Songs that use Counterpoint

This video is sponsored by tom play. Counterpoint is a musical texture where each voice of the music, each part moves with its own independent movement and contour and yet between the different voices we still have a sense of harmony in this piece, the music is built exclusively from of only two melodies, an upper voice and a lower voice; However, although the music is not accompanied by any additional chords, we still get a sense of harmony in the way these two voices interact. Here is an example of three-part

counterpoint

. see with additional voices the harmony can become much more sophisticated the beach boys were certainly fans of

counterpoint

they often layered their vocal harmonies in beautiful contrapuntal textures now, unlike the bark pieces we heard before, when counterpoint is used in music pop, the texture is rarely one hundred percent contrapuntal 100 counterpoint, there will often be other harmonic instruments that will accompany the counterpoint and ultimately dilute the texture, for example, although the vocal lines here, God only knows, are interacting in counterpoint, everything It is sustained beneath these chords, if only God knows they were pure.

Counterpoint as you can see in the Baroque era would sound like this as you can hear it, the texture becomes much more delicate and exposed, we no longer have that rock solid harmonic support from the harpsichord or the other instruments which means everything sense of harmony now. comes from the interaction between the voices, this is a much purer example of counterpoint, however of course there is nothing wrong with mixing counterpoint with what we could call homophony and as I mentioned before this is the context in which we generally hear counterpoint. Homophony in pop and rock music is a different type of musical texture, while counterpoint is when each voice has its own independent movement.

In homophony we want the opposite, we want all the voices to mix in a unified movement. Most popular

songs

will use homophony instead. than counterpoint, more specifically what you might call melody-dominated homophony, where we have a clear melody on top and all the other instrumentation strives to create a homogeneous harmonic base upon which the melody now sits, although the texture of the Most pop and rock music is probably best described as homophony or melody-dominated homophony. We can find examples of contrapuntal texture counterpoint in pop and rock music. A common use of counterpoint in pop and rock

songs

is when two or more melodies that have been presented to us during the course of the music are layered on top of each other so that we then hear them together creating a counterpoint texture between them, e.g. in the song For Noone by the Beatles, we are first introduced to this melody in verse, your day breaks, your mind aches.

We discover that all our words of kindness, a few bars later, introduce us to the second melody played on the horn and then, later in the song, these two now familiar melodies are layered on top of each other creating a counterpoint between them if we consider The baseline here to be a third melody, we could consider this as a three-part counterpoint, your day breaks your head, there will be times when this technique will be particularly satisfying because we have already been presented with these melodies individually, we already know what they sound like. , so when we hear them interact together in a satisfying way, it's almost as if we've seen two pieces of a puzzle come together.

Another example is the muse's supermassive black hole at the beginning of the song, we are introduced to this melody, then we are introduced to the second melody, these two melodies. They are then superimposed on top of each other creating a two-part counterpoint. This is also a good example of combining homophonic writing with counterpoint. This melody here is harmonized in a homophonic texture. All the different voices work together to create the sense of a unified melody. meaning that although this part is made up of several vocal harmonies when combined with this other melody, we can consider it a two-part counterpoint because this four-part vocal harmony acts as a unified voice, one part is another great example of counterpoint in a rock The song is the middle section of Radiohead's Paranoid Android.

It begins with this set of three voices, two singing an octave away from each other and the third intertwining, then in the second rotation they are joined by this voice and in the third rotation the texture develops once again with this third vocal melody separate that joins the frame and in the fourth and final rotation we have another voice that adds to the texture. What I love about this type of contrapuntal writing is that as you listen you don't necessarily stick to one melody as the main melody, your attention begins to split between the different lines, which means that every time you listen to the song, you may find yourself feel drawn to different melodies in the same section.

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Use the links below for more information. One of my favorite examples of counterpoint is Blur Blur's Country House. I used counterpoint to develop each chorus of the song. The first chorus of the song does not feature any counterpoint, it only features a main melody; however, with the second chorus a second countermelody is now introduced adding that layer of counterpoint and then when we get to the final chorus another countermelody appears. This time brass playing has been added, meaning that with each chorus we have something new to listen to to increase the energy of the song. Simon and Garfunkel are well known for their beautiful vocal writing and perhaps one of their best examples of vocal arrangements is their version of The Scarborough Affair Simon and Garfunkel used counterpoint to weave a new original melody into the traditional melody of The Scarborough Affair and this use of counterpoint actually introduces some pretty dark irony into the song.

The innocent old melody of the Scarborough Affair is tangled with a scornful chant against war lyrics written by Paul Simon Oh, counterpoint can also be very common in musicals, it's a great way to hear the perspectives of two different characters at the same time. time, intertwining their lines in a melodic counterpoint, for example, One More Day of Les Misérables begins by allowing each character to have one. one to sing a verse that tells us about their individual situation, these men who seem to know my crime will surely come a second time someday and then as the song develops the lines of the different characters begin to overlap each other until the melodies have created a deep interwoven web and this interwoven contrapuntal texture then culminates with all the different lines suddenly unifying everything into one unified lyric.

This is such a powerful moment musically and narratively, the dense counterpoint illustrating each character's conflicting and overlapping situations, but then comes the sudden moment of unison. It dramatically underlines the one thing all these very different characters have in common: tomorrow they will discover what God has in store for them. A particularly sophisticated form of contrapuntal writing is the fugue. A fugue is a particular type of composition in which we start with an initial theme, once the first voice has completed this theme, a second voice will now enter as well playing that same theme; However, as the second voice progresses through that theme, the first voice will continue on its own course developing a contrapuntal texture.

Often we will have several voices, each of which will echo the opening theme here in the Bach G minor fugue that we have developed to the point that we have a three-part counterpoint played in both hands of the organist, but now The organist has to get his feet involved too to play a fourth voice using the organ's pedals and, like all the other voices, this voice also begins by reintroducing that now familiar opening theme. You can almost think of a breakout as a much more complicated round. I'm sure you remember from your childhood that when a group of people sing a melody, however, different groups start the melody at different times, resulting in a much more elaborate contrapuntal texture than what you would get if you sang it all together, which last one I did.

What I would like to talk about today is what is commonly cited as the rule of counterpoint, which is not to write in consecutive fifths or octaves. A convention for composing counterpoint is not to write consecutive fifths or even consecutive octaves. What this means is to imagine that we have written this three-part counterpoint in this measure here, these two voices are actually moving in parallel fifths with each note, they are moving in the same direction with the same rhythm and, since you were here, the The problem with this is that these two voices because of this parallel movement end up sounding like one unified voice.

The problem with this is that with counterpoint the idea is that each voice retains a sense of independence. We want each voice to interact in a nice way, but we don't want them all to be condensed. into a unified melody as they would in homophony and this is the problem with consecutive fifths or consecutive parallel intervals of any kind at this point because the voices now move together in the same direction at the same rhythm that we naturally perceive them as one. unified voice instead of three independent voices, which ultimately destroys that contrapuntal texture, so the whole thing about this rule of parallel fifths is that if you want to maintain your counterpoint, if you want to maintain that texture, you have to avoid this kind of parallel movement, for example, we could fix this parallel movement here by adjusting the notes in this way now the three voices retain that independent sound, of course this is not a rule, it is just a convention, a guide that you should follow if your goal is to create this counterpoint classic baroque style so you can