Reharmonisation Part 11: Bass Notes II

With all the previous parts of this series it has become relatively obvious that successful (re)harmonisation strategies don't need to be complicated. In fact, strikingly simple strategies can have a huge impact. Additionally, complex sounding harmonisations don't need to actually be complex at all.

Today, I want to focus on a strategy that is incredibly versatile, sounds very sophisticated but remains quite accessible on the other hand, which is the simple strategy of "non chord bass notes".

The concept is super easy: use a note as bass note that is not part of your chord. Done.

Well not quite. There's a bit of limitation to this. The principal idea of this approach is to actually create two simultaneous elements that create tension between each other but are very plausible and stable if looked on their own.

The extension of this concept would be the strategy how Stravinsky creates dissonances: juxtaposing two different triads on top of each other. However by having "one side" of this just being a single note we get a milder form of the sometimes harsh dissonances that Stravinsky created with this strategy which is compatible in more cases.

However, we have one opponent in this game which is the listening experience of the 21st century audience which is used to complex harmonies so that a different bass note often gets perceived in context of a larger chord and not as two elements sitting side by side (which is the foundation to make this concept work). While this sounds very cryptic, let's just strategically go through possible bass notes to a C major triad:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/c-major-bass-notes/s-gHu8Sw1ZNYS

It's relatively tricky in this example to isolate these chords without hearing it in context of the surrounding chords and getting that descending bass line feeling so I would recommend playing each one individually on a piano and let it ring for a while and just listen to its sound on its own.

This is a more subjective thing but I have added chord symbols where I personally don't hear these two elements separated but where my brain combines them into one chord. Some people might say that they hear the Abmaj7(#5) as two distinct elements (as it is an already relatively complex chord) while others might say for example that even with the F# in the bass they hear this construction as a unit of F#7(b9#11no3) which is both totally fine, so again these chord symbols represent my subjective perception. 

As a side note: people who come from a classical background will most likely hear the third chord (with Bb in the bass) as a plain Dominant7 inversion (which was quite common in the classical literature but is relatively uncommon in "modern" harmony). I think as soon as you hear the following progression, you will immediately understand the functionality of this chord in a similar way:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/c7-inversion/s-P0nKpblhctW

Personally, I can hear this chord detached from this function but I can understand if people who hear this chord immediately anticipate this resolution next. In any case, we can use it for our strategy and simply avoid this resolution to embed it into a different context. More on this in a bit.

The constructions that don't have a chord symbol above are useful for the strategy that we're talking about here as they mostly create two distinct layers in our perception and in spite of being really simple constructions sound emotionally quite complex. I will give you a musical example in a bit but let's first do the same thing with a minor triad:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/c-minor-bass-notes/s-8vsN7mh62wT

Again, it might be debatable which of these constructions form a unified harmony in our perception and which not but you get the idea. Again, it is recommended to play these detached from each other and just let them "sink in" individually.

Some of these minor chords have a long history of tenseful scoring. I used a Gm with an F# in the bass as opening harmony for this cue. So it might be relatively obvious to use these in tenseful, thriller and action sequences. However, especially the major versions can have a life in really calm and "beautiful" music.  So let's try putting this into context:

https://soundcloud.com/robin-hoffmann/bass-notes-musical-example/s-EnQ0jYlYqjj

This one switches in and out of this strategy which works quite seamlessly. Harmonically speaking we start with a clear F major tonality and switch to that Ab/G and C/B (that inverted Dominant 7th with it's presumed resolution denied) going to an F/B and E/D# in the next bar back to a straight forward F major again which moves to a C/E (hence pushing this whole thing into more of a Cmajor world) and finally concluding on this Bb/A leaving it open with some sort of question.

It should be noted that that E/D# (which resolves to a plain E) even serves a functional task here, we could see it as the Dominant of an Am and the following F major would be a "deceptive cadence in minor", so you can even infuse some functionality in such chords.

Otherwise we very often treat them as "harmonies of the moment" without lots of contextual connection. They of course make the tonality of a passage very unstable so we tend to follow along from chord to chord. Consequentially, you should be aware that staying in this world for too long can become disorienting for the audience. Generally it is advisable to give your audience something to hold on to once in a while to not lose them in the harmonic adventures that you present to them. Of course this disorienting quality can be desired and exploited but more commonly we would want to zone in on a clear tonality once in a while when using those to create islands of orientation. As usual, voice leading and strong melodies help alot to make these plausible. In the example above this quasi sequential motif in bar 2 and 3 helps to make these chords more digestable.

Personally, I feel that these chords add lot of emotional complexity to this passage, way more than the unambiguous chords ever could. Williams uses such chords a lot in scenes where emotions are conflicted, where there is doubt or underlaying conflict. Just laying one of these chords into the strings and let it sustain for several seconds, maybe establishing a melody on top of it will create an incredibly emotionally and harmonically rich passage.

I encourage you to try this concept on your own as it really is more of a "learning by doing" thing than me explaining these. When I first stumbled over this concept I really wondered why I didn't try this out earlier as it is so simple and so obvious, yet so effective. It just felt like a I had cracked one of these "film scoring codes" when I started to consciously use it so give this a go and try it out on your own.