Lesson 6c - Basic Voice Leading Errors

Before we move on to analyzing harmonic function, we must define the stylistic rules of the music we will be studying. I hope that you remember from our discussion of laws, rules, and strategies that rules are necessary to create a style. They are the binding agents that create a genre, but they also provide enough flexibility for composers within a style to carve out a unique voice. For our beginning exploration of tonal harmony, we will be studying basic diatonic harmony in a chorale style, so we need to consider the stylistic issues that arise when adding inner voices to our soprano-bass counterpoint.

Voice-leading errors

In the following example, each staff system highlights a different voicing error.

• Compare the “good” chords to the “bad” chords to come up with descriptions of the first two basic voicing rules of doubling and spacing.
• Because range is a simple maximum and minimum, I have listed conservative estimates for each voice part.
  • These can vary widely depending on the skill level of the intended performers but will be sufficient for our early exercises in part-writing.

Conclusions

To this point, everything that we have discussed has been based on a two-voice model, but to move into full diatonic harmony, we need to add inner voices and fully flesh out the harmonies. When doing this, there are certain rules that create better voice-leading and voicings when followed, but please note that these rules are generally strong suggestions rather than hard and fast rules. Good composers constantly bend or break these rules if it better serves their ideas.

Doubling

When voicing triads in four-part harmony, at least one note must be doubled.

1. Doubling the root is the ideal choice.
2. Doubling the fifth is the second best option.
3. Doubling the third is generally unacceptable, although there are certain corner cases in which this can be necessary. As a rule of thumb, try to never double the third. The reason for this will be clear after we talk about chordal resolutions in Unit 7a.
4. If you need to omit a voice, the fifth is the only option, because the root and third are required to define the chord. Diminished triads are the only diatonic harmony that require a fifth as well.
5. You can triple the root if necessary, but this creates a difficult voicing to continue writing afterwards. This is most commonly used as an ending chord of the piece (often after a V7).

Doubling in a seventh chord is similar, but because you have four notes for four voices, there is less freedom.

1. There must always be a root, third, and seventh in the chord, because without any of them, the chord is no longer a functional seventh chord.
2. If necessary, you can omit the fifth.
3. If the fifth is ommitted, the root is the only chord tone that can be doubled. Do not double the third or the seventh.

Spacing

Spacing is a relatively straightfoward idea, but it took the class quite a few tries to come up with working definitions based on the examples. The final conclusions were:

• The bass can be as far from the tenor as needed.
• Tenor and alto cannot have more than an octave between them.
• Soprano and alto cannot have more than an octave between them.
• Tenor and soprano can have more than an octave between them.
  • When the tenor and soprano are within an octave of each other, we call this a closed voicing.
  • When the tenor and soprano are more than an octave apart, we call this an open voicing.

In general, a good voicing will mimic the overtone series on which our harmony is created. This details of this concept are discussed in Unit 8, but a general rule of good voicing is to allow wider intervals between lower voices and narrower intervals between high voices.

Range

The ranges for each voice in the examples are conservative, but will serve us well in our beginning part-writing. These are highly dependent on the intended performers.

Voice-crossing

There was no easy way to notate this in the examples, but voice-crossing should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. It is almost never absolutely necessary.