I did a deep dive (or as close as I'm going to get to one, at this stage of my playing) on quartal voicings this year. The application of them over minor chords is delicious and the use of augmented fourths for dominant sounds is very satisfying. One thing I discovered, that might be useful to y'all, is that if you build fourths up from the 3rd of a dominant chord, you get the natural extensions, but if you do fourths up from the 7th, you get altered extensions! Tasty!
It is important to distinguish between real quartal harmony and traditional chords from the usual harmony from thirds with voicings so that some intervals are arranged in fourths. I suppose that the latter are the quartal voicings you are talking about. Eg in pure quartal harmony the concept of a dominant chord does not exist, it is another world.
@@aaronsinger In quartal harmony any chord can go anywhere, which implies that the usual rules of chord movement don't apply. But even if they would, a chord root movement up a fourth or down a fifth is not sufficient to talk about a real dominant chord. The dominant concept comes from tonal functional harmony that assigns to each scale degree a function. V(7)-I in major means tension to release, rest. This tension arises also from the vital presence of the leading tone. This is a third (or sixth) from the chord root, so cannot be part of a pure quartal chord (normal usage: up to a 5 or 6 note chord). Moreover, the dominant function and tension-release is determined bij voice movement (interval resolution, chord relationship) rules. Aside: sus type chords, correctly used, are not in contradiction to this. To have some kind of dominant thing in quartal harmony one should have to construct a clear definition that would have very little or nothing to do with tonal dominants and therefore should get another name. There's a lot more to say about this. (update: the person to whom this reply is addressed has removed his comments. I leave it here as an extra explanation, maybe it's helpful to someone)
I'm so glad that I discovered you. I love that you deliver great content without screaming. Your voice is fantastic for instructional youtube. Glad I found you.
As a beginning self-taught piano student, a lot of what Amy says is a bit over my head. However, she's such a great teacher that she makes this stuff reachable for a student like me! She helps me HEAR what she's talking about and uses the interval approach which I understand pretty well, being that I'm a bass player. Thank you Amy for helping me grow as a musician! You're helping me "tune" my ear to jazz voicings.
The 5th isn't really boring. It's actually essential to defining a tonality. But we can omit it since it, being the strongest overtone after the 1st and 2nd harmonics, is a very present overtone of the bass when the bass sounds the root of a chord.
Quartal is the best for adding warmth and movement to a otherwise stale sound! Love the emotional range and mathematical quality those symmetries provide. In a sense quartal harmonies have an essencial minor quality (minor thirds of a note will be found on the fourth consecutive perfect fourth: E - A - D - G) while quintal harmonies are essentially major (major third will be found on the fifth consecutive perfect fifth E - B - F# - C# - G#). Those are very fun to explore and to recognize in different recordings (Boards of Canada chords are fourths and a vibrato modulation). Great video as usual Aimee!
As a partially educated amateur, I never knew what to call these types of chords. I've always called it the 1-4-7 or 1-4-7-10. I just knew I loved them, heard them a lot in gospel and Jazz, and I've borrowed them for my own use.
I'm a Progressive Metal guitarist that loves the piano. I actually took piano lessons when I was about 10 years old. Unfortunately I didn't practice because I was obsessed with Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhodes. Luckily I picked the piano back up about three years ago, so glad I did.
I've been playing the Mantooth quartal harmonies for years, but it was only fairly recently that I had the epiphany that the stacked notes in 4ths create a pentatonic scale (If you use five, rather than the four in your example). So E, A, D, G, C reordered = C, D, E, G, A! This helped me see how inverting these voicings also really add to your vocabulary, so E,A,D,G,C becomes G,C,E,A,D then A,D,G,C,E and so on!
Yes, a 5 voice quartal chord is usually a distribution of a pentatonic scale. This realization helps you reorganize the voices, of which inversion is just a subset. For example, you can also break them into two distinct structures and invert each structure independently. Chick did...
O wow… this is so amazing! I’m simplifying this in my head by just thinking of where to start the stacked 4ths by simply remembering the chord tone it starts on! So for major chords you have the 3 the 6 and the 7. For minor chords you have the 1, 2 and 5 etc. I feel like my playing just expanded within minutes of doing this! You’re teaching style is so straightforward and understandable… So thank you endlessly Aimee! Gonna be sharing this and your channel with all the jazz cats I know 🙏
Aimee, I love your Jazz Bible, I must say it makes my piano journey so much easier for me, in fact I used it yesterday to figure out a solo you taught me. Because my voice is developing my vocal coach suggested I change the key of the solo so I could apply vocal fry, so I grabbed my handy dandy Jazz Bible, refereed to your chart and was able to figure it out! Bravo 👏 thank you
I’m so glad you brought this to TH-cam. Your Nebula video lessons are excellent, but I can never thank you there or ask you questions there. Thanks, Aimee for all your deep dives and more!
So glad you like it. And yes, that’s true. But you can always leave a comment on my Facebook music page. I usually make a post there when I put a new video up. And I’m happy to answer questions there. Thank you.
Thanks! great video! Funny you talk about making your own charts, I am always doing those hehe...I made a chart for Quartal Voicings for major chords by building fourths from every note of a pentatonic scale built from the major 7th of the major chord.
I love stacked fourths. It's such a trope in jazz. :) I play the guitar, which, because of it's tuning, is uniquely suited for stacking fourths. Also, huge fan of McCoy Tyner!
Unlike some other self-proclaimed jazz teachers on youtube with large followings, who like to talk at us and tell us how they see the world, Amy actually teaches us some real helpful stuff.
Fantastic as always - near the end you say quartal harmony is great in modal jazz (inevitably sounds like 'So What'), but it's also great in traditional folk songs, which often have a modal character even if they have been reharmonised in stacked 3rd chords. They also have very simple chord structures and quartals give you lots of ideas what to do as the bars roam past; more appropriate than adding/subbing chords. Puts a modern sound into folk songs without losing the intent of what were often unaccompanied vocals. Also quartals sound amazing on guitar.
Thanks for this. I've never heard an explanation or the phrase "quartal harmony." Last century, I heard Chick stack A D G C over a-min. I assumed it was to open up improv options, and copped it without knowing anything else. (I play bass and guitar... stacking favors their tuning."
"My Romance" is one of several I can never hear without my mind going straight to the brilliant "Supremes Sing Rodgers and Hart" album that introduced me to so many of their songs. It was expanded to the originally-intended double on CD in the nineties, from the archives. They recorded it after an extremely positive response- especially from Richard Rodgers himself- to their singing several of the songs on a TV special.
Fascinating approach, My weird way of getting into to this was a via the dorian mode - how all notes from Cmajor in stacked 4ths work as either chord tones or extensions of Dm7. Really good stuff, thanks.
Very useful video ! I wanted to understand how jazz pianists manage to make sens with these 4th ! Bartok wrote that he started to use chords of 4th because successions of 4th are usual in Hungary's folk music. But his use of it can be very free. I think one of his most beautiful use of this kind of tool is in the Adagio of the second piano concerto : the strings play stacks of 5th, wich can seems absurd on the paper - although it can't sound wrong - but the result is very sweet and mysterious. With score : Bartók - Piano Concerto No.2 - Géza Anda - Movement II Thanks !
You brought a very important topic here man. Quartal harmony in jazz is quartal voicing(witch is very good and the sound is great) but quartal harmony is another thing. I know you know the diference but people tend to think that quartal voicing is the same thing that quartal harmony. But it's not. Anyway. Great video. Very useful.
Very nice lesson. Some composers like Arlen and Johnny Mandel use lovely quartal harmony in their sheet music. Arlen's "A Sleeping Bee" and Mandel's "Close Enough for Love" come to mind.
Hello Aimee, very interesting! It's hard to explain, but I've developed an entire new harmonic world (for me), using cycles of fourths, on the guitar. It opens up an all new world. Been tinkering with it for a while now, tried to explain it to a pianist friend, he got it and the result was very interesting, very different from usual. Thank you!
Keith Emerson wrote many pieces using quartal harmony. That's one of the main reasons why Emerson, Lake & Palmer's music sounds so different from most of rock music.
You mean like in Georgia ( the country not the US state ) ? I'd like to hear that ( or any folk music ) based on quartal harmonies . How about some links please ?
Great vid! One musician to another she's right about all this and great camera angle. BTW on the job we don't really say "quartal harmony" we just say "lotta fourths." Because that's too big a name for it. I man it's not really different than common practice so it's not as though some other harmonic system. Accent versus language distinction. Bird lives!
Ha ha - I am listening to this and thinking, "what does this remind me of?". Then I remember, in one of the bands I play in we do a jazz/funk version of Toto's Georgie Porgie. Right there - stacked forths at the start..
Just my observation that 6/9 chords "sound quartal". On the guitar, B E A D G is a stack of 4ths. Raising the B to C gives a C 6/9 voicing. I'm not sure why this is so theory wise but it sounds pretty cool just walking up or down the diminished scale.
Quartal harmony is a way to avoid the mechanisms that tonality and functional harmony have. It weakens or eliminates tonality. It gives chords that don't want to go somewhere or that clearly require resolution. That's why it's used a lot in modal jazz, on popular music with pentatonic scales etc. It comes for a great deal from medieval polyphony which has the same characteristics. Personally I like mixing the chords with 1 or 2 thirds to get something of both worlds, as some famous guitarists do. Pure quartal harmony in modern classical music has a very obscure and immature theory and methodology behind it.
@@emanuel_soundtrack Wrong. Pure quartal harmony IS a system, albeit an immature one. I have studied works on that subject from composers of the previous century. Although immature, it already has important rules and guidelines regarding dissonances, voice leading etc that are completely different from tonal harmony. Quartal harmony is part of a movement away from tonality towards atonality that started in the 20th century. It was gradual, meaning there are grey overlapping areas and transitional works: the stacking of some third chords by using voicings with fourth intervals (which are in fact extended or altered chords), and mixing a quartal chord here and there between third chords (often giving a kind of sus effect). But all these are just additions and extensions of tonal harmony to enrich and add color to the music. However, when quartal chords are used exclusively in a work or large part of it, then we are in a situation of pure quartal harmony following a system of its own. One important note. If you use chords as fairly independent blocks that you arrange in an arbitrary way, you don't have a system. Many self educated people do this, but I don't. So if you start by not having/wanting any complete harmonic system and you use quartal chords with the same mental approach, quartal harmony is not a system for *you* .
Hi Aimee. Love your videos and insightful lessons and been watching you on youtube for several years now. Great stuff. After watching this video I signed up for curiosity stream hoping to find you on there but having searched for everything I can think of (nebula, aimee, aimeenolte, jazz piano etc etc) I can't find you. The rest of curiosity stream is of no interest to me so please let me know how I find you on there. Thanks and Happy New Year.
Thank you so much, Nigel! After you signed up, you should have gotten a welcome email from Nebula. That is where you will find me. You’re getting two platforms. CuriosityStream, and nebula.
Quartal harmony or "I don't know how to play guitar chords or theory so I just barre". The Db chord was funny. Sort of like "nope these don't really fit but you know, they're close enough so we'll say they're good enough and roll with it".
Quartals are totally natural on a guitar in standard tuning. Your first example even matched, except up an octave, the 4 lowest strings, open (unfretted) - E A D G. In theory you could get all the rest by barring those 4 strings. You could become the laziest accompanist ever, while sounding totally hip... Fred
Hi Aimee - I went to the link to your site and would like to buy your block chords ideas and course but don’t see a link a place on there am I missing something - thanks
I think you mean you’d like to sign up for Nebula - the link is curiositystream.com/aimeenolte but I can’t enter links here so you’ll have to type it into google
It was not "set up" purposefully to play quartal music, after all the fourths guitar tuning came from the Renaissance period, if not farther back...church and folk music basically. It was tuned that way instead of the 5th's of other string instrument then (violin, cello, etc) for ergonomics, to be able to reach notes and chords better, having a longer scale length than violin, and played horizontally rather than vertically like cello. That said yes it is great to play fourths on for that reason, when that music came to be (60s jazz)
You know - I don’t. I mean I think it’s an accurate descriptor and I probably should use it. But for 9ths and 13ths, they don’t feel like very much tension to me…not nearly as much as a sus
Just add the eleventh and ninth and call it good. Harmony in fourths yields two different chords; that is why western harmony is based on thirds of which you get 7 combinations.
You wouldn't sus a Dominant chord? Like D7sus4 or C/D? I think the E,A,D,G with D in the bass would sound nice. And what about other stacked fourths? Like C,F,B,E. or the Lydian F,B,E,A? Have you messed with those at all. Like modal 4th's?
You’re right about a Dsus. EAGD is a nice way to play that. Careful when you say CFBE because f to b is not a perfect fourth. It would have to be a Bb - but yeah FBEA is an option for a Lydian sound - Fma#11 🙌🏼
For some reason I think of these voicings (actual 4ths) as Jacob Collier chords. It's hard for me to make sense of them, but in some of your examples I actually could, so I'll give it a try. That's not supposed to be a backhanded compliment. It really is rare for me to feel quartal harmony functionally. Especially planing it around, it feels so drifty. I never viewed it as upper extensions of an absent root. That was the missing insight, for me (other people are probably going "duh"🤣 but no worries). I think I'll get an oversized sketchbook. Lately I've been wanting to make a negative harmony chart, a tritone sub chart, and now there's this one, too.
Y si, si suma B es pentaEm o intente con la misma escala de la nota susodicha, quiero decir, pentaBm, gg soy un tonto, a proposito, que acorde es E,A,D,G,B? E,G,B,D,A....? Y, del B al E hay un eslavon perdido? Exato Cmaj7 y compañia. Saludos!.
This is truly great!! I love what you do, and you teach so well. I wonder, have you heard this "song" by Gong: th-cam.com/video/A_xFLBD_9wM/w-d-xo.html I find it intriguing, puzzling and beautiful. It has an ongoing longing character, going up from E 11 / C/E up the scale to the point where I lose track... I have love this piece for over 40 years and never wrapped my mind around it. Just getting to it, actually.. Love, Knud
The jazz bible is cool and all, but it feels kinda culty to be like "these work because the jazz bible says so" instead of like... "these work because if you place them in a higher octave, it makes a C Major 7 add 9 chord which is pretty"
@@AimeeNolte Right. That makes sense. Of course it is. That should go without saying. It just felt weird to me, but it makes sense to promote something you created to help people learn. Edit: Just to clarify.. It was a bit of hyperbole.
Hearing a woman talk intervals like that drives me wild. You're an angel, thanks for this video, a great explanation of how Spinal Tap decided that jazz was simply what you get when you play wrong notes, haha. You're obviously well trained and you actually explain your concepts very clearly and thoroughly. I'm a guitarist/bassist/drummer and unfortunately can not play piano. I see the advantage piano offers when using inversions especially. To see them in a linear form is indeed beneficial. Maybe if I watch you enough, I'll be inspired to learn piano, that or I'll need a long cold shower.
Why don’t you try complimenting Aimee without mentioning that she’s female or trying to hit on her like a nasty creep? Treat her like what she is - a great musician.
@@jacobscolliers198 How about you concern yourself with you and I will continue minding my own business. I do not have conflict with anyone ever under any circumstances. Good day to you.
When you start a n the 3 f a change rd it leaves room to become a pentatoni chord ie (e) a (d) g (c) (c major pentatonic) and the {ga } is the a minor pentatonic or a minor 7.
What's that old joke: rock musicians play 3 chords to thousands of people while jazz musicians play thousands of chords to 3 people?
Hey, there are hundreds of jazz concerts with sold out arenas around the world, don't generalize. But the joke is good hahaha.
Stop you’ll make Steely Dan upset 😅
Depends on the kind of rock though.
Guys enjoy the joke, it’s just that … a joke
Proudly doing the thousand chords thing.
I did a deep dive (or as close as I'm going to get to one, at this stage of my playing) on quartal voicings this year. The application of them over minor chords is delicious and the use of augmented fourths for dominant sounds is very satisfying. One thing I discovered, that might be useful to y'all, is that if you build fourths up from the 3rd of a dominant chord, you get the natural extensions, but if you do fourths up from the 7th, you get altered extensions! Tasty!
awesome! gonna mess with that!
Very cool. I'm not a jazz guy but I like theory.
Oo this comment is hella helpfull
It is important to distinguish between real quartal harmony and traditional chords from the usual harmony from thirds with voicings so that some intervals are arranged in fourths. I suppose that the latter are the quartal voicings you are talking about. Eg in pure quartal harmony the concept of a dominant chord does not exist, it is another world.
@@aaronsinger In quartal harmony any chord can go anywhere, which implies that the usual rules of chord movement don't apply. But even if they would, a chord root movement up a fourth or down a fifth is not sufficient to talk about a real dominant chord. The dominant concept comes from tonal functional harmony that assigns to each scale degree a function. V(7)-I in major means tension to release, rest. This tension arises also from the vital presence of the leading tone. This is a third (or sixth) from the chord root, so cannot be part of a pure quartal chord (normal usage: up to a 5 or 6 note chord). Moreover, the dominant function and tension-release is determined bij voice movement (interval resolution, chord relationship) rules. Aside: sus type chords, correctly used, are not in contradiction to this. To have some kind of dominant thing in quartal harmony one should have to construct a clear definition that would have very little or nothing to do with tonal dominants and therefore should get another name. There's a lot more to say about this. (update: the person to whom this reply is addressed has removed his comments. I leave it here as an extra explanation, maybe it's helpful to someone)
quartals... the final frontier.... these are the voyages of the aimee nolte piano...
I'm so glad that I discovered you. I love that you deliver great content without screaming. Your voice is fantastic for instructional youtube. Glad I found you.
As a beginning self-taught piano student, a lot of what Amy says is a bit over my head. However, she's such a great teacher that she makes this stuff reachable for a student like me! She helps me HEAR what she's talking about and uses the interval approach which I understand pretty well, being that I'm a bass player. Thank you Amy for helping me grow as a musician! You're helping me "tune" my ear to jazz voicings.
The 5th isn't really boring. It's actually essential to defining a tonality. But we can omit it since it, being the strongest overtone after the 1st and 2nd harmonics, is a very present overtone of the bass when the bass sounds the root of a chord.
Quartal is the best for adding warmth and movement to a otherwise stale sound! Love the emotional range and mathematical quality those symmetries provide. In a sense quartal harmonies have an essencial minor quality (minor thirds of a note will be found on the fourth consecutive perfect fourth: E - A - D - G) while quintal harmonies are essentially major (major third will be found on the fifth consecutive perfect fifth E - B - F# - C# - G#). Those are very fun to explore and to recognize in different recordings (Boards of Canada chords are fourths and a vibrato modulation). Great video as usual Aimee!
It's like you're dancing about architecture to me. And it's beautiful.
As a partially educated amateur, I never knew what to call these types of chords. I've always called it the 1-4-7 or 1-4-7-10. I just knew I loved them, heard them a lot in gospel and Jazz, and I've borrowed them for my own use.
I'm a Progressive Metal guitarist that loves the piano. I actually took piano lessons when I was about 10 years old. Unfortunately I didn't practice because I was obsessed with Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhodes. Luckily I picked the piano back up about three years ago, so glad I did.
I've been playing the Mantooth quartal harmonies for years, but it was only fairly recently that I had the epiphany that the stacked notes in 4ths create a pentatonic scale (If you use five, rather than the four in your example). So E, A, D, G, C reordered = C, D, E, G, A! This helped me see how inverting these voicings also really add to your vocabulary, so E,A,D,G,C becomes G,C,E,A,D then A,D,G,C,E and so on!
Yes, a 5 voice quartal chord is usually a distribution of a pentatonic scale. This realization helps you reorganize the voices, of which inversion is just a subset. For example, you can also break them into two distinct structures and invert each structure independently. Chick did...
hey cool. cheers for this... i have never heard many (if any) people talk about this subject! .. loved it
O wow… this is so amazing!
I’m simplifying this in my head by just thinking of where to start the stacked 4ths by simply remembering the chord tone it starts on!
So for major chords you have the 3 the 6 and the 7. For minor chords you have the 1, 2 and 5 etc.
I feel like my playing just expanded within minutes of doing this! You’re teaching style is so straightforward and understandable… So thank you endlessly Aimee!
Gonna be sharing this and your channel with all the jazz cats I know 🙏
Way to go! These are the kinds of conclusions I hope people discover on their own after watching. Woohoo!!
right essential is schematic and visual, the mathematical view is recreative but not useful
TI just started studying quartal harmony, and you make it easier to learn. Thanks!
Thank you,Aimee. Beautiful singing 🌹🌹🌹🌹
Thank you, Aimee for this video on quartal harmonies! This really helps open up the choices we have to further enhance our sound!
Thank you, this is very enlightening! I've long been a fan of McCoy Tyner, and this helps me better understand what he was doing.
I'm always reminded of Becker and Fagen's "stack of fourths" when I watch / listen to such videos. "Peg" - from "Aja" is a great example.
Aimee, I love your Jazz Bible, I must say it makes my piano journey so much easier for me, in fact I used it yesterday to figure out a solo you taught me. Because my voice is developing my vocal coach suggested I change the key of the solo so I could apply vocal fry, so I grabbed my handy dandy Jazz Bible, refereed to your chart and was able to figure it out! Bravo 👏 thank you
So glad!! That’s awesome! (Be careful with vocal fry - I wouldn’t recommend using it ever) Much love to you!
I’m so glad you brought this to TH-cam. Your Nebula video lessons are excellent, but I can never thank you there or ask you questions there. Thanks, Aimee for all your deep dives and more!
So glad you like it. And yes, that’s true. But you can always leave a comment on my Facebook music page. I usually make a post there when I put a new video up. And I’m happy to answer questions there. Thank you.
Thanks! great video! Funny you talk about making your own charts, I am always doing those hehe...I made a chart for Quartal Voicings for major chords by building fourths from every note of a pentatonic scale built from the major 7th of the major chord.
I love stacked fourths. It's such a trope in jazz. :) I play the guitar, which, because of it's tuning, is uniquely suited for stacking fourths.
Also, huge fan of McCoy Tyner!
Unlike some other self-proclaimed jazz teachers on youtube with large followings, who like to talk at us and tell us how they see the world, Amy actually teaches us some real helpful stuff.
Jimin Dorothy teaches well too!
Wonderful, as usual.
Fantastic as always - near the end you say quartal harmony is great in modal jazz (inevitably sounds like 'So What'), but it's also great in traditional folk songs, which often have a modal character even if they have been reharmonised in stacked 3rd chords. They also have very simple chord structures and quartals give you lots of ideas what to do as the bars roam past; more appropriate than adding/subbing chords. Puts a modern sound into folk songs without losing the intent of what were often unaccompanied vocals. Also quartals sound amazing on guitar.
"Inn the skyyy" I loved that. You are a great singer! I would really appreciate some more vocal music from you.
Check Spotify! :)
Thanks!
Another cool clip. Nicely explained. Hi from London England.
I absolutely love that sound at 8:40
Thanks for this. I've never heard an explanation or the phrase "quartal harmony." Last century, I heard Chick stack A D G C over a-min. I assumed it was to open up improv options, and copped it without knowing anything else.
(I play bass and guitar... stacking favors their tuning."
Great lesson! Thanks so much.
Awesome Tutorial Aimee ! I Love it , you put alot of great stuff across seamlessly....keep it goin 🎶🎹🎵
"My Romance" is one of several I can never hear without my mind going straight to the brilliant "Supremes Sing Rodgers and Hart" album that introduced me to so many of their songs. It was expanded to the originally-intended double on CD in the nineties, from the archives. They recorded it after an extremely positive response- especially from Richard Rodgers himself- to their singing several of the songs on a TV special.
Nice voicing. Lovely voice.
Fascinating approach, My weird way of getting into to this was a via the dorian mode - how all notes from Cmajor in stacked 4ths work as either chord tones or extensions of Dm7. Really good stuff, thanks.
Iam just now learning quads for improvising on guitar. Can't wait to watch this.
Very useful video ! I wanted to understand how jazz pianists manage to make sens with these 4th ! Bartok wrote that he started to use chords of 4th because successions of 4th are usual in Hungary's folk music. But his use of it can be very free. I think one of his most beautiful use of this kind of tool is in the Adagio of the second piano concerto : the strings play stacks of 5th, wich can seems absurd on the paper - although it can't sound wrong - but the result is very sweet and mysterious.
With score : Bartók - Piano Concerto No.2 - Géza Anda - Movement II
Thanks !
You brought a very important topic here man. Quartal harmony in jazz is quartal voicing(witch is very good and the sound is great) but quartal harmony is another thing. I know you know the diference but people tend to think that quartal voicing is the same thing that quartal harmony. But it's not. Anyway. Great video. Very useful.
Very nice lesson. Some composers like Arlen and Johnny Mandel use lovely quartal harmony in their sheet music. Arlen's "A Sleeping Bee" and Mandel's "Close Enough for Love" come to mind.
thats dope thanks for helping musicians
Thank you Aimee. Best wishes.
You are AWESOME Aimee! Thank you
Great video!! You play and sing beautifully too, by the way….just one musician complimenting another
Great lesson Aimee...!!!
Hello Aimee, very interesting! It's hard to explain, but I've developed an entire new harmonic world (for me), using cycles of fourths, on the guitar.
It opens up an all new world. Been tinkering with it for a while now, tried to explain it to a pianist friend, he got it and the result was very interesting, very different from usual. Thank you!
Keith Emerson wrote many pieces using quartal harmony. That's one of the main reasons why Emerson, Lake & Palmer's music sounds so different from most of rock music.
There’s some Georgian folk music that uses a stack of fourths as its main functional harmony (microtonal of course) that’s really cool
You mean like in Georgia ( the country not the US state ) ? I'd like to hear that ( or any folk music ) based on quartal harmonies . How about some links please ?
Instant sophistication! Take the portal to the quartal!
Great vid! One musician to another she's right about all this and great camera angle. BTW on the job we don't really say "quartal harmony" we just say "lotta fourths." Because that's too big a name for it. I man it's not really different than common practice so it's not as though some other harmonic system. Accent versus language distinction. Bird lives!
I always loved quartile harmony. I recorded a jam based on a sus 2 when I was 16 I dearly wish I could hear now, recorded with my 25 year old mentor.
"Sorry, I digress" made me laugh loud, thanks.
Who doesn't!
Quartal is where it's at. Great way to "modernize" tired voicings
Ha ha - I am listening to this and thinking, "what does this remind me of?". Then I remember, in one of the bands I play in we do a jazz/funk version of Toto's Georgie Porgie. Right there - stacked forths at the start..
This is great 👍
Just my observation that 6/9 chords "sound quartal". On the guitar, B E A D G is a stack of 4ths. Raising the B to C gives a C 6/9 voicing. I'm not sure why this is so theory wise but it sounds pretty cool just walking up or down the diminished scale.
Show muito bem👏👏👏❤
Love me some McCoy Tyner......
Quartal harmony is a way to avoid the mechanisms that tonality and functional harmony have. It weakens or eliminates tonality. It gives chords that don't want to go somewhere or that clearly require resolution. That's why it's used a lot in modal jazz, on popular music with pentatonic scales etc. It comes for a great deal from medieval polyphony which has the same characteristics. Personally I like mixing the chords with 1 or 2 thirds to get something of both worlds, as some famous guitarists do. Pure quartal harmony in modern classical music has a very obscure and immature theory and methodology behind it.
Well said. But it misses to understand better the concepts and words, quartal harmony is not a system
@@emanuel_soundtrack Wrong. Pure quartal harmony IS a system, albeit an immature one. I have studied works on that subject from composers of the previous century. Although immature, it already has important rules and guidelines regarding dissonances, voice leading etc that are completely different from tonal harmony. Quartal harmony is part of a movement away from tonality towards atonality that started in the 20th century. It was gradual, meaning there are grey overlapping areas and transitional works: the stacking of some third chords by using voicings with fourth intervals (which are in fact extended or altered chords), and mixing a quartal chord here and there between third chords (often giving a kind of sus effect). But all these are just additions and extensions of tonal harmony to enrich and add color to the music. However, when quartal chords are used exclusively in a work or large part of it, then we are in a situation of pure quartal harmony following a system of its own. One important note. If you use chords as fairly independent blocks that you arrange in an arbitrary way, you don't have a system. Many self educated people do this, but I don't. So if you start by not having/wanting any complete harmonic system and you use quartal chords with the same mental approach, quartal harmony is not a system for *you* .
Damn I didn’t know it was that deep lol
Quartal fantasy: th-cam.com/video/FA-S3u57tqU/w-d-xo.html
This is great Aimee! Players might want to check out Walter Bishop Jr.´s videos and books on this subject.
I understand what you're doing as a sax player, but I'm not here yet learning piano.... but I'll be back, thank you.
Hi Aimee. Love your videos and insightful lessons and been watching you on youtube for several years now. Great stuff.
After watching this video I signed up for curiosity stream hoping to find you on there but having searched for everything I can think of (nebula, aimee, aimeenolte, jazz piano etc etc) I can't find you. The rest of curiosity stream is of no interest to me so please let me know how I find you on there. Thanks and Happy New Year.
Thank you so much, Nigel! After you signed up, you should have gotten a welcome email from Nebula. That is where you will find me. You’re getting two platforms. CuriosityStream, and nebula.
In Rock they stack the Amps - in Jazz we stack the Fourths
I remember first hearing A Love Supreme by Coltrane. Didn't he use fourth harmony on that tune?
Mccoy did. All over it.
Great lesson broken down so untrained players like myself can understand clearly!👌
Quartal harmony or "I don't know how to play guitar chords or theory so I just barre".
The Db chord was funny. Sort of like "nope these don't really fit but you know, they're close enough so we'll say they're good enough and roll with it".
Quartals are totally natural on a guitar in standard tuning. Your first example even matched, except up an octave, the 4 lowest strings, open (unfretted) - E A D G.
In theory you could get all the rest by barring those 4 strings. You could become the laziest accompanist ever, while sounding totally hip...
Fred
Yeah, lol
Hi Aimee - I went to the link to your site and would like to buy your block chords ideas and course but don’t see a link a place on there am I missing something - thanks
I think you mean you’d like to sign up for Nebula - the link is curiositystream.com/aimeenolte but I can’t enter links here so you’ll have to type it into google
Ok thank you
Very nice
Is the guitar set up for Quartal Harmony?
That’s most of the standard tuning for guitar
It was not "set up" purposefully to play quartal music, after all the fourths guitar tuning came from the Renaissance period, if not farther back...church and folk music basically. It was tuned that way instead of the 5th's of other string instrument then (violin, cello, etc) for ergonomics, to be able to reach notes and chords better, having a longer scale length than violin, and played horizontally rather than vertically like cello. That said yes it is great to play fourths on for that reason, when that music came to be (60s jazz)
EADG, the example is the tuning of the bass
Hi Amy, At Berklee they call the 9ths etc, tensions. Do you not use this terminology?
You know - I don’t. I mean I think it’s an accurate descriptor and I probably should use it. But for 9ths and 13ths, they don’t feel like very much tension to me…not nearly as much as a sus
wow
Just add the eleventh and ninth and call it good. Harmony in fourths yields two different chords; that is why western harmony is based on thirds of which you get 7 combinations.
Wouldn't the E-A-D-G work well with an E minor chord?
Absolutely
Can you use the quartal chords in a choir ?
Yeah of course!
You wouldn't sus a Dominant chord? Like D7sus4 or C/D? I think the E,A,D,G with D in the bass would sound nice. And what about other stacked fourths? Like C,F,B,E. or the Lydian F,B,E,A? Have you messed with those at all. Like modal 4th's?
You’re right about a Dsus. EAGD is a nice way to play that. Careful when you say CFBE because f to b is not a perfect fourth. It would have to be a Bb - but yeah FBEA is an option for a Lydian sound - Fma#11 🙌🏼
Go counterclockwise on the circle of 5ths to get the circle of 4ths.
Wonder if the idea of a perfect 4th was coined in the 20th century or does it come out of earlier musicle erras?
Since Pitagoras
E...A...D...G -- first four notes of the standard guitar tuning.
Stanley Jordan tunes the whole guitar in 4ths making it much more logical
@@alanhowell3646 Yeah, others do that as well.
For some reason I think of these voicings (actual 4ths) as Jacob Collier chords. It's hard for me to make sense of them, but in some of your examples I actually could, so I'll give it a try.
That's not supposed to be a backhanded compliment. It really is rare for me to feel quartal harmony functionally. Especially planing it around, it feels so drifty. I never viewed it as upper extensions of an absent root. That was the missing insight, for me (other people are probably going "duh"🤣 but no worries).
I think I'll get an oversized sketchbook. Lately I've been wanting to make a negative harmony chart, a tritone sub chart, and now there's this one, too.
Hi Aimee. My wife wants to know: why do we love harmony so much?
ive been using quartals but am having a hard time applying them to the m7b5. any advice?
Start on the flat five or the root!
the final fantasy VI intro
My first thought not Bill Evans, Mccoy Tyner!
Hope you take a look at Dire Straits' "Your Latest Trick" sometime!
Y si, si suma B es pentaEm o intente con la misma escala de la nota susodicha, quiero decir, pentaBm, gg soy un tonto, a proposito, que acorde es E,A,D,G,B? E,G,B,D,A....? Y, del B al E hay un eslavon perdido? Exato Cmaj7 y compañia. Saludos!.
Progressive rock fans are thinking "Tarkus!".
Aimee PLEASE pretty please, could you play "Wind beneath my wing" in D? Just melody Not with voice?? I would pay you for it. 🙏🙏🙏
Please make the secret of bebop....thanks
I have several bebop videos :)
Aimee Nolte's stacked
Aimee Tuition up the Warzoo
😄
Star Trek theme song intro.
This is truly great!!
I love what you do, and you teach so well.
I wonder, have you heard this
"song" by Gong:
th-cam.com/video/A_xFLBD_9wM/w-d-xo.html
I find it intriguing, puzzling and beautiful.
It has an ongoing longing character,
going up from E 11 / C/E up the scale
to the point where I lose track...
I have love this piece for over 40 years
and never wrapped my mind around it.
Just getting to it, actually..
Love, Knud
B E A D G C F Would this work over a B half diminished chord? B D F A
The E is cool but I wouldn’t play a G and C. If it’s quick in passing and resolves nicely you could go for it
The jazz bible is cool and all, but it feels kinda culty to be like "these work because the jazz bible says so" instead of like... "these work because if you place them in a higher octave, it makes a C Major 7 add 9 chord which is pretty"
It’s just a jumping off place. That’s all.
@@AimeeNolte Right. That makes sense. Of course it is. That should go without saying. It just felt weird to me, but it makes sense to promote something you created to help people learn. Edit: Just to clarify.. It was a bit of hyperbole.
Hearing a woman talk intervals like that drives me wild. You're an angel, thanks for this video, a great explanation of how Spinal Tap decided that jazz was simply what you get when you play wrong notes, haha. You're obviously well trained and you actually explain your concepts very clearly and thoroughly. I'm a guitarist/bassist/drummer and unfortunately can not play piano. I see the advantage piano offers when using inversions especially. To see them in a linear form is indeed beneficial. Maybe if I watch you enough, I'll be inspired to learn piano, that or I'll need a long cold shower.
Why don’t you try complimenting Aimee without mentioning that she’s female or trying to hit on her like a nasty creep? Treat her like what she is - a great musician.
@@jacobscolliers198 How about you concern yourself with you and I will continue minding my own business. I do not have conflict with anyone ever under any circumstances. Good day to you.
When you start a n the 3 f a change rd it leaves room to become a pentatoni chord ie (e) a (d) g (c) (c major pentatonic) and the {ga } is the a minor pentatonic or a minor 7.
I missed the day they taught stacking thirds, and there went understanding diatonic harmony out the window.