|
Post by stacknymint on Apr 24, 2008 16:35:05 GMT -4
What is the bold part supposed to mean: "The perfect fourth is a perfect interval like the unison, octave, and perfect fifth, and it is a sensory consonance. In common practice harmony, however, it is considered a stylistic dissonance in certain contexts, namely in two-voice textures and whenever it appears above the bass.[1] If the bass note also happens to be the chord's root, the interval's upper note almost always temporarily displaces the third of any chord, and is then called a suspended fourth." For the life of me I could not figure out what this meant. I was just looking around in Wikipedia and I found this about the perfect 4th. The only thing I could possibly take from it is that any chord in root position would have an added 4th...But that doesn't even make sense. Because its not true. Definitely not with root position chords anyways.... Someone help me before I say something else stupid.
|
|
|
Post by stratman on Apr 24, 2008 16:58:56 GMT -4
"The perfect fourth is a perfect interval like the unison, octave, and perfect fifth, and it is a sensory consonance. In common practice harmony, however, it is considered a stylistic dissonance in certain contexts, namely in two-voice textures and whenever it appears above the bass.[1] If the bass note also happens to be the chord's root, the interval's upper note almost always temporarily displaces the third of any chord, and is then called a suspended fourth." this is exactly why i have a hard time understanding music theory, most of it just doesn't make any sense! well is it a consonance or a dissonance? contradictory to me my head hurts
|
|
Rustee
Full Member
pima practitioner
Posts: 214
|
Post by Rustee on Apr 24, 2008 18:05:32 GMT -4
Yep, poorly stated indeed. I'm guessing it's just trying to say that when forming a chord starting from the root note, including the interval of an ascending perfect 4th will always replace the usual 3rd...thus creating the "suspense" of wanting to resolve.
|
|
|
Post by stacknymint on Apr 24, 2008 18:41:24 GMT -4
I'm sure you're right Rustee...Its just weird because I've seemed to analyze enough music that I haven't really seen that many suspended 4ths. It seems that typically all chord tones are present and you get more passing tones and neighbor tones than anything as far as non-chord tones go. Its just, I see PLENTY of root position chords with no suspended 4th.....oh well.
|
|
|
Post by stacknymint on Apr 24, 2008 18:44:01 GMT -4
PS-a perfect 4th is considered dissonant when played as a 2 voice harmony. However, the interval being played melodically without other voices is considered consonant.
|
|
|
Post by thesmitchens on Apr 24, 2008 23:31:15 GMT -4
That looks like about the damn most absurd way to say when you build a suspended fourth chord you use a perfect fourth instead of a third.
I'm assuming the consonance vs. dissonance statement comes from the fact that the distance from the fourth to the fifth is a Major Second and Seconds are dissonant intervals... but with wording like that who knows. I can't imagine how people could call it dissonant if it's a two note harmony, as it's just a reversed Perfect fifth and that's about as consonant as it gets. Hence how it got its name.
|
|
|
Post by iiholly on Apr 25, 2008 9:21:02 GMT -4
Consonance and disonance are sometime a matter of opinion... but then again that is just my opinion. If you get used to hearing something "weird" for long enough it will become "not so weird".
|
|
|
Post by thesmitchens on Apr 25, 2008 10:27:07 GMT -4
Consonance and disonance are sometime a matter of opinion... but then again that is just my opinion. If you get used to hearing something "weird" for long enough it will become "not so weird". Perhaps in that context it's an opinion, but in the sense of how the brain perceives sound, it's less opinion based... sort of. Seconds, Sevenths and Tritones are always considered dissonant, but to add to the confusion, if you're doing something and you use an Augmented Second, despite the Minor Third sound (which is under consonant), it would still be classified as dissonant.
|
|
|
Post by earthman on Apr 25, 2008 16:42:55 GMT -4
But isn't it also the case that stuff we now consider consonant was considered dissonant once? My music teacher told me that back in the Gregorian chanting days, only the same notes were considered in harmony with one another (like a C and a higher or lower C). Eventually perfect fifths became considered consonant, and then major thirds, and so on. There was one interval in specific (that I of course can't remember) that he said really only came to be considered consonant about 150 years ago.
|
|
|
Post by thesmitchens on Apr 25, 2008 18:32:28 GMT -4
Personally I think there ought be three types of intervals.
Consonant - Perfect Fifths, Perfect Fourths, Octaves Dissonant - Seconds, Sevenths, Triton Other - Thirds, Sixths
Essentially it'd be a categorization for intervals and their reverse. Like a Perfect Fourth is a reversed Perfect Fifth, so they get one. Sixths backwards are Thirds, and so on. But this is just the way people categorize things, so what can you do?
|
|
|
Post by iiholly on Apr 29, 2008 12:15:11 GMT -4
I meant more in terms of interpretation with different culture. You know how some of that chinesish japanesish scales (yeah I know I'm being way to specific and politcally correct) and shiotz sound nutty and disonant, but I doubt they consider it to be that way. The cultural distintion probably be lost due to the mass media just like dialects in America.
|
|
|
Post by earthman on Apr 29, 2008 12:39:21 GMT -4
Yeah, that's like another thing my music teacher told me...how some friend of his went to India and was trying to play one of their scales on some wacky instrument and this guy kept saying he was doing it wrong. Because their notes are like, in between our notes, and having been raised in the Western world he actually could not tell the difference between what they considered out of tune and dead-on.
|
|
|
Post by stacknymint on Apr 29, 2008 16:23:13 GMT -4
I think the entire world should just refer to Bach.
|
|
|
Post by dblcreek on Oct 22, 2009 18:02:36 GMT -4
a major chord for example C consists of 1 3 5 tones of the scale. or C E G now if you replace the third (E) with the 4th tone in the scale( F) or as some people say the suspended 4th it makes tension that needs to be resolved.. also keep in mind in the same key the 5 chord or g7 also uses the same F note to create tension, in both cases the F resolves down to the E and everyone's ear is happier! hope this might help someone....paul m.
|
|