- Hi, I'm Gareth Green, and in this video,
we're going to be learning how to spot double major thirds.
Now, what's all this about?
There's a little kind of rule if you like
in the writing of four-part harmony
that says it's better not to double major thirds in a chord.
In other words, you can double minor thirds,
but try to avoid doubling major thirds.
Now I'm just going to say upfront that while this is a rule,
it's a little bit more of an advisory rule
than, if you like, a really compulsory one.
There are other rules in harmony,
like try not to write consecutive fifths
or consecutive octaves, and those
I think we have to treat more seriously.
The reason I say this is actually,
if you look at the music of many great composers,
you will find examples of double major thirds.
So for example, look at the music of J.S. Bach,
you'll find Bach doubles his major thirds.
Well, he didn't have to worry about it,
he wasn't trying to pass harmony exams
or anything like that, of course.
But actually, when you do look at it,
you'll notice that generally speaking,
Bach does avoid doubling major thirds,
unless there's a good reason to ignore the rule.
Well, seems to me, in any form of composition,
that's very sensible.
There are some people who make a virtue
of writing consecutive fifths and consecutive octaves,
because they want to write in a style
that really features that.
Well, once it becomes a feature of a piece,
well, that's part of the character of the music, isn't it?
Whereas if you just get the odd consecutive fifth
it tends to sound a bit strange.
Well, double major thirds are not really offensive
to the ear, but the argument is this,
that a major third, if it comes more than once in a chord
when you're writing four-part harmony,
tends to slightly dominate the chord
in a way that doubling a minor third doesn't.
It's a bit of a moot point,
but nevertheless, that's the thinking of it.
So if I take a C major chord,
just take my C, E, G,
and I organise that into four parts,
let's say I have it organised like this.
Well, I've got two E's in that chord,
and the E is the major third of that chord.
Well, this is the argument,
that if I have two of those major thirds,
it tends to dominate the chord a bit.
So if I take one of them out,
so at the moment I've got a four-part chord
that the bass has got E, the tenor's got middle C,
the alto's got E again, the soprano's got C.
Okay, so hear that slight dominance
of the double major third.
Now, if I move the alto from E up to G,
the argument is that the chord sounds much better for it.
And I agree, it does sound a lot better, doesn't it?
If I have this, well it's all right,
but this is a lot better.
Do you hear the difference?
Or instead of having this,
well, maybe the bass could move down to a C.
And you might say, "Well yeah, you've doubled the C now.
"You've got C and C."
Actually it doesn't have the same impact on the chord.
So you can double the root of a chord,
you can double the fifth of the chord,
you can double the minor third, if there is a minor third,
but when you get a major third,
it's always worth trying to avoid.
Bach will double his major thirds if, for example,
he's trying to preserve a scale run in the bass,
and it just happens to create a double major third
on the way.
Okay, is it better to break the scale run
in order to avoid breaking the rule?
Or do you think, "Well, actually on this occasion,
"I know I'm doubling the major third,
"but I'm going to do it anyway"?
That's the view he takes
and the view that many other composers take too.
So I think the basic thing is, don't write major thirds
doubled for the fun of it.
But if you end up thinking, "Oh, you know what?
"If I change that double major third,
"it's going to impair what I'm trying to achieve musically",
well, that's where there might be
a bit of room for manoeuvre.
Okay, now let's think more about
when we're likely to be doubling these major thirds.
The piece of music that you can see here
is in the key of E-flat major.
So let's just think in E-flat major for a moment.
The scale of E-flat major is
E-flat, F, G, A-flat, B-flat, C, D, E-flat.
So the chords in E-flat major,
here's chord I, E-flat, G, B-flat.
Chord II, F, A-flat, C.
Chord III, G, B-flat, D.
Chord IV, A-flat, C, E-flat.
Chord V, B-flat, D, F.
Chord VI, C, E-flat, G.
Chord VII, D, F, A-flat.
Well, in any major key, chords I, IV and V are major chords.
All right?
So I is major, IV is major, V is major.
The others are something else.
So II is minor, III is minor, VI is minor,
VII is diminished.
Okay, well the great thing about using the minor chords
or the diminished chord is that you're not going to have
major thirds in the chords,
because the thirds are minor thirds above the root.
But when you're using major chords,
the thing that makes it a major chord really
is the fact that you have a major third.
So say you've written a piece of harmony,
or you've written a piece of music,
and you're concerned about this double major third business.
Well, instead of having to comb through every single note,
thinking, "Oh my goodness, what's going on,
"is there a double major third here?"
You only need to look for chords I, IV and V
if you're in a major key.
Now, if you're in a minor key,
the situation can be a little bit more complicated.
If you're working with a harmonic minor scale,
which you quite likely will be if you're writing harmony.
The clues in the name, isn't it, harmony, harmonic minor.
In a minor scale, you're going to have chords V and VI
as your major chord.
So when you're in a minor key
and life is ticking very happily in the harmonic minor,
check all your chord V's and your chord VI's
to see if you've got double thirds there.
Otherwise, you'll be dealing with other things,
because in A minor, well, chord I is minor,
II is diminished, III is augmented, IV is minor,
V is major, so you see that G-sharp is a major third,
so if you've got two G-sharps in the chord,
you've doubled the major third.
Chord VI is major, it's an F major chord,
so if you've got two A's in it,
you've doubled the major third.
Chord VII is diminished, so no problem there.
So it's only V and VI in the minor key.
But any major chord where the third appears more than once
in a fairly conventional four-part kind of harmony
is the thing that we're supposed to be looking out for.
Now, what I've given you here
is eight bars of a bit of music that I've just put together
and I've purposely done it
to be full of double major thirds,
and I've done it in such a way
as to try and make it sound quite okay.
So you'll listen to this and think,
"Well, what on Earth is all this fuss about?"
And I have some sympathy with that view.
But I've done it so you can think,
"Well, it's not the worst thing in the world".
But we'll then go through
and work out where these double major thirds are,
and whether actually in some cases it might sound better
if we eliminate the double major thirds.
So here's the piece as it stands.
Okay, well you listen to that,
whether you like that style or not, doesn't matter,
but it doesn't sound offensive to the ear, does it?
But if we comb through it,
we're going to spot quite a few double major thirds.
So it's a kind of useful exercise in spotting these things,
and then if you were writing some harmony for an exam,
you'd definitely try and do something about it.
If you're writing for yourself, then you might think,
"Well, is it worth changing this?
"Is it not worth changing it?"
But let's go through and see what's happening.
So we're looking for major chords.
We're looking for chords I, IV and V in this extract.
So what happens if we start off
by just whizzing through this thing
and working out what the chords are.
So let me quickly just notate it.
I,
Ib,
I,
IV,
II,
Ic,
V,
VI,
IV,
VIIb,
I,
V7b,
V7,
Ib,
IV,
II7,
V,
I.
And in case you're bothered about me using b's and c's,
that's a kind of UK tradition
that's used in many other parts of the world as well,
where in that system, "a" means root position,
"b" means first inversion, "c" means second inversion.
If you've been brought up more in that kind of US system,
you'll have used different ways of talking about this,
so the root position will be a I5-3,
the first inversion is a I6-3,
and the second inversion is a I6-4, for example.
Same thing though.
So the point of just whizzing through to see what's going on
is now to work out, well which are the chords
are the ones that could be troublesome.
So if we're in a major key, which we are,
we're looking at anything that's to do
with chords I, IV or V.
So which are the chords we need to look at?
Well, here we've got a load of I's,
IV, II is not going to be a problem,
there's a I, there's a V,
VI is not a problem,
there's a IV,
VII's not a problem,
there's a I, V, V, I, IV,
II's not a problem,
V, I.
I purposely put lots of major chords in this
so that we can kind of draw attention to them.
But you might find in a real piece
that you would have far fewer of these major chords,
because you'd have more of these secondary chords,
these minor chords and other chords going on.
So now all we need to do is to check all the chords
that I've circled and say,
"Have we got double major thirds in this chord?"
So chord I, the third of that chord is G.
Well, we've got G, haven't we, in the soprano part,
but we haven't got it anywhere else.
So that's not doubled, it's just appeared once.
I've got the bass on the tonic, on the root,
the tenor's doubling the root,
the alto has the fifth, and the third is at the top,
so there's only one third.
Look at the second chord in the first bar though,
and you can see that we've got two G's, haven't we?
We've got a G and a G.
So the G is the major third in a chord I, isn't it?
The G is a major third above that root note, E-flat.
Because it's a first inversion chord,
it's a Ib chord or a I6-3 chord,
we've already got the major third in the bass.
So if you have a major chord in first inversion,
bear in mind you've already got one major third in the bass.
So if that bass note comes somewhere else,
you've doubled it,
and that's why I've put that example in here.
Okay, the next chord is chord I,
so we're looking for any doubling of a G again, aren't we?
But there's one G in the alto part,
but we've got E-flat, E-flat, so two roots,
a fifth in the soprano, and only one third.
So that's fine, that's not doubled.
Going onto bar two, you might notice
that we have got a double major third here,
because we've got chord IV,
the third of chord IV is C.
Because IV is a major chord,
we know the C is a major third.
So I've got A-flat, C, A-flat, C.
So you feel that, you see the point of this rule.
That major third slightly dominates the chord.
So it's kind of thinking,
"Yeah okay, I might want to change something
"to get round that."
Okay, so maybe I could change the tenor note,
maybe I could change the soprano note
but just to kind of juggle your way out of it.
The next chord is chord II, so that's not a problem.
Going into bar three.
We begin with Ic, so okay, one in second inversion.
Have we got two G's in that chord?
No, we haven't.
There's a G at the top in the soprano,
but there's no G in the alto, the tenor
or the bass part so we're safe.
Notice that when we go to the second beat,
the Ic is still going on,
but some of the notes have moved.
So just check the second beat
just to make sure nothing has moved into a position
where we've got two major thirds.
Actually, you'll see, we've got one G in the alto,
but it's not doubled, so that's okay.
End of bar three, chord V, the third of that is D
and that's going to be a major third.
So do you notice, I've got D in the tenor
and D in the soprano, so that's a double major third.
Bar four is all about chord VI, so that's not a problem
because it's a minor chord.
Bar five, we start with chord IV.
The third is C, so it's going to be a major third
and we've got two of them, so there's a double one.
Chord VII, no worries about that.
It's a chord VIIb, to be precise,
so maybe I should just put that in
because it's a first inversion chord.
That's fine.
So that's not a problem.
Then we have a chord I at the end of bar five,
so have we got two G's in that chord?
No, there's only one in the alto.
Marvellous.
Go onto the next chord.
It's a V7b chord, a V7 in first inversion.
Have we got two D's in that chord, the third?
No, we haven't.
We've got a D in the bass, life is good.
And then there's a bit of messing about
in the tenor and bass parts with passing notes.
But when we go onto the second beat of the bar,
we've still only got one D, this time it's in the tenor.
So it was in the bass, now it's moved to the tenor,
but the bass has moved away from the D,
so it's still not doubled, so that's great.
End of bar six, we've got a Ib chord,
so remember this is alarm bell time,
because if it's I, if it's in first inversion,
it's a major chord in first inversion
so we've already got the third in the bass.
But here, we've got the third in the soprano as well,
so that's a double major third that will need fixing.
Beginning of seven, we've got a chord IV, major chord.
The third is C, there it is in the tenor,
there it is in the soprano,
so there's another double major third.
The II7 that follows, that's not a problem
because it's chord II.
The V that follows could be a problem
if we've got two D's in it,
because the D is the major third,
but there's only one D in it, it's in the alto.
The other parts have all got different notes of the chord.
The last chord is a chord I, so that is a major chord.
The third is G.
How many G's have we got?
We've got one in the tenor.
So you see what's going on here.
You're looking for the major chords,
and then if you've got one third, brilliant,
but if you've got two thirds,
then that's when you have to start thinking,
"Oh, what am I going to do about this?"
So I'm not going to go through and correct it all,
but for example, in the first bar,
where you've got those two G's on the second beat,
you could decide that, say the alto is going to have
a B-flat repeated instead of the G.
So instead of doing,
and having that double major third,
the alto's going to stick on the B-flat.
Actually does it sound better?
Yes, it does.
So you see, by fixing these things,
sometimes you end up with a better result.
So I hope that helps us to understand
what this rule of harmony is about,
because lots of people get slightly freaked out by it,
but this is what it is.
It's not too difficult to spot these things
once you kind of get into the flow of looking for them.
But I hope that's been helpful in explaining the rule,
in clarifying what we mean by double major thirds
and where you're likely to find them, how to spot them,
and then to start thinking about
how you're going to fix them if you're going to.
If you're wanting to get more into harmony,
we've got lots of things to help you at Music Matters.
If you go to www.mmcourses.co.uk,
you can access our online courses.
Things like the advanced theory course
will cover the kind of topic we're doing in this video,
and much more besides.
You might want to look at the Keyboard Harmony course
if you're a keyboard player
wanted to get this going under your fingers.
Or maybe the Aural Dictation course
that would just help you to be able to hear
all this stuff more clearly as well.
While you're on the website,
you might click on the Maestros link on the home page
that will tell you all about our special Maestros community,
a worldwide community of musicians.
We meet together once a month in a live stream
where you can put comments in our live chat
and we can have an exchange of musical ideas.
You can submit compositions or recordings or performances
you want some personal evaluation on.
We cover all sorts of musical topics of great interest
and often responding to requests from members of the group,
so that might be something else to go for.