Week 1: Vertical Voicing
Week 1: Vertical Voicing
Choose one piece of Bach, with suggested repertoire below. Use the daily practice activities to begin practicing exclusively the chords in your chosen piece. Listen along with a good recording. Track your progress daily and upload a videos of your work and feel free to ask questions about voicing, technique, or texture.
Week 1 Suggested Repertoire
Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1
- Prelude in E-flat minor
- Prelude in B-flat minor
Well-Tempered Clavier Book 2
- Prelude in F minor
- Prelude in A-Flat Major
English Suites
- English Suite 1 – Sarabande
- English Suite 2 – Sarabande
- English Suite 3 – Prelude
Partitas
- Partita 1
- Partita 4
- Partita 5
- Minuet 2
- Overture
- Sarabande
French Overture
- Passepied I
- Passepied II
- Sarabande
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Practice Habits
Five basic voicing habits for this week to be mastered first:
- Numbers game: identify number of voices per chord. Assign a percentage of sound per note/voice (10% + 20% + 10% + 60%).
- Transpose the chord up or down an octave. Check clarity is consistent in any octave.
- Arpeggiate downward and upward. Alternate between playing higher % notes and lower % notes (intervals).
- Observe obliques and listen carefully when one voice moves. Practice in two hands (eg. RH plays Tenor, LH plays Bass) in exaggerated percentages.
- Sink/slide into chord loosely (no tension), see what your hand naturally does. Adjust angle of arm toward the finger playing highest % note.
Five intermediate voicing habits after the above five are mastered:
- Play long tones as if they repeat (half note = 4 eighths cresc/dim).
- Textural thinking (eg, wool, velvet, cotton, cashmere, linen). Use your imagination to envision sophisticated effects for each sound in a chord.
- Hold highest % note(s), repeat the lower/lowest % note(s) and vice-versa.
- Key depth and reaction thinking (sinking slowing into keys with full arm weight, glancing the key at the halfway point, bouncing off the point of sound, etc).
- Playing an entire passage/chord progression with all chords voiced clearly.
Ultimate Goal
Your sound should convey the character of the piece / passage conveyed as soon as the chord sounds. There is absolute clarity of the leading voice which develops harmonic tension and phrasing.
63 replies
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Do not know if I am doing this right… Or if this not the best piece or the best bars to show?
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Here’s a bit of my practice with voicing the chords in the Italian Concerto https://youtube.com/shorts/sYLiVd8XWGc?si=rC00Rs-L2ZfOL9l-
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Hello Jarred, I choose English suit no 2 in A minor Sarabande.
melody line for 60% bass for 20% ( some exceptions m 24 on first page and m 22 on second page). Inner voices are 10%. Thank you for help.😊 -
Is it ok to play English suit No 2 in A minor sarabande A section and A from Les Agrements de la meme Sarabande A and same way for B section? ( without all repeat)
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Practicing a few bars (Prelude in F minor - Book II):
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Another part. Not easy to decide what’s the most important voice.😂 https://youtube.com/shorts/OrMGD3A7EaU?si=DcrG31a1YIdX5MOx
It’s the part before the last part starts.
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Good morning! I am enjoying this, and it is making me really thing about the music, and what is going on. That is good! Attached is the percentages for the first line of Prelude in B flat minor. I apologize for the smudges from when I erased. A couple of questions: In these 2 measures, the is the B flat in the base line. I wanted to keep that at a pretty steady, almost foundational sound. Is that correct? Then I tried to emphasize some of the moving parts, and places where there was some dissonance. A question: There are a couple of places with the same chord structure in both hands. Example: second measure, the and of beat 2. I made the voicing of the notes the same in both hands, with the B flat and D flat having 20% each, and the F 10%. Does that make sense? I hope to record this and post the recording today.
