TFRESH PRODUCTIONS
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Buy My Music
    • Chamber Music
    • Concert Band
    • Pep Band
    • Tonal Fluency
  • Theme Songs
  • Composer's Secret Weapon
    • Engraving/Preparation
    • Orchestration
    • Proofing & Consulting
  • Finale 101
  • Links
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Articles
    • Everything In Its Right Place
    • a tempo vs. Tempo I
    • Placing Fermatas over Whole Rests
    • Introduction to Linked Parts
    • Transpose Percussion Notes
    • Learn As Much As You Can...
    • A Place for Everything, and Everything In Its Place
    • Combined Staff in Score --> Separate Parts
    • Tritone and P4ths
    • Large and In Charge
    • JW Copy Part Layout
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Buy My Music
    • Chamber Music
    • Concert Band
    • Pep Band
    • Tonal Fluency
  • Theme Songs
  • Composer's Secret Weapon
    • Engraving/Preparation
    • Orchestration
    • Proofing & Consulting
  • Finale 101
  • Links
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Articles
    • Everything In Its Right Place
    • a tempo vs. Tempo I
    • Placing Fermatas over Whole Rests
    • Introduction to Linked Parts
    • Transpose Percussion Notes
    • Learn As Much As You Can...
    • A Place for Everything, and Everything In Its Place
    • Combined Staff in Score --> Separate Parts
    • Tritone and P4ths
    • Large and In Charge
    • JW Copy Part Layout
Search

Tritones and Perfect 4ths

The article is going to be different than my usual ones, which tend to focus on music engraving.
Today we're going to get into just a little bit of theory.

In my composition course I teach, we were talking about the varying degrees of
consonance and dissonance of the different intervals.

Octaves and Perfect 5th - very consonant
Major and Minor 3rds and 6ths - pretty consonant
Major 2nd and Minor 7ths - mild dissonance
Minor 2nd and Major 7ths - very dissonance

But both Perfect 4ths and Tritones have qualities that are dependent on their environment.

The tritone sounds neutral in chromatic passages, but restless in diatonic passages.
The Perfect 4th sounds consonant in dissonant passages, but sounds dissonant in consonant passages.

In his monumental tome, Twentieth Century Harmony, Vincent Persichetti demonstrates this phenomenon.
For the purpose of demonstration to my class, I have made a video with audio examples.

I have decided to also share the video here with you.

ENJOY
(and learn something)





I hope you found this article useful. If you did, please share it with your friends and colleagues, and consider signing up for our email newsletter. It's a very low-profile email newsletter, only going out once ever 6 weeks or so. It's very unannoying and unobtrusive.

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required
Email Format
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Buy My Music
    • Chamber Music
    • Concert Band
    • Pep Band
    • Tonal Fluency
  • Theme Songs
  • Composer's Secret Weapon
    • Engraving/Preparation
    • Orchestration
    • Proofing & Consulting
  • Finale 101
  • Links
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Articles
    • Everything In Its Right Place
    • a tempo vs. Tempo I
    • Placing Fermatas over Whole Rests
    • Introduction to Linked Parts
    • Transpose Percussion Notes
    • Learn As Much As You Can...
    • A Place for Everything, and Everything In Its Place
    • Combined Staff in Score --> Separate Parts
    • Tritone and P4ths
    • Large and In Charge
    • JW Copy Part Layout