Tonal Improvisation- Course Contents

Welcome to the Tonal Improvisation course! This course is part of the core Creative Strings
curriculum because it contains a set of skills essential to composing, arranging, and improvising
in tonal music.

The category of tonal music contains most European and American classical music, and all of
American popular music (swing, blues, rock, folk, etc.), and it refers to music which is in a key
and follows certain rules of harmonic progression. These rules will not be elaborated on in
detail; rather, you will learn how to navigate any given chord progression and understand the
different parts of songs in these styles.

The course will include the following:

1. A detailed written explanation of songs and their parts, and how to address these parts
using ​chord stacks
2. NEW VIDEOS- ​Tonal Improvisation Course, teaching example videos- High School
Students
3. Older videos- ​Tonal Improvisation for Younger Students (full CSA course only, not
included a la carte)

Parts of a Song
One way to look at any song is to examine the following elements:

1) Melody:​ For many people, this is the most obvious or memorable part of any song. This is
often (but not always) the highest voice or instrument in an ensemble, playing a singable line
which is supported by the other elements of the song.

2) Bass line​: Usually played by the lowest-pitched instrument in an ensemble, and is usually
composed of the root notes of chords (for example, the letter used for a chord symbol: the root
of a D major chord is D).

3) Inner voices: ​also known as the "harmonic accompaniment", the inner voices could be the
rhythm guitar or piano in a band, or the 2nd violin and viola in a string quartet. They cover the
remaining notes in the chord which are not played by the bass or the melody, and make the
harmony sound more "complete".

I encourage you to listen/look for examples of these elements in your favorite songs. It is
important to memorize and be able to explain these elements before going on.
 Harmony and Chord Stacks
The ​chords ​in a song are an important clue to understand how to play any of the above roles.
Usually they can be found as chord symbols on sheet music. There are many types of chords,
with different numbers of notes, but for this exercise, we will focus on ​triads.

A triad is a chord with three notes- a root, a third and a fifth.

You can use Chord Stacks to find all the notes in any chord within a song.

The notes in the chord are generally the ​safest ​notes to use in a melody, bass line, or
accompaniment. They are known as ​chord tones​.

All of the other pitches are considered ​non chord tones​. These include ​scale tones ​and
chromatic tones. ​These are also important in creating good melodies, but are less fundamental
and stable than the chord tones.

Hierarchy of Note Choices:

1)​ Safest Notes​: Chord Tones - 3 notes, anywhere they occur on your instrument.

2) ​Moderately safe tones​: Scale Tones - 7 notes, including the 3 chord tones, anywhere they
occur on your instrument (Pachelbel's Canon is in the key of D Major, which means we can use
the D Major scale over all the chords in this song).

3) ​Least Safe:​ Chromatic Tones (the five remaining notes which are not in the chord or the
scale).

On ​the sheet below​, you will see the chord symbol and Roman numeral above the staff. Don't
worry about the numerals for now. Underneath the D chord, the three chord tones of the D
major triad (D, F#, A) are stacked everywhere they occur in first position on your instrument.
 When starting out with this method, I prescribe ​two simple rules.

1. Always use ​chord tones

​ oice lead ​the inner voices.
2. Always v

Voice leading is the process of moving the smallest distance from a tone in one chord to
a tone in the next chord.​This is almost always a step-wise move (moving closely along the
scale, rather than leaps like an arpeggio). ​When two chords share a common tone (the same
note), you will stay on the tone from the first chord when the chord changes​. If there is no
common tone, you can choose to move one step down or one step up to the nearest chord tone
in the second chord.

FROM HERE:

Complete the lesson videos, starting with the Pachelbel Canon videos, and then the live
teaching demonstration videos.