Was studying a vocal arrangement to get how its harmony works, felt like I was following, then—bam! Are there good frameworks for understanding tone clusters like these? Like: why every diatonic *except* G# on the first cluster? Should we see the second as an elaborate V of ii?
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i fucking love this arrangement of 715 - CRΣΣKS so one sec i'm gonna try to answer this question despite not knowing anything about harmony really
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okay so played around with this on piano a bit and i think the bare chord progression here with no embellishment is D - A - E, so IV - I - V. so in the first cluster, aside from the B you could argue in terms of voice leading that it’s just notes held from the D
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that’s looking at the treble clef tho i guess. the bass clef suggests Bm - C#m - DM7 - E which is very similar, third down and third up respectively, makes sense of the B, and then the DM7 is arguably passing tones?
not sure it’s gonna be clear what’s going on with the second tone cluster w/o seeing where it voice leads to. jacob collier says in a video that (my paraphrase) thinking in terms of chords is misleading and voice leading is actually the real thing and i’ve been chewing on that
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Right, I saw that too! That would seem to go doubly true in a vocal arrangement. That bass part really wants to walk up, and that may be the main thing, rather than the chord structure.
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I think it's reasonable to read the bass clef's first chord (on beat 2) as an appoggiatura into the A you suggest (in first inversion) on beat 2.5. Beat 3, though… hm...
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