Orchestral Voicings Part 8: Quartal and Quintal Voicings

While until now, we mainly looked at chords that basically were triadic harmonies (even if they had a few extensions), it is essential to understand that this by no means should be considered as the ultimate default that every chord should have. Structures that don't rely on stacking thirds can have a very fascinating quality, however often have the property of being harmonically ambiguous. This means if you look at them with a traditional harmonic approach, they could have different root notes and it's usually quite tricky to name them.

The most obvious alternatives to triadic harmonies would be quartal or quintal structures, or structures in seconds:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/quartalquintalm2/s-Fo1xWJSd8jv

Notice how all these chords seem rather "undefined" in their sound. (As a little trivia, that third chord (or in this case rather to be called cluster) is the "beaming" sound effect chord in Star Trek).

While there are compositions that at least in sections follow these strict structures, the more common approach to these structures would be to use voicings that use these structures predominantly but not exclusively as using them in their pure form would very quickly result in a very static harmonic impression.

While I mentioned already in another part CATCH ME IF YOU CAN by John Williams who as a central element of the main theme of this movie uses a voicing that stacks two perfect fourths and a minor third, the classical prototype of this harmonic approach probably is Miles Davis' "So What":

https://youtu.be/ylXk1LBvIqU?t=34

The central element here is what has become known as the "So What"-Chord:

It basically is a stack of three perfect fourths plus a major third. In order to harmonically shape the piece with this quartal impression, the exact voicing is being moved to different pitches to create some harmonic variety. The interesting thing about this chord is that we could give it a relatively simple chord symbol of Em11, however noticing that from the "standard" voicing strategy that we talked about before it doesn't follow the common structure by voicing the third of the chord (g) above the 11th (a) which in spite of the theoretical relatively simple chord gives it a feeling of being somehow ambiguous.

In fact this particular sound is one of the stylistic properties of the "Cool Jazz" era in the 1960s. Coming back to Williams' CATCH ME IF YOU CAN which plays in exactly this time, the "sneaky" and ambigous sound quality of this harmonic world plus the historical connection made it an excellent choice to base the score on.

Here is the CATCH ME IF YOU CAN voicing in comparison:

And yet it allows a (however slightly more complex) chord symbol.

You might have noticed that we're slowly reaching a ground where we reach the limits of what chord symbols can express. These two examples above are not defined by their CHORD but by their VOICING. And in order to replicate the intention and distinctive quality of this music, it is essential to get the voicing right.

Let's demonstrate this with the "So What"-Chord. Below are two perfectly fine voicings of an Em11 chord. One being rather traditional, the other one being the "So What" chord.

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/em11-voicings/s-N5E4euuqNuL

In spite of the subtle difference, in the context of what effect you create with these two, the difference is striking and the dominating fourth stacks in the second one have a strong influence on the perception of this voicing. In fact they define the voicing. If you apply this concept to the grand scale of a piece (as done in Catch me and So What), it will create a specific harmonic world that in consequence will also create a specific emotional response (which is of course an attractive playground for media composers).

The colour palette you can achieve with "non triadic" voicings is quite diverse. Let's for now stick to fourth structures and explore a bit possible colours if we play around with the interval between two stacks of perfect fourths:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/quartal-alternatives/s-U2tKucuxaDR

These are not meant as chord progression but rather as example of what kind of shades you can create with fourth structures. The only thing I changed are the intervals between these stacks (as indicated by the interval markings between the staves). From a pretty stable and "nice" sounding first chord (which could be labeled as D9sus4) to the minor ninth laden second voicing a lot of different hues are possible. And this is only by have a varaiable of one interval in the voicing. So the possibilites of what you can actually do by fourth dominated voicings are enormous. Just try adding another "non fourth" intveral or move the varaible interval somewhere else in the structure etc.

A similar approach can be employed with quintal harmony. The limiting factor here becomes that the span of several stacked fifth quickly becomes quite large with voicings spanning several octaves. However due to the stability of fifths it is possible to source incredibly beautiful voicings with just a few notes which can be observed by just moving two perfect fifths further and further apart (filling up another fifth when possible).

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/quintal-structures/s-Xn1qeKokuNT

I added chord symbols where the voicngs were unambiguous. Again, the possibilites here are almost endless, depending on how and where you employ "non quintal" intervals in the voicing, and yet all voicings share the tonal quality of the fifths that dominate them.

So the bottom line here is to show with these examples that voicings are essential in order to create certain effects.

I mentioned at the beginning that alternative chord structures could also be based on seconds and we'll get back to this when we have a look at cluster voicings in one of the next parts.