Horizontal and vertical

Melodic notes do take part in the harmony, whether you like it or
not. You may have lead and accompaniment using different pitch
sets, but chords are everything.

I also hold that harmony is as much about connecting chords as
considering their properties in isolation. I quantify the
"dissonance" of a chord change from the dissonance of the two
chords taken together. If horizontal dissonance is too high, the
harmony sounds arbitrary. If too low, it sounds weak. This is
relevant to atonality, where you deliberately avoid both
horizontal and vertical consonance.

I don't agree that tempering resolves the conflict between melody
and harmony. Melody works fine in JI, it's horizontal harmony
that's the problem.

The structure of a diatonic key puts a limit on the dissonance of
chord changes within it. The prohibition against roots
progressing by one scale step avoids the most dissonant changes.
The idea of octave equivalence means you can't just keep playing
inversions of the same chord, giving excessive consonance.

Lots of people say that tonality is based on acoustic principles,
but they never give you a full derivation. I think this has got
something to do with it.


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From: "kris peck"
Subject: Johnston, Schneider, Catler, tape swap
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