- Hi and welcome to this quick tip
which is on the subject of passing notes.
So what are passing notes?
Well, when you have a melody in music,
you normally find that the note
in the melody belongs to a chord.
So in other words, say
I've got a C in the melody,
and I'm in the key of C Major,
well I might have a chord
of C Major to go with it.
So if I put down a chord of C
Major, which is C, E, and G,
you can hear that C fits nicely
fits nicely with that chord.
Now it could be possible
that you could write
all of your melody notes with chords
but it could be a little
bit tedious after a while.
Let me give you an example.
I'm going to just improvise
a short piece of music
where all the notes of the melody
belong to the chord that
I'm playing at the time.
Sounds alright, doesn't it?
But you wouldn't want to carry
on like that for too long
without a little bit of
embellishment in the melody.
Something like this.
And what I'm doing there is
using some passing notes.
So what exactly is a passing note?
Well, a passing note has to pass by step
between two other notes.
So here's an example on the board here
where I've got a C that
belongs to a chord,
and then there's E that
would belong to a chord,
and I've just slipped
in this D in between.
Now the D doesn't belong to the chord
but it's going by step
between the C and the E.
So if I put down a chord of C again
and instead of just going
C to E, I go C, D, E,
you can hear how this D
is not part of this chord,
but it just passes between two notes
that do belong to that chord.
So it adds a bit of melodic interest,
but it still works because
it's passing by step.
Now if it comes between
beats like this one does,
we call it an unaccented passing note.
And if it comes on the
beat like this one does,
we call it an accented passing note.
And an accented passing
note is going to be stronger
than an unaccented passing note.
So here's the unaccented passing note,
and here's the accented passing note.
So you can hear how that
accented passing note
is a bit stronger.
So, for example, if
you were writing a song
and you just want something to be
a bit more florid in the melody,
you could use an unaccented passing note.
If you're writing a song and you've got
a particularly poignant word
that you want to express,
well, you might think about
using an accented passing note.
So there we are.
An introduction to passing notes.
