Harmonic Planing

[steve jones]

While we were on the subject of voiceleading and parrallels, I thought it might be interesting to discuss harmonic planning. For those not familiar with this term, planning in the process of harmonising a voice with parrallels (probably not the best definition, so might be worth looking it up for something more concise!).

Anyway, an example of planning might be to take a melodic line and to play a full triad rather than just the one note. There are two kinds of planning, on that takes the diatonic system into account (ie, changing thirds and fifths to represent the position in the scale) and planning where the intervals remain fixed. Not sure of the exact terms for each.

Late romantics and 20th century composers used these techniques all the time. Debussy for one. Rachmaninoff also seems to use this technique in his more lyrical passages (although he does sometimes mix the intervals to get apparently get away from totally parrallelism).

Anyway, I was curious to see what you guys know of this technique and its applications.

Cheers,

SJ

[mike_lang]

There seems to be quite a bit in Ravel's Menuet from Tombeau.  Maybe some other Ravel?

ML

[steve jones]

Debussy seems to use this technique alot, in the chromatic form I believe. I couldnt quote any passages of hand, but Im sure I remember hearing stuff like this in his preludes.

Also, some classic examples in the Sibelius Op75. When you plane (1, 5, you get this wonder oriental effect! And if you place this above a rich extended triad, you can get some nice results.

SJ