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KEYBOARD HARMONY

and

IMPROVISATION

Kenneth Simpson

© 1963 by Alfred Lengnick & Co. Ltd.

ALFRED LENGNICK & CO., LTD, 14, SHERATON STREET, LONDON, W.1

Sole selling rights Jor Canada of the Frederick Harris Music Co. Limited,

Oakville, Ont., Canada.

Sole Agent U.S.A., and South America; Mills Music, Inc., New York 19, N.Y



Contents PREFACE PAGE

Chapter 1 THE POINT OF VIEW 1

” 2 TONIC AND DOMINANT CHORDS IN G MAJOR 3

” 3 CHORDS I, IV, V 10

” 4 THE KEY OF G MINOR 16

” 5 FIVE NEW KEYS 19

” 6 THE CADENTIAL 6/4 CHORD 31

” 7 THE DOMINANT SEVENTH 38

” 8 IMPROVISATION : PRELIMINARIES 41

” 9 IMPROVISATION : A SCHEME OF WORK 44

” 10 THE SUBMEDIANT TRIAD AND

EXGURSIONS TO THE DOMINANT 50

” 11 THE APPOGGIATURA AND

EXCURSIONS TO THE RELATIVE MAJOR 57

” 12 THE SUPERTONIC TRIAD AND SIMPLE SUSPENSIONS 64

” 13 FIRST INVERSIONS OF CHORDS I, IV AND V 71

” 14 MOVING BASSES AND CHORD VII 6/3 76

” 15 CHORD PATTERNS IN MUSICAL SENTENCES 81

” 16 REVIEW AND PROSPECT 85

APPENDIX : KEYBOARD TECHNIQUE 88

NOT FOR RESALE

This edition is to be used solely for personal and educational use.

A. L. & Co., Ltd. 4157



Preface

There is a welcome growth of interest in practical keyboard harmony, both as a study in its

own right, and as a preparation for written harmony. This book, the outcome of a good many

years' experience of helping pupils and students of various ages and talents to approach this

subject, offers, by means of carefully graded and abundant exercises, a way of acquiring

systematically the resource needed to harmonise most of the tunes found in well-known song

books, and to add appropriate harmonic clothing to original melodies.

Detailed guidance and exercises are offered to enable the Student to develop some measure of

skill in improvisation, and through such features as exercises in practical harmonic analysis

(Chapter 15) and brief illustrative historical excursions (e.g. Chapter 11, the appoggiatura) an

attempt is made to help him to discover that the study of harmony can enrich his whole

experience and understanding of music.

The exercises are presented in such a way that the Student is led from the very begin-ning to

make considerable use of unessential notes. This ensures the growth of a feeling for

appropriate harmonic rhythm (or speed of chord change) and helps him to avoid the over-

harmonisation so common in the work of those who start their study of harmony with written

work. Moreover, a great deal of very easy material is given (102 of the exercises need no

more than the three primary trials in root position in simple keys) so that confidence can be

gained and a really firm foundation laid.

Ideally, of course, all music textbooks should draw their examples and exercises exclusively

from ' real' music. But life is short (and music type not unlimited) so I have devised a great

many of the melodies specially in order to give concentrated experience of the chords under

consideration. Nevertheless, I hope that I have included, or drawn attention to, sufficient

examples from other sources to establish the genuineness of my belief that ' real' music is the

eventual object of the study. An Appendix suggests ways of overcoming the problems of

keyboard technique which arise in this work.

My thanks are due to J. Raymond Tobin, editor of Music Teacher, for encouraging me to

write the series of articles on which the book is based, and to my wife for her help in typing

the articles, and her forbearance during their recasting and expansion into this new form.



CHAPTER ONE

The Point of View

The aim of this book is to enable students who have given thought and regular practice to the

subject to take a melody copy of any Standard song book to the piano and play an appreciable

number of the songs at sight with simple appropriate harmonisations. This is a satisfying

accomplishment and one of great practical value for any musician. For one thing, it gives

enhanced insight into the texture and structure of music and helps to obviate many common

slips over accidentals in Performance, for the player learns to think in particular tonal contexts

instead of relying on an uncomprehending, and therefore fallible, obedience to the accidentals.

The use of Keyboard Harmony in Classroom and Studio

The use of keyboard harmony for teachers in the class-room is obvious: less readily apparent,

but equally great, are the possibilities of help in private lessons to pupils on all sorts of

instruments. Many a technical drill on violin, oboe, voice or piano can be made more

meaningful, and therefore more interesting and purposeful, by the addition of an

accompaniment to clarify the rhythm: intonation, too, will be more certain in such exercises

with the help of a touch of piano.

But keyboard harmony has other uses. Many students, when they have gained some facility in

harmonising tunes with simple chords, will find themselves beginning to extemporise;

haltingly perhaps, at first, but with increasing assurance and expressiveness. Side by side with

this will go developing ability to recognise harmonic progressions in any music that is heard.

The ear (by which we really mean the mind) will become sharper in musical Observation and

perception, and the Student will begin to acquire, so far as harmony and pitch are concerned,

that precious skill in "seeing with the ear and hearing with the eye".

Sound and Sign

What should be the relation of keyboard harmony and written harmony? Keyboard harmony

is widely recognised as an invaluable aid when practised concurrently with the study of

written harmony. But an increasing number of experienced teachers go further and say that it

is a well-nigh indispensable preliminary to written work. Harmonising a melody on paper

presents three problems : first, the choice of appropriate chords, secondly, disposal of the

notes constituting the chords in ways providing satisfactory sonority (avoiding doubled

leading-notes, etc.1, and thirdly, ensuring that each of the individual voices moves in a way

which is not only melodically satisfactory (e.g., in text-book choral harmony, avoiding

augmented intervals and other leaps which are "difficult" or ungainly) but which also makes

accepted progression with other voices (avoiding consecutive fifths and octaves for example).

American theorists have an interesting and descriptive term for this third aspect of harmony:

"voice-leading". Notice, incidentally, that true to the inescapable traditions of harmony text-

books, the illustrations given are all "don'ts". Did not somebody once publish a book entitled

"One Hundred Don'ts for Harmony Students"? Or was it "Five Hundred . . . "?



The Practical Approach

It is the simultaneous presentation of these three difficulties, chord progression, chord

disposition and voice-leading, which disheartens and defeats so many students at the out-set

of their harmony studies. And it is totally unnecessary. It is an old and established educational

principle to analyse a problem, survey the components, and attack the difficulties, as far as is

possible, one at a time. By approaching the study of harmony through keyboard work we can

side-step the intimidating welter of warnings and prohibitions about voice-leading and chord

disposition and set the Student straight down, in a satisfying and enjoyable way, to the

acquisition of a memory for the sound and effect of chords and harmonic progressions. A

Student who goes no further than this will have acquired some-thing of far greater value than

he would have gained from the same amount of time devoted to written work. But he will also

have laid such an aural foundation that, if he does want to go on to written work, choice of

chord will offer little difficulty, so that he can give fuller attention to the new problems of

chord-dispositioning and voice-leading. In point of fact, if his keyboard study has been on

sound lines, he will also have picked up, subconsciously, habits which are substantially

correct, at an elementary level, in respect also of these other aspects of written harmony.

Importance of Careful Grading

Several books already exist on keyboard harmony, offering among them a wealth of useful

practice material. But good as they are for more gifted students, their grading is not fine

enough to smooth the way for average beginners, who need, as far as possible, to deal with

only one new point at a time. One book, for instance, recognises the pedagogical soundness of

presenting initially the least possible number of chords, and confines the earliest exercises to

two chords only. But in the first eleven melodies it confronts the beginner with the task of

using those chords in various Positions in nine different keys. Another deals with one key at a

time, but at the outset requires the Student to use all the triads in the major mode except that

on VII. These deficiencies in grading have proved a serious obstacle to many. The practice

material given in this book therefore presents, as far as possible, only one new feature at a

time.

A Language Teaching Technique

In deciding what chords the Student should learn, and in what order, we can take a valuable

lesson from teachers of modern languages, who have faced a parallel problem in choosing

which words, from among the tens of thousands in a given language, they should include in

the vocabulary of their beginners. Some Compilers of older language courses chose in an

arbitrary, even capricious, way, so that pupils brought up on their books were often unable, at

the end of an extended course, to make much practical use of the language, for their

vocabulary was deficient in many of the commoner words. The modern approach to

vocabulary selection makes use of the results of "word-frequency counts", whereby the

relative frequencies with which words appear in actual, everyday use are noted. By their

means it is possible to say which are the hundred, five hundred, thousand or two thousand

most frequently used words in a language, and the common-sense view is taken that among

the words to be learnt first are those which occur most frequently, since they give a

rudimentary practical competence almost at once.



Keys in Most Frequent Use

Applying these principles to the choice and order of chords and keys within the context of

song-books, we get some interesting results. A key-count in four hundred songs suggests that

the six commonest keys, in descending order of frequency, are: G major, E flat major, F

major, C major, B flat major and D major. An investigation of chords also suggests an order

which differs in important respects from that followed (with small deviations) by many of the

Standard text-books. Nothing in what has just been said should be construed as criticism of

these text-books. The results quoted come from examination of music of a particular sort:

investigation of other sorts would probably lead to different conclusions. But since I have

proposed, as the chief aim of this present study, the harmonisation of melodies from Standard

song-books, the results of the count seem valid.

The practice material which will be provided has also been so devised that, almost from the

beginning, the Student will make free and accurate use of some types of unessential notes,

without at this stage being bothered about the whys and wherefores. Children in their early

years use past participles and infinitives correctly in their speech without knowing that there

are such classes of words: the Student will use passing notes and changing notes in a similar

state of innocence.

CHAPTER TWO

Tonic and Dominant Chords In G Major

For our first experiment in harmonising melodies at the keyboard, we shall use the notes of

the scale of G major. If we take the note G, and add above it the note which is a third higher,

B, and that which is a fifth higher, D, we have the common chord, or triad, of G.

Play the triad of G in various parts of the keyboard.

This we call, in key G, the tonic triad, because it is built on the note G, which is the key-note,

or tonic, of the scale.

Triads can be built similarly by adding a third and a fifth above any Step of the scale. Thus

the triad on A will consist of A, G and E, and that on C will comprise C, E and G. The triads

with which we are at present concerned are, however, those formed on G, the first step of the

scale (I), and on D, the fifth step of the scale (V), called the dominant.



Play triads I and V at various parts of the keyboard.

The notes of I can be rearranged, so that G, which was the lowest note, is at the top, giving, in

ascending order, B, D, G.

Another arrangement puts B at the top, so that we have, again in ascending order, D, G,

B.

The triad of D can be similarly rearranged.

Practise, at various parts of the keyboard, swinging through the positions of I and V thus:

To add a left-hand part to these chords, we simply play, against each arrangement, the root

from which each chord has sprung, namely G for all the positions of I, and D for all the

positions of V.

Note that when two or more positions of the same triad appear consecutively, as in the above

example, it is often more musical for the left-hand to play the root with the first position, and

(as suggested by the dotted ties) to sustain it, while the right-hand plays the subsequent

position or positions of the triad.

This arrangement of the chords, with one note in the left-hand and three in the right, is

recommended to the Student for the first few months of study. It is, historically, the

disposition most commonly used in the heyday of continuo playing; it is the way in which

Bach and Handel, more often than not, arranged chords when they were accompanying from a

figured bass. (Those who are able, should examine the realisation by Bach's pupil, Kirnberger,

of the continuo part of the sonata in C minor for flute, violin and continuo which forms part of

Bach's "Musical Offering" to Frederick the Great of Prussia. It is available in Peter's Edition

No. 237). It also has the advantage of giving reasonable sonority, and avoiding the crudities

which so often intrude into students' early experiments if no System, or, in my experience,



any other System of disposition is adopted. Occasional difficulties in maintaining legato will

no doubt arise, but none which cannot be overcome by appropriate fingering or careful use of

the sustaining pedal.* Play, then, normally, three in the right, and one in the left.

* See appendix for technical exercises for overcoming this difficulty.

Before proceeding to the use of these two chords in harmonising melodies, the Student should

master the following groups thoroughly. Until these can be played fluently from memory, it is

profitless to attempt the next stage.

Note that the left-hand part consists of single notes. Resist, at this stage, the temptation to

double the part in octaves. That wi0ll come later, but at present, while the chords are being

learnt, a more musical sound is likely to result from the use of an undoubled bass part.

For present purposes, harmonising a melody means adding, at suitable points, appropriate

notes under the melody. The choice of suitable points will be made for the Student, at present.

He should add chords only at the places marked by a cross. How long the chord should be

held is left to his discretion; sometimes the chord should be short, some-times it should be

held while several succeeding melody notes are played. It should be realised though, that even

when a chord is played short, the hearer tends very strongly to keep it in mind until the next

chord is sounded. The relevance of this will be appreciated when the Student is later choosing

for himself the points in a melody at which to add the chords.

The chord added should be one which contains the melody note which it is to harmonise.

Thus in the phrase:

G, the first note to be harmonised, can with our present resource, triads I and V, only be

harmonised by I, (made up of G, B and D), because the other chord, V, (made up of D, F

sharp and A) does not contain G. For similar reasons, the second and third notes to be

harmonised, A and B, must take V and I respectively, so the working will be:



Examination of Example 7, which contains all the chords at present available (the same

chords can of course be used an octave higher or lower, provided they give satisfactory

sonority), shows that we can harmonise the melody notes G, A, B, D, and F sharp. For G, A,

B and F sharp we have no choice; for D, either I or V is theoretically possible. The student's

ear must guide his choice according to the context.

Consider the following tune:

Six notes, at points labelled (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) and (f), are to be harmonised. Reference to

Example 7 shows there is only one Solution for each of (a) (b) (c) (d) and (f). The note at

point (e), however, is, in Example 7, harmonised twice, once by I, and once by V. Half a

minute spent in listening will convince the student that in Example 10, V is satisfactory, and I

is not. The working will therefore be:

Note: in the left-hand of bar 4, the rhythmic filling-in, created by the sounding, against the

sustained tonic chord, of the fifth and the lower tonic. This device is often helpful, but beware

of over-using it.

The Student should now be in a position to harmonise the tunes at the end of this chapter.

Remember:

(i) Nothing is added above the melody notes.

(ii) The chords can all be found in Example 7.

(iii) Harmonise only the notes marked X.

(iv) Three notes in the right, and one in the left hand.

(v) The harmonisations at present available are by no means always the best possible.

But they do make musical sense, and we must be content with that for the

moment. They provide a foundation for the greater harmonic resource to be

acquired later, which will make possible much more stylish work.

At this stage, students who are quite new to the study of harmony will find it useful to read, in

any text-book on harmony, about perfect and imperfect cadences, bearing in mind that

cadences are the rest-points, or punctuation, of music, and that they come only at the ends of

phrases and sentences. They should then examine the G major melodies in a melody copy of a

collection such as the New National Song Book and play them, harmonising the cadences.



Students who have completely mastered the melodies given should practise playing them in

other keys. As a preliminary, play Example 7 in the new key, and do not attempt the melodies

until it is secure.

Note: Melodies 12 to 18 are waltzes, and the Student who has mastered them with the

arrangement suggested, namely three notes in the right hand and one in the left, may like to

try them again with a typical waltz-bass, like the following, which reaches forward and uses a

dominant seventh, a chord which will be treated systematically in Chapter 7.

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