Reharmonisation Part 2: Bass Notes 1

In the previous part of this tutorial, I was talking about the general idea of (re-)harmonisation and why these techniques are relevant, not only from a harmonic standpoint, but also from a dramaturgical standpoint, regardless whether for a film score or a purely musical dramaturgy. 

The plan with these tutorials is to introduce you to a few techniques and strategies to reharmonize and illustrate these concepts with plausible examples. We will start with the "easy" strategies that can be applied without much harmonic restructuring and work our way step by step to the more advanced concepts. Additionally, I'll try to always give a stylistic assessment about the strategy.

Today, I want to focus on one of the simplest but yet incredibly effective way to reharmonize which is through the change of the bass note(s).

The strategy to divert from the root notes of chords as their bass notes can transform a pedestrian chord sequence into a intriguing and "filmic" cadence that sounds way more sophisticated than it actually is.

Effectively, you can use any chord with any bass note, but for this part, we want to focus first on the "most obvious" ones, which would be the other notes of the chord. In fact, a chord with its third in the bass sounds considerably dfferent to the same chord with its root. It harmonically serves the same function, so it doesn't change anything on the harmonic dramaturgy, but just that difference of colour you get from the alternative bass note can make a huge difference.

The use of "non root" bass notes is practically non existant anymore in current chart music but has been a strong factor in the harmonic language of popular music in earlier decades. For instance, the harmonic language of ABBA is full of thirds and fifths in the bass. In film music, they have survived though. They are not present in every film or game score but even 4-chord trailer music cycles use them quite regularly.

As mentioned, most commonly, we would see the third or the fifth of the chord as alternative bass notes. Using higher structural notes of the chord as bass notes is relatively uncommon and quickly diverts into a world where you hear these chords in an ambivalent way. For example using the ninth of a Cadd9 chord as its bass note would sound more like a Dm11 chord than a C chord. So in order to keep the chord function intact, we should stick to the basic chord notes as alternative bass.

Historically speaking, a Dominant7 chord with the dom7 as bass note has been used and is relatively easy to understand, however it suffers from the same problem as the dom7 chord itself which is that it sounds relatively old fashioned and classical so we don't hear these chords a lot in current media music.

The third and fifth as bass note work equally well in major and minor chords. With minor chords, they also do adopt the property that it feels like you can combine everything with everything. You could work your way through a sequence of random minor chords and they would still feel somehow connected (A strategy which was excessively used by Howard Shore in his Lord of the Rings/Hobbit scores) Similarly, using thirds/fifths as bass notes in such a sequence doesn't change much about it.

With predominantly major cadences, the change of the bass notes can even add more structure to a chord sequence and give it more direction.

Let's take this short example:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/bass-notes-original-harmony/s-G90NGdVQe1U

As you can see, the harmonisation is very simple, circling around a basic diatonic cadence Let's also ignore the dodgy voice leading and parallel fifths for now as this is not the point that we're talking about here. It is obvious that the harmonisation of this example is very static. Even to a point where one gets annoyed by the constant repetition of the same harmonic degrees. The lack of dramaturgic structure is caused by the constant repetition of the tonic which always works as a reassuring stable "home chord" which however is exactly what makes this harmonisation so annoying. The entire harmonic structure doesn't manage to move away just a tad from its home. If you want to put it metaphorically, it feels like someone wants to go on a (melodic and harmonic) adventure but just takes a few steps out of the door just to return back and do it again.

Introducing chords that don't have their root as bass notes introduces a degree of instability. Of course, putting the third or the fifth of the chord into its bass doesn't have the same stable quality as a root note in the bass. In our example above, using more of these alternative bass notes helps to create variation in the otherwise repeating chords and due to that instability also removes some of these moments where one feels like it is harmonically too close to home. There are still a few moments where it circles back to the actual tonic with the root in the bass but still, this mild reharmonisation feels considerably more like a harmonic journey.

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/bass-notes-reharmonisation/s-eDeEoifbLMe

One chord that should be specifically noted here is the tonic chord with its third in the bass which gets particularly lots of use in film music but also in musical theatre. Probably 80% of all musical ballads use it, most often followed by the subdominant. Here's an example that is particularly notorious in its use. In spite of its excessive use, it still works very effectively and I have to admit that it also is one of my harmonic standard devices for "emotional".

Bass note reharmonisations are also used to "linearize" bass lines. Ascending or descending bass lines feel quite attractive for our ear as they create a strong sense of voice leading as opposed to cadential harmony where bass notes jump around quite heavily. If an opportunity arises where a section of a chord progression or even an entire chord progression can be restructured with alternative bass notes so that a linear motion in the bass line is possible, in most cases it is worth pursuing that approach.

Let's for instance look at this short chord progression.

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/linear-bass-original/s-ehw1Y2fZUIX

he cadential harmony causes alot of leaps in the bass line.

Through using alternative bass notes, we can linearize this line only leaving the final ii-V-(I) as structural pillar.

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/linear-bass-reharmonisation/s-jtfR02g2dmm

Another very commonly used device to change bass notes is the pedal point. In its essence, it means to sustain one note in the bass while changing the chords on top of it. Most commonly either the tonic or the dominant pitch is used as pedal point bass notes (in C major either sustaining a C or G). This device is excessively used in all sorts of popular music including film scores but again has the power to make trivial chord progressions considerably more interesting.

Here's an example:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/pedal-point-original/s-pdd99AYUZOs

You see (and hear) that again, the excessive use if the tonic chord compromises the structural dramaturgy of this progression. Other than that, it is not the greatest chord progression but I wanted to show an example that uses the pedal point on tonic and dominant as below:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/pedal-point-reharmonisation/s-DKIhr8fHQ2w

Theoretically pedal points are possible on all notes and also "high pedal points" are possible, but it is considerably more tricky to make pedal points other than tonic or dominant work.

Personally, I use all three strategies quite a lot in order to harmonically develop ideas. The great advantage is that they are quite easy to apply and are a great middleground between providing something new and remaining in the same harmonic ballpark.

For instance, in my piece GAZING AT THE NIGHT SKY, the reharmonisation strategies are largely based on the concepts mentioned above.

In spite of many of you probably knowing these concepts already and using them more or less consciously, it really is worth diving a bit deeper into these as they have a great potential without needing to completely restructure the harmonic path.