Tutorial No 5. Assembly of a piece in
ternary form (AABA) with 3
part counterpoint.
Ternary
form involves 3 sections, usually labeled A, B and either C or A2.
Section A may be repeated to form the pattern A A B A2.
Section A starts in the tonic key, but modulates to the dominant or relative
minor. Section B presents a contrasting theme, then section A2 is
usually similar to section A, but staying in the tonic key instead of
modulating.
This tutorial shows how to put together the A A B A2 fragments
horizontally for the violin melody line, and then add two more tracks below,
each with the same A A B A2 pattern. The second track is a counter melody
on viola, the third is the bass line on cello.
- Open the Musical Discovery Composing Board from the main MENU :-
Create -> Compositions -> Composing Board.
- Click the drop-down box labeled Fragment Lists at the top of the
screen, and select Tutorial 5 - Ternary Form.
- A total of 9 fragment icons should appear at the foot of the screen,
labeled Study in Ternary form - Violin - theme A, and so on.
Right-click on each in turn, and click the green
Play Fragment button to listen to them.
- Assemble the top violin melody part onto the top row of the grid, by
dragging the icons for the violin fragments onto it. The ternary form for
this piece will be A A B A2, so drag the Theme A icon
twice, into the first and second squares. Then drag theme B, lastly
drag theme A2.
- Click the orange button Assemble
fragments, then hit the play button to listen to the melody
of this piece.
- Repeat steps 4 and 5 for the viola part, dragging the icons into the
second row, underneath the corresponding themes of the violin part.
- Repeat steps 4 and 5 for the cello part, dragging the icons into the third
row, then listen to the finished work.
- The tracks may be given more meaningful names than the default track
1, track 2 etc. Simply type Violin over the top
of Track 1, Viola for track 2, and Cello
for track 3, all in the squares at the far left of each row in the
grid.
- Look at the staff notation for your assembled piece, by MENU Edit ->
Staff View. The music is clearly in A major, judging by the
accidentals, the harmonic structure, and the ending note. But the key
signature shows no sharps or flats, i.e. C major! So correct this by
typing A into the key signature box at the top of the screen, then
click the OK button beside it. The key signature of three sharps
should appear at the start of every clef, and the accidentals should disappear.
- Click the Forward button at the foot of the screen, to move along
to bar 6. This shows a top Ab where it should show a G#.
These notes sound the same, they are called enharmonics. But in the
key of A major, this note should definitely show as G#. So click the
button Enharmonics by key, and this should fix the problem, and all
other similar enharmonic errors in this piece.
- If you wish, you may save the resulting finished piece onto the database.
Firstly, set up the cataloguing information by MENU Edit -> Melody
Data and filling in the title, filename, and other
data. Then click the green
button Save to Disk (database).