Basic Music Theory: How to Easily Use and Resolve the Three Tonal Functions.

Previous knowledge requiered: to be able to read violin and cello key and some praxis with intervals.

We will only focus on chords in root position. That means the root note of the chord is located in the lower voice (the bass).

Chords are built by adding two thirds over the root note. We will focus on mayor chords (wich have one mayor third and a minor third, in this particular order).

In this tutorial we will use the C Major tonality. C is the main note and the are not accidentals (that means we use all the notes of the scale without sharps and flats).

We will only talk about consonant intervals (3rds, 5ths, 6ths (not from the bass because we are working woth root positions chords) and octaves).

Pencil, paper and a brain.

First of all it is mandatory to know the basic rules of resolving chords:

-It is not allowed to do parallel fifths or octaves.

-No distance over an octave between voices (except for Bass-Tenor).

Music is about reaching tension and resolving it. There are three funtions: Tonic (the 1st degree of the scale and), Subdominant (4th grade of the scale) and Dominant (5th grade of the scale). If you want a tonic chord, you build a chord over this root: the 1st grade of the scale. The Tonic is relax, home. So you want to finish your chord progression in a Tonic, and you might want to start with it, too. You normaly go from tension (Subdominant) to even more tension (Dominant) before resolving in Tonic. You can also go T-S-T or T-D-T as well. D-T is not so popular because it sounds like old Reinassence modal music, but we will not go further into that now.

What I am trying to say is that music theory is not mathematics and it should not be understood like this. If you make chord progressions thinking about its meaning, it will change your point of view and it will make sense.

In order to lead the voices the best posible way, it is needed to keep the common notes (one note that belongos to the two chords), to avoid jumping big intervals (the bass is sometimes an exception).

Sometimes, you can omit the 5th of the chord if it benefits the voice leading, but the third always needs to be there.

It sound much better when you reach a 5th or an octave and the voices go in countermovement. Try to do this specially between the external voices: bass and soprano.

In general, you have to pay attention to where the voices are going. If you see they are all moving in the same direction, then you are probably making a mistake. Try to move some of the other voices in the oposite direction where the bass is going.