Discussion 11c - Voice-leading for First and Third Inversion Chords

Inversion Immersion

Functional Substitution:

• Two chords whose roots are separated by a third.
• They share the same function.

Important tricks with the ii and IV chord:

• Often, ii can be treated like a IV chord.
• You can double the third of a ii chord (which would be the root of the IV chord), but only if you resolve each third in a different way. One goes up by step to the root of the V chord, while one goes down to the fifith of the V chord. The motion of the latter third is like that of a frustrated leading tone.
• The notes in the IV chord could also be treated like the notes of the ii chord if you so desire.

Voicing a viiº using functional substitution:

• Can’t double the root of a viiº because it’s a tendency tone.
• The fifth is acting as the chordal seventh and follows the same resolution rules. Ex: in C, viiº is B diminished. The fifth of the chord, F, will resolve down by step to E in I
• Frustrated sevenths are not a thing. We can only have a frustrated leading tone.
• Don’t try and do viiº in root position. As demonstrated in class, it doesn’t really work–we tried multiple inner voicings and all of them had a bunch of errors
• I - viiº - V6/5 - I
  • This is the one time you can double the fifth in a root position viio because it will result in a doubled root for V6/5, but honestly…it’s better to try and avoid them whenever possible

Three levels of function:

• Primary: predominant, dominant, and tonic. When we assign these to chords in a progression, we’re saying they fill a certain slot.
• Secondary: chords that have a primary function in a secondary key center.
• Tertiary: they don’t have a function in of themsleves, rather, they extend the function of a chord that they are next to.

Passing chords:

• They are like a collection of passing tones that we call a chord.
• They are not part of the functional progression.