Write More Parallel Fifths
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- Опубліковано 3 лют 2025
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Music:
Claude Debussy: La Cathédrale engloutie from Préludes, Book 1, performed by Stefano Ligoratti and available on IMSLP: tinyurl.com/de...
Thomas Little: Dance! #2, performed by Rachel Fellows, Michael King, and Bruce Tippette [original upload: zps7sQZecQY]
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1) I'd like to thank new patron *Chiara C* for supporting the channel-she joined after the video was rendered and uploaded, hence why she's not in the end screen.
2) This is the first step towards a schedule that I'm trying out where small videos will appear between the longer documentaries so that the channel doesn't go a month (or more) without any new content. We'll see how sustainable this is, and how the algorithm reacts, together.
Yay!!!!😎
I was recommended the video, so I’d say the algorithm likes it!
All depends on the period.
Unless inbedded in the musical context you hear NO parallels in Bach's music.
None......
"Das klingt gut!" - Bach
"Ça sonne bien!" - Debussy
" !" - Cage
"I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry." -Cage
Parallel fiths are part of everyday music. One can find them in a lot of jazz, pop and rock music as well as in videogame- and filmmusic. Telling young aspiring composers not to use them (at all) is like telling aspiring painters not to use vibrant colour contrast such as yellow/purple which, belive it or not, were once considered vulgar in western art.
I teach theory and harmony, and I always tell my students that parallel 5ths (and octaves) should be intentional, not by accident.
@Brent well I have mixed feelings about this because unless you're writing in a style of music where parallel fiths should be avoided, you can't really tell whether they were placed intentionally or not. There are similar "rules" in the visual art like: you should avoid placing objects in the middle of your composition or you should not use (pure) red, yellow, and blue in one painting. But this has aesthetically very little to do with the world around us, and unless these rules are taught alongside their historical context from which they stem, they are completely meaningless. Who cares if somebody writes unintentional parallel fiths ore of something accidentally slips onto the middle of your painting? Most average people won't notice it, and nobody is going to die because of it. In some cases, writing too many parallel thirds or using dominant 7- or even worse dim7-chords too often can make your music sound (unintentionally) old-fashioned, even for the average listeners.
Stacking Parallel 4ths is even better
Noone ever told anyone not to tell them at all. This is clickbaity bs
@@yango8778 Quite agree with this. As a composer I trust my ear more than I trust anything else, to the extent that when I'm in a creative moment I pay very little heed to what the theory behind what I'm doing is. Sometimes people don't believe me when I tell them this, as they can't imagine how it can work that way or they assume I must be a very sloppy kind of composer if I think this way. But it's very easy for me to think this way because all of my initial self-taught composing was based on having a good ear for melody and using tools that pushed me towards independently developing voice leading skills. It was really only later that I learned the names for things and the theory of it, and so it's very easy for me to separate my processes of creation and analysis. Of course, they SOMETIMES cross over, and that can be good. If I've drifted from my home key, say, and now I'm trying to get back, I might help myself out by thinking 'okay, well what's the V of that?' But just as many times as I've done something like that, I've used my ear to find my way, and often found a pleasing and less-obvious solution to whatever musical problem I'm having - which later I'm free to learn the theory of later if I'm interested in better understanding the reasons why the choice I made works. But in the moment all I care about is my ear, which I have developed trust for.
Paralell 5ths are only against the rules in Music Theory semesters 1 and 2. In real life, they are wonderful tools. I agree with what you are saying 100%.
Yup, it's good to teach a very strict framework to students at first, so that they can properly understand the framework. Everything is allowed, so long as you know what you're doing.
I want a shirt with this picture of Bach and "Thou shall not write fifths!"
Now I do too
@@ClassicalNerd Maybe it's time for new Merch!
except bach had no problem breaking the rules. he valued nice, easy to sing lines more than conforming his music to fit in with the rules of counterpoint. a better person to put on the shirt would be johann fux because he litterally wrote the book on counterpoint.
Wasnt Johannes De Garlandia the first one to forbid perfect fifths?
In our music A-level class (highest exam you do in last 2 years of school before university), we set the instructions to Taylor Swift:
"You can't put an octave twice in four part harmony, and
We are never, ever, ever, ever... putting fifths together"
We also did the exercise of doing the "Pie Jesu domine, Donna eis requiem" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail in parallel fifths and wandered the corridors hitting each other in the face with our notebooks
As a metalhead, I love parallel fifths on guitar. Chuck from Death used them all the time to great effect.
As a Music theory adjunct at a state university, I always point out that “ the music theory we focus on is very specific to a style. And I always try to give examples of parallel 5ths sounding great! I like that day because it calls for me bringing in my guitar!
When I was a beginning composer I wrote exclusively in parallel fifths because that was all I knew at the time. If you already guessed it I am a guitarist who "studied" punk rock theory, so I only knew to harmonize with the root and fifth (except for open chords). I'm glad I took one year of classical music theory in college thought because I think it made me more open to other ideas. I never thought of music theory to be "rules" but rather Tendencies of composers in the 18th-19th centuries.
a la Piston in Harmony
Goodness, this subject has gotten...tiresome.
Love this video, especially the idea of there being multiple music theories. I’ve been studying Arvo Pärt’s music for the last few years because I relate to his sound and philosophy, and it’s been so fun figuring out how it works in the absence of much theoretical research.
When I was studying music, we were told to not use consecutive fifths or octaves because it sounds medieval and doesn't really fit what we were doing. But as Debussy's teacher told him:
"There's only one rule you should follow: your own pleasure".
All this makes sense.
i love the way you explained music theory as descriptive and not prescriptive. I lose sight of the fact that music theory is the analysis of why things sound the way they do, not the rules of how to make things sound good.
I am currently composing a choral piece that has a parallel fifth.
𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙚
You absolute scoundrel.
@@maxgregorycompositions6216 Nice name.
Just ONE? The piece likely must have lots of motific integrity. Cool.
Commenting here for channel's algorithm. Great video as always, sir.
Parallel fifths sticking out as a distinctive sound, in my experience, really depends on the timbral context. On a harpsichord with no dynamic control, yeah the voices blend. On a piano, in which dynamics can be used to distinguish two voices, parallel fifths can sound independent enough in contrapuntal work. I've met people who cringe or otherwise sharply react when they hear a parallel fifth in any context and I cannot help but feel that's a learned sensitivity. I've yet to meet somebody with little to no music theory background who reacts strongly and consistently, negatively to parallel fifths.
It is 100% a learned sensitivity. "Oh, I'm supposed to not like that, yes, yes, it's very bad!" Meanwhile, the rest of society grows and evolves.
You have the best comprehensive response to this subject, so far. Context seems the name of the game, ultimately.
Very good, Nobody ever explained the reason to me before.
If you have a jazz or rock band improvising live, parallel fifths and octaves must be happening all over the place but no one minds.
Parallel motion is good way to simplify a lot of chaos without reducing the texture of the music. Theory isn't rules but a set of musical functions that can be used to get the desired effect.
i love this analysis, it gave a lot of clarity to sentiments i have carried for a while!
I’ve been reading Nicholas Slonimsky’s “Lexicon of Musical Invective” and Debussy was widely criticized for his parallel 5ths in the early 1900s. So in fact there was a pretty concerted effort to “cancel” him at the time.
...and at some point, a tritone was considered: "the devil of music"... plain silliness. Anyone cancelling some artistic bent has censorship-itis.
Great topic, and overdue. In my writing I acknowledge the doctrines of 5ths and tritones and tend to reserve them for deliberate passages with blatant showcasing. In bi, tri, or atonal work the situation is less clear and I wholeheartedly agree with your description of grammar and consistency - _yours_
Jazzer here: No fear, no fear. Thank you for your excellent content, Thomas.🌹🌹🌾🌹🌹
THANK YOUUUUU *SOMEBODY* NEEDED TO SAY IT
A day that has a new Classical Nerd video is a miraculous day
I saw a comment earlier on a forum that I completely agree with. Parallel fifths are amazing when you want to enhance a melody and strengthen it. If you want more independence between parts, omit parallel fifths
I had similar thing when i started learning function harmony. I was always weirded out by motion that 5th in a chord is least important and that you can drop 5th in final tonic of a exercise i was doing. When I'm writing I usually am dropping the 3rd, liking the sound of just plain tonic octaves, sometimes adding some 5ths.
The post title got me pumped you rock man
Thanks so much for this video! Recently I’ve been trying to get out of the fear of writing for other instruments (I play piano, albeit quite poorly) and with no one to teach me personally, a lot of online resources speak about SATB voice leading as if it is law that, if broken carries a death sentence. This has helped me obtain a clearer idea of what I should be doing and thinking about while writing. THANKS!
Besides, they’re more like guidelines anyway.
Stumbled across this by accident. I am not much of a composer but I do write a lot and I wish more people would understand what you say about music in art in general: The theory is descriptive not prescriptive. Whatever works is correct. There are so many people out there that will tell you how to write a story the "correct" way. And that then leads to people comparing the art to what they learned is right and dismissing most of what doesn't fit these narrow rules instead of trying to experience the art and see if it works for them. If art fit into narrow rules we could just let an alhorithm create the "best" piece of art and then go home. So yeah. Thank you for that video! More people need to see this.
Descriptive and not prescriptive. And whatever WORKS is correct. Best response I've witnessed here! Too bad that "whatever works" isn't applied to politics or economics(!)
Thank you for posting this! My personal dabblings in composition and music theory have always been as a self taught composer with a love for western sacred music, and parallel 5th are SO important for seeing the continuity between medieval organum through to impressionists and composers like Durufle and his requiem setting, Appalachian shape note music even, and on into modern sacred music where there is something of a neo-medieval revival among certain high church liturgy groups. Its not that contrapuntal music suddenly thought that the earliest seeds of polyphony were now bad, its that they held it as a totally distinct thing that created different results. That would be like saying pizza is good therefore pineapples are bad. No! Not at all! They just didn't want pineapple on their pizza! And now, due to shift in culture and the intentions of chef's attempts to stimulate the palate, it is infact acceptable to put pineapple on pizza because we aren't doing the same exact thing that people before us were trying to do. It is essential to understanding music history and how we fit in relation to those who carried the torch before us to do away with these foolish notions that at the turn of an era everyone woke up and decided something that was good is now bad, or as we pridefully tend to do now, that we woke up one morning more enlightened than everyone who came before us and realized how silly everyone's rules were.
Music theory appears after music is composed, told me a teacher once...
Very true. True for everything, really.
Yup. Application yields theory. Form follows function!
I think something important to note is that there are NO limits in music. Everything has an optimal time and place, but nothing is really off limits.
Agreed; it's all dependent on the skill and soul of the composer.
Brilliant video as always 😊
I sometimes use parallel fifths, but not when I’m harmonizing a melody. I feel like 3rds and 6ths sound better, but sometimes, they add a nice texture to music.
Music is SO infinite...like the...multiverse.
Love your attitude on this subject. It’s so much about context. 🎵
I adore the clever use of parallel fifths!
Well it's a good thing I never cared about most of the western classical music theory rules when making my stuff
this is a rule for exercises, not for composing music
ANOTHER video, oh my gosh yay! Please make a video on harpsichord!!
It is just important to realize that parallel forward motion glues the notes and makes the harmony thinner. That's all.
Lol I teach music theory on the college level. A few years ago, I was also taking private composition lessons with an accomplished composer I came in with a piece I was working on that the first measure had a parallel 5th in the 2 lowest parts. He had me rewrite it. The force is strong against the parallel 5th!
Thanks a lot for this video ! :)
As a beginner composer taking harmony lessons too, i always find myself between people telling me that harmony rules are bullshit and that i shouldn't care about it, but without giving me any reasons to do so, and my teacher who is pinpointinf every mistake in my works
Not saying that my teacher is obsessed by rules, he is doing the right thing to help me improve, but we never have any conversation about these topics, and he is pretty close minded about music anyway
And it seems to me that what you say is the perfect spot between those two mindset
It gives me words to express my point of view in the future, so thanks again !
Have a nice day/evening :)
Beautiful and subtle of a concept in need of light. Great video 👏
The best music theory video I have watched in a long time.
You’re back !!!
Great video as always 👍
Lili boulanger used them quite often... And it really works well in the impressionistic style...
NOT surprised! And from what I understand, she taught LOTS of well-known composers.
Its very common for synthesist to tune a second oscillator to a fifth and play everything like that. Steve Roaches Structures from Silence is my favorite example.
The funny part is that most people won't be able to listen and identify a paralel fifth within a four part harmony.
Exactly
lol - when i compose music, my only music theory is to not think of it all - i listen to what sound it is that my inner ear wants - music theory is a nice thing to give music teachers something to teach - fine - if it helps people understand the history of music - i remember reading a wonderful quote by Debussy - wish I could repeat verbatim - but I can not - but I do remember that it was such a joyful declaration - expressing the exhilaration he felt as a composer when he realized he was finally free to write however he desired
Oh my god! I’ve been preaching descriptivism in music theory for ages!!!! Thank you so much!!!
Jeez, the only points I missed in lit and materials of music was one parallel fifth and one *gasp augmented second.
Well said
Best clarification of a very common misunderstanding of what music theory is.
ravels sonatine is my favorite example of this
as a dance music guy parallel fifths are literally part of standard lead synthesizer patching- two sawtooth oscillators tuned a fifth apart, giving you parallel fifths ad infinitum.
But they’re treated as one voice. If we’re getting super technical, any two notes played back to back on an instrument are parallel fifths because of overtones.
I studied counterpoint. It's NOT that parallel fifths were "bad", just an indication of lack of melodic integrity, when writing a basic cantus firmus. Our instructor pointed that out right away. Just a matter of context. Parallel fifths are ALL OVER THE PLACE, and used copiously. But I understand the underlying idea of avoiding them when studying the 18th century system of counterpoint. All that my teacher was pointing out was that it was like the difference of one voice to two voices, period.
Having a melodic line played in parallel gives the melody depth, substance, richness, gravity. It makes it thicker, more dominant. It gives a piece of music a greater sense of structure.
One technique for paralleling a melodic line is doubling --- having two instruments play the same line simultaneously.
Another method would be parallel octaves.
Another method would be parallel fifths.
So given the goal of a piece of music, or of the composer, if you want to bring greater structure to a piece through the melody, if you can analyze and articulate how each of those techniques differ in terms of the impact on the listener, you can decide which to use.
Even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when parallel fifths were strictly forbidden, composers frequently composed hidden parallel fifths, which were the result of voice crossing.
Very interesting even for a guy who doesn't know any music theory
Debussy studied at French conservatory methods that came from Italian conservatory, partimento and that kind of thing, practical skills, not music theory. Gjerdingen: Music theory was for high classes, collage students who wanted to learn *about* music. Conservatory was for lower classes, working musicians who had to actually create music. "You take a class on space travel; you don't actually go to space." Debussy was learning to go to space, not just taking a class on it. There might have been some particular exceptions to the rules about parallel fifths in that period French counterpoint stuff?.. something about them being ok if one is treated as a dissonance? Anyway Debussy rebelled against all that, *after* graduating and winning, quoted something like "I don't write in fugal style just because I know how," etc... but I think it's of note that he learned it first, mastered it, and only then deciding to do something else, but no, you don't learn how to do that by studying "music theory" as I learned it. We never did anything like that in my collage theory courses, and even before I knew anything about partimento and the methods by which fugue was actually taught to composers who could actually do it well, a composition teacher I had once said "I'm reading this paper on this piece of mine... and by god all music theorists should be shot."
The 15 dislikes on this video are Bach and 14 of his children
Yeah - as a huge fan of Heavy Metal - that whole genre of music is BASED around Parallel Fifths and the opposite is true for Metal - that other intervals sound super weird!
It's a really funny thing being a fan of both Metal and Classical - noticing that basically the opposite is true of Classical.
Despite the differences, I've noticed quite an overlap in fans of metal and avant-garde classical music!
@@ClassicalNerd Absolutely, I try to encourage Metal listeners to check out Ornstein's Wild Men's Dance to encounter high levels of furious aggression in music composed 110 years ago.
I think dissonance is almost classical's equivalent to what metal does with 'distortion'. There is a shared pleasure in sounds that would be to jarring and unpleasant to most people.
@@ClassicalNerd Taking a history of rock and roll class right now. My professor is literally part of a band that's like a 50/50 blend of metal and avant-garde classical lol
those aren't parallel 5ths in the context of this video. parallel 5ths occur when two individual parts join together to make 5ths. in metal, the 5ths you are talking about are power chords. these are not two individiual parts, it is a single part which has its texture thickened with the 5th. no different than writing an entire melody with octaves on the piano. these aren't parallel octaves because they're not individual parts
god i love your videos
Thanks for the best Classical channel on YT!
Let me vote for doing videos on four composers who are already on your list:
Conlon Nancarrow
Guillaume de Machaut
Karl-Birger Blomdahl
Charles Wuorinen
And for one who isn't yet:
Karl-Erik Welin (Swedish Avant-Garde Organ music)
Duly noted: www.lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html
I have really been enjoing your vidios just amazing, been binging them haha. I would love to see a vidio on horowitz! I think this would be great as we have a lot of videos of him playing.
Duly noted: www.lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html
I have written a lot of songs with parallel motion! I'm not afraid at all!
In a so called classical composition, If parallel fifths occur, there's usually lots of them. Not just one or couple of them here and there. That's something to think about.
I'm a metalhead so parallel fifths is basically all I listen to lol
Absolutely based; it’s nice to have a video that explains this so succinctly
I think this is an example of how when a teenager in a basement says something, you kind of yeah, right, carry on the good work...but when you say it, it carries quite a lot of authority. When this comes from THAT place, it is liberating. Does that mean that the teenager is right. Meh :) This, first of all, is very well argued. I find that i agree. The point, of course, is not fifth parallels at all. An eyeopener, this one! :) (Also, as my grandfather said, the reason you learn the rules, is to know when and how to break them.)
If there is a "how" to break a rule, then that's merely another rule.
If you're writing something based on gregorian chant, you want LOTS of parallel 5ths. And open chords are extremely common in celtic music for harp.
I ran into the assumption that parallel 5ths are bad and need to be removed at all costs on a different channel on youtube, and asked "Why? What's wrong with them?" After a long and interesting discussion, we came to more or less the same conclusion you did here.
Rock/Metal guitar players: "I'm already 12 parallel (fifth) universes ahead of you"
The rule of parallel fifths or eights only applies when talking about real part writing. What Debussy does there can be literally called parallel fifths and eights, but classic harmony doesn’t call them so, for the same reason that violins I and II playing in octaves are not parallel octaves (even the violin section playing its part is not parallel unison), celli and double basses playing in unison (but sounding an octave apart), a flute doubling violins an octave higher, flutes and oboes playing in octaves or the piano left hand playing the bass line in octaves are not parallel octaves
Its so funny having Jazz arrangement and more classical music theory at the same time because they so often contradict each other, what is ok in one style is completely normal in another and vise versa.
Can you do a video on Jorg Widmann? Or maybe some other modern living composers? Like Rebecca Saunders, Brett Dean, or Robin Holloway?
I'm more inclined to do shorter analytical videos focusing on one element/aspect/piece/trend (as with my New Complexity video) as opposed to full-scale biographies-given that it's impossible to do an all-encompassing retrospective of those with ongoing careers.
I do think that there is a difference between composing polyphonically in classical music, which theorists like Riemann have described, where some parallel fifths actually sound bad, and thinking more in terms of timbres, like Debussy. This could be described as proto-spectralism, where individual lines are the overtones of sounds. I therefore believe that the replacement of polyphony by thinking in colors is responsible for this cultural change in music history.
I think part of the reason people ask, "Did [X pop artist] know music theory?" is, because pop isn't exactly well known for its application of complex music tools.
Which is a shame because there are a lot of great pop and rock songs with interesting musical aspects whether that's strange rhythms, polytonality, atonality, or some really cool timbres, etc.
Off the top of my head I can think of at least half a dozen pop songs with "oriental" riffs written entirely in PFs. I liken the perceived "rule" as akin to grammatical heresies like splitting infinitives or ending sentences on propositions... there's nothing really wrong with them per se; it's more a matter of style rather than actual law.
great!
Bach also has some parallel fifths in his fugues from wt clavier. I recall Aminor fugue from book 1 has parallel fifths. The fifths by thirds are very common too (they articulate a seventh chord).
So good
When I was studying music in college and someone proclaimed that *you shouldn't use parallel fifths*, I liked to play some random guitar riff that uses power chords (e.g. Symphony of Destruction) and say "so this riff is just wrong, right?" Usually got a chuckle from some of the other students 😝
It seems people tend to hear a rule and want to apply it everywhere regardless of context or reason... 😅
Im more of a diminished sevenths or pentatonic person, but can look into fifths.
( The seventh transposition of Pentatonic Sakura. ) Also Iwato.
Nadia Boulanger once told american composer Aaron Copland, essentially, to not write the music of Europe, but to write his own music
Parallel fifths is like 90% of rock and roll
Great video!
...but parallell octaves are punishable by death, right?
Sir thankyou for this video i want to learn composition ...iam from India ..is it possible you teach me sir 🙏 I really want to learn
I've forgotten how to read sheet music.... Check out Royer's Pièces de clavecin, No. 11: Le vertigo, pf. Jean Rondeau
"Music theory should be about musical grammar." I agree, somewhat. And let's keep in mind that there are many languages, each with different grammar.
Having said that, is there any merit in your mind to having a field of musical study which plays the role that linguistics does to languages? What is common to the way we experience musical sound, regardless of the style? I don't think we have made much progress on this front. Meanwhile, it is becoming common for people to put increasingly narrow styles of music into separate boxes, and to declare that each of those styles requires a separate "music theory." I think this trend ought to be reversed.
Music Theory is a guideline for making music. A basic musician can do pretty good music, following the rules. But a great musician know the rules and makes art in breaking this rules.
The horn parallel fifth is technically not a parallel fifth because it’s only one fifth right?
It's a cousin of the parallel fifth called the direct fifth-usually considered a poor choice in the same grammar, for similar reasons, but not _quite_ as bad an infraction, as there are acceptable use cases and they're a little harder to hear.
Cool vid
Other rule I daren'?t disobey the teacher: "Never begin with a 2nd Inversion of V! Beethoven did srart with augmented 4th chord in 2nd movement of op.78! I know perfectly well I am not Beethoven!!
NB: Debussy won the Prix de Rome for Fugue….
anyone averse to Parrallel fifths in this day in age is probably mentally ill in some capacity, or lives thier life having never consumed popular music before
1:10 I think he did, it was a very special event, and now it’s forbidden to write parellel fifths *sarcasm ends*
But place the dominant in the bass line, and replace higher ones remaining with dominant sevenths.
I like to call music theory more guidelines than laws or rules.
This is what it looks like, when you use parallel fifths🎵
tell this to the guitar riff crowd
I mostly agree with you but I think it's wrong to assume that all music schools just blindly tell their students to avoid parallel fifths at any cost. I learned that parallel fifths (and parallel octaves) should be avoided in style of music in which you want the voices to be independent, because they undermine the independence of the voices. But in any other style of music there's obviously no problem with it.
Guitar players: *Laughs in power chord
In a way, those chords in Debussy's piece are working as a single voice, with the notes of the chord adding timbre and texture, not unlike the registration in an organ. So... could one maybe claim they're not parallel fifths, because there's just one melodic voice?
that's exactly what they are. this video obscures that crucial distinction i think. if debussy has parallel 5ths everywhere, then even bach has parallel 5ths everywhere, if played on an organ at least