Voicing (music)

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Various voicings: V/V-V-I progression. 1st (help·info),[1] 2nd,[2] 3rd,[3] 4th, 5th[4] and 6th[5]

In music theory, voicing refers to one of two closely related concepts:

1. How a musician or group distributes, or spaces, notes and chords on one or more
instruments
2. The simultaneous vertical placement of notes in relation to each other;[6] this relates
to the concepts of spacing and doubling
It includes the instrumentation and vertical spacing and ordering of the musical notes in
a chord: which notes are on the top or in the middle, which ones are doubled,
which octave each is in, and which instruments or voices perform each note.

Contents

• 1Vertical placement
o 1.1Examples
• 2Doubling
• 3Drop voicings
• 4See also
• 5Sources
• 6External links

Vertical placement[edit]
The following three chords are all C-major triads in root position with different voicings. The
first is in close position (the most compact voicing), while the second and third are in open
position (that is, with wider spacing). Notice also that the G is doubled at the octave in the
third chord; that is, it appears in two different octaves.
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Examples[edit]
Many composers, as they developed and gained experience, became more
enterprising and imaginative in their handling of chord voicing. For example,
the theme from the second movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s early Piano Sonata
No. 10 (1798), presents chords mostly in close position:

Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 10, Andante

On the other hand, in the theme of the Arietta movement that concludes his last piano
sonata, Piano Sonata No. 32, Op. 111 (1822), Beethoven presents the chord voicing in
a much more daring way, with wide gaps between notes, creating compelling sonorities
that enhance the meditative character of the music:

Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 32, Arietta: Listen

Philip Barford describes the Arietta of Op. 111 as "simplicity itself… its widely-spaced
harmonization creates a mood of almost mystical intensity. In this exquisite
harmonization the notes do not make their own track – the way we play them depends
upon the way we catch the inner vibration of the thought between the notes, and this
will condition every nuance of shading."[7] William Kinderman finds it "extraordinary that
this sensitive control of sonority is most evident in the works of Beethoven's last
decade, when he was completely deaf, and could hear only in his imagination."[8]
Maurice Ravel’s Pavane de la Belle au Bois Dormant from his 1908 suite Ma Mère
l'Oye exploits the delicate transparency of voicing afforded through the medium of the
piano duet. Four hands can cope better that two when it comes to playing widely-
spaced chords. This is especially apparent in bars 5–8 of the following extract:

Pavane de la Belle au Bois Dormant. Listen

Speaking of this piece (which also exists in an orchestral version), Austin writes about
Ravel’s technique of "varying the sonority from phrase to phrase by telling changes
of register."[9]

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The chords that open and close Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms

The two chords that open and close Igor Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms have
distinctive sonorities arising out of the voicing of the notes. The first chord is sometimes
called the Psalms chord. William W. Austin remarks:
The first and last chords of the Symphony of Psalms are famous. The
opening staccato blast, which recurs throughout the first movement, detached from its
surroundings by silence, seems to be a perverse spacing of the E minor triad, with the
minor third doubled in four octaves while the root and fifth appear only twice, at high
and low extremes... When the tonic C major finally arrives, in the last movement, its
root is doubled in five octaves, its fifth is left to the natural overtones, and its decisive
third appears just once, in the highest range. This spacing is as extraordinary as the
spacing of the first chord, but with the opposite effect of super-clarity and consonance,
thus resolving and justifying the first chord and all the horror of the miry clay.[10]
Some chord voicings devised by composers are so striking that they are instantly
recognizable when heard. For example, The Unanswered Question by Charles
Ives opens with strings playing a widely spaced G-major chord very softly, at the limits
of audibility. According to Ives, the string part represents "The Silence of the Druids—
who Know, See and Hear Nothing".

Doubling[edit]
In a chord, a note that is duplicated in different octaves is said to be doubled. In the
second chord below, the note E is doubled in two octaves, while G is "doubled" in
three.

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Melodic doubling in parallel (also called parallel harmony) is the addition of

a rhythmically similar or exact melodic line or lines at a fixed interval above or
below the melody to create parallel movement.[11] Octave doubling of a voice or
pitch is a number of other voices duplicating the same part at the same pitch or at
different octaves. The doubling number of an octave is the number of individual
voices assigned to each pitch within the chord.[citation needed] For instance, in the
opening of John Philip Sousa's "Washington Post March",[12]the melody is
"doubled" in four octaves.

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Consistent parallelism between melodic lines can impede the independence of

the lines. For example, in m. 38 of the gigue from his English Suite No. 1 in A
major, BWV 806, J.S. Bach avoids excessive parallel harmony in order to
maintain the independence of the lines: parallel thirds (at the beginning) and
parallel sixths (at the end) are not maintained throughout the entire measure,
and no interval is in parallel for more than four consecutive notes.[12]

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Consideration of doubling is important when following voice leading rules

and guidelines, for example when resolving to an augmented sixth
chord never double either notes of the augmented sixth, while in resolving
an Italian sixth it is preferable to double the tonic (thirdof the chord).[13]
Some pitch material may be described as autonomous doubling in which
the part being doubled is not followed for more than a few measures often
resulting in disjunct motion in the part that is doubling, for example,
the trombone part in Mozart's Don Giovanni.[14]

Drop voicings[edit]
One nomenclature for describing certain classes of voicings is the "drop-n"
terminology, such as drop-2 voicings, drop-4 voicings, etc. (sometimes
spelled without hyphens). This system views voicings as built from the top
down (probably from horn-section arranging where the melody is a given).
The implicit, non-dropped, default voicing in this system has all voices in
the same octave, with individual voices numbered from the top down. The
highest voice is the first voice or voice 1. The second-highest voice is
voice 2, etc. This nomenclature doesn't provide a term for more than one
voice on the same pitch.
A dropped voicing lowers one or more voices by an octave relative to the
default state. Dropping the first voice is undefined—a drop-1 voicing would
still have all voices in the same octave, simply making a new first voice.
This nomenclature doesn't cover the dropping of voices by two or more
octaves or having the same pitch in multiple octaves.
A drop-2 voicing lowers the second voice by an octave. For example, a C-
major triad has three "drop-2 voicings". Reading down from the top voice,
they are C E G, E G C, and G C E, which can be heard as the voicings
supporting the first three melody notes (following the introductory phrase)
of the Super Mario Bros. video game theme.[citation needed]