Hello and welcome. In this episode, I will be telling you what quartal Harmony is and how you can use it in your music. I will also be looking at the melody harmonization process with these chords and explore some ideas for it. Let's get started. Cuarto, or even quintal Harmony is a term that refers to chords built by stacking fourths. Or fifths. These chords don't need to have these intervals exclusively as
they can be considered. As such as long as these intervals predominate, these cards can also be inverted and this is actually one of the ways in which you can prevent harmonic monotony caused by the fixed interval position of stacked Force. For instance, if you have this chord progression in fourths, you can either maintain it. It's fixed position or you can rearrange the nodes in a way that favors a better voice leading movement.
This only means that we are trying that each note that goes from one car to the next smoothly. Moves by the smallest interval possible. Cuartel cards can be very ambiguous in the sense that we can get the proper field for the Route more often than not, this ambiguity is introduced by the lack of the third in relation to the root of that Court, meaning that you are free to use major or minor modes on top of these chords. And because there is no clear route.
These chords don't have an impetus to resolve to any other particular court to show you this. I will be using this cord in fourth and then change the base. Note, what happened is that the existence of a bass note puts the rest of the chord tones in the context of that base notes. So, It's time, we change it it implies different, chords all together apart from the sound of the cars themselves. This ambiguity is one of the reasons why these are so
appealing to Modern composers. It's all very vague harmonically and the ability of turning vagueness into something is a very useful resource. Another thing you can do is to have your cords built in thirds and then rearrange them in fourth intervals. Let's say you have a chord progression In thirds like this one. Now, you can arrange it in fourths. And you can change it even further by experimenting with different bass notes. This is a nice way of
repurposing. An existing chord progression in your music because it suggests different cards. You can even switch it back to chords in thirds. As for chord progressions, the approach is the same. As chords in thirds, you can consider a base or root movement and stack fourths on top of that route. When you go about harmonizing a Melody, the procedure is also the same now considering that you want to use quartal Harmony, which is what we have been talking about.
You will try to match the chord tones to the melody, but this is not mandatory or even desirable at times, it's a guideline to get you started. Here are some ways you could approach the harmonization process by matching the malady with tones of the cord, you choose. Are after the fact you can use chord inversions for smoother, Baseline transitions. Or by first adding a base movement to the melody and then harmonize it. The cards, ambiguity will work in your favor.
And whilst experimenting, you may end up with exciting results that will fool even more. Your creative juices. I hope that this approach to using quartal Harmony inspires you to make more music. I'll see you on the next episode. Happy composing.