finished.

It's got that feeling of going home and completeness.

Now, the second example we listened to was an imperfect cadence.

So we've had perfect cadence which finishes and feels resolved on chord one.

And then we've got an imperfect cadence which finishes on chord five.

So it feels unfinished and like more chords need to follow to make it feel resolved.

So perfect finishes on one, imperfect finishes on five and feels unresolved.

So if we're in the key of C major, we might have this notation here where we finish on that G chord, chord five.

And it still feels like it needs to go somewhere else to feel resolved.

Have a listen to these two examples.

One of them is perfect and one of them is imperfect.

Can you identify which is which? And to do this you're listening for if it sounds finished and complete, finishing on chord one, that's the perfect cadence.

Or if it sounds unfinished like it still has somewhere to go, finishing on chord five, that's the imperfect cadence.

Let's listen to both of them.

Here's the first one.

(Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) So just thinking about the feeling at the end of that there.

Did it sound resolved and complete or unfinished like it still had somewhere to go? Now let's listen to the second one.

How does this feel at the end? (Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) Hopefully you managed to identify there that the first one was imperfect.

It feels unfinished, finishing on chord five.

And then the second one was perfect.

It feels complete and resolved and finished because it finished on chord one, that tonic chord.

Let's check your understanding.

Which chord does an imperfect cadence end on? Is it one, three, five or six? I'll give you a few seconds.

(silence) And the correct answer here is chord five.

If it's imperfect, it finishes on chord five.

There are also two other important cadences.

So we've looked at perfect and imperfect.

Now we're gonna look at the interrupted cadence.

And this one sounds like we are going to hear a perfect cadence.

So it's set up to give us that nice resolution.

But the composer interrupts the cadence, that's why it's called an interrupted cadence, by ending on a different chord.

And usually in a major key, this would be a minor chord.

So it creates a sense of something a bit surprising, unexpected, like it's interrupted what was naturally going to happen.

The notation there we can see as an example where in that case if we're in C major it's gone from chord five like it's gonna do a perfect cadence back to chord one.

But then it suddenly moves to chord six, which is a minor chord, creates a bit of a surprising unexpected end.

Have a listen to this interrupted cadence, and think about that feeling that it creates at the end.

Does it feel resolved? What sort of emotional feeling does it create from the harmony? Let's have a listen.

(Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) Hopefully there you identified that it sounds so unexpected and unresolved at the end.

And that's because it doesn't finish on chord one.

So it only feels that real sense of resolution and completeness if it finishes on chord one.

And it's a slightly surprising chord that comes at the end.

You're not expecting it to come that's why it's called an interrupted cadence 'cause it's interrupting that normal, perfect cadence.

The plagal cadence is the fourth cadence we're gonna look at.

We've looked at perfect and imperfect, looked at interrupted.

And now the fourth one, plagal.

This uses the progression of four-one.

And it's often used at the end of hymns and sung to the word "Amen".

So sometimes it's called the Amen cadence because it's so heavily associated with the end of church hymns.

It sounds similar to a perfect cadence because they both sound finished and complete on chord one.

So it finishes on chord one, just like a perfect cadence.

We've got some notation there that will show you an example of that if we're in C major, a plagal cadence would be going from the F chord, that's chord four, to C chord, which is chord one.

I'd like you to listen now to this perfect cadence and plagal cadence.

How could you tell the difference between the two? Because they both finish on chord one, so what's the defining difference that might allow you to identify the difference between them both? Here's our perfect cadence.

(Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) And here's a plagal cadence.

How would you tell the difference between this and the perfect cadence? (Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) So identifying the difference between a plagal and a perfect cadence is quite tricky, and that's because they both feel resolved.

The plagal sounds slightly different because it uses chord four before chord one, instead of chord five, which is what the perfect cadence uses.

But this can be quite challenging to identify.

To spot the difference, the key is to listen to the two base notes.

So the notes at the bottom of the chords.

In plagal cadence, the interval's gonna go from the fourth note of the scale back to the tonics.

That's from four to one.

So from the key of C major, base removed from F to C.

And that might be a descending fourth of an interval.

In a perfect cadence instead it's gonna go from five to one.

So in C major, that'd be going from G to C.

So we can listen for that different interval and try and work out those two base notes.

This does take practice.

This is not something that's easy to do straight away.

And you just need to get used to identifying those base notes and how they move.

As a general rule, perfect cadences are far more common in Western classical music than plagal cadences.

So if you're trying to work out a cadence and you're not sure which of those two it is, as a general rule, perfect is probably a safer bet than a plagal.

But ideally you'd want to get really good at identifying both so we can be really be precise and confident with our answers.

Have a listen to these two.

Can you identify which one is plagal, so it moves from chord four to chord one? And which one is perfect? So it moves from chord five to chord one.

Try and listen out for those base notes.

If you can, sing them back to yourself and work out which one is going from the fourth note of the scale to the tonic, and which is going from the fifth note to the tonic.

This is tricky, but give it your best shot.

Here's the first example.

(Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) I'll play that one more time.

Try and listen out for those base notes and sing them back to yourself at the end.

(Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) If you want to pause my video to sing those base notes back and work out that interval, you can do that now.

And now let's hear the second example.

Is this plagal or perfect? (Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) One more time, the second example.

(Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) As I've said, it is tricky identifying the difference between the two, particularly when it's something that's new to you.

But brilliant effort if you identified the first one was plagal because the base note was moving from the fourth note of the scale to the tonic.

And the second was perfect 'cause the base note was moving from the fifth note of the scale down to the tonic.

So in summary, there are four types of cadence.

Perfect cadence.

This moves from chord five to chord one at the end of a phrasal section, and it feels resolved.

An imperfect cadence, which ends on chord five and therefore feels unfinished.

An interrupted cadence, which ends on a different chord and it sounds unexpected.

And then a plagal cadence, which is chord four and then chord one.

And this feels resolved just like a perfect cadence, but it uses chord four before chord one, instead of the chord five that you would get in a perfect cadence.

Let's check our understanding.

Which cadence ends on an unexpected chord? Is it perfect, imperfect, interrupted, or plagal? I'll give you a few seconds.

(silence) And the correct answer here is it's the interrupted cadence that ends on an unexpected chord 'cause the composer is interrupting that normal perfect cadence.

Which cadence uses chord five and then chord one? I'll give you a few seconds to choose the answer.

(silence) And the correct answer here is perfect.

Perfect cadence goes from five the dominant, to one the tonic.

Well done if you got that one.

Have a listen to this one.

What is this cadence? So listen to the chords at the end of the clip.

What cadence does this create? (Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) And the correct answer here was that was an imperfect cadence.

The way we know that is because it feels unresolved and incomplete at the end.

Really well done if you identified that correctly.

That shows that you're starting to get your head around these different cadences and the feeling that the harmony creates.

But task B, listen to this extract and answer the questions.

What is the tonality? Remember, tonality is generally speaking what kind of notes are used.

This is the chord sequence.

I'd like to circle any chords that are not primary chords.

So think about what your three primary chords are, and circle any that are not primary chords.

For question three, what cadence is used at the end? What cadence can you hear? And how many times is the tonic chord used? And you can use that written out chord sequence that you can see there to help you with question three and four as well.

So let's listen to this extract now.

Use the chord sequence that's written there and answer these four questions.

Here's the clip.

(Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) I'll play you a bit one more time.

Here we go.

(Western classical music begins) (Western classical music ends) Now you can pause my video and finish off all four questions.

Okay, let's review task B.

The tonality was major.

Well done if you identified that by hearing those major chords and major tonality.

The chords that were not primary chords are chord six and chord two, and you can see them there in bar five and six.

Remember, the primary chords are one, four, and five.

So anything that is not one, four, and five is a secondary chord.

The cadence heard at the end was a perfect cadence.

And we can see if we look at the chord sequence there, five and then one, means it's a perfect cadence.

And the tonic chord is used three times.

Remember, the tonic chord is chord one.

And if you look at the chord sequence there, we can see it's used in the first two bars and then at the end as well.

So three times in total.

So well done if you've got those questions right.

We've tested lots of different aspects of your understanding of harmony and tonality there.

And even if you didn't get them right, hopefully you start to feel a bit more confident identifying these different harmonic concepts and just understanding how chord sequences, chords, and tonality work as well.

Let's review today's lesson.

In the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods, tonality was almost always major or minor.

Every piece has a key signature, which explains which notes should be used in the given key.

Harmony in all three periods is based on primary chords.

That's chord one, four, and five, with some use of secondary chords.

Romantic composers experimented more with chord choice and chromatic notes.

That's notes from outside the key.

And cadences are fundamental to all three periods, with perfect and imperfect cadences being the most common.

So that's the end of today's lesson.

We've gone through a huge amount there exploring the fundamentals of harmony and tonality.

And even if you don't feel like you've got your head around all of those concepts perfectly yet, hopefully you're feeling a little bit better equipped to experiment with harmony and tonality in your own composition, but also to understand more what's going on in the harmony of pieces that you're listening to, analyzing, or performing.

So thanks for taking part in today's lesson.

And I'll see you in another one.

(silence).