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Year 9 - Music

Adding triadic harmony to ground bass

Harmonic progressions and bass lines

Unit Summary

In this unit pupils extend their understanding of harmonic progressions, learning about ground bass and triadic harmony.

Lesson Summary

You will learn to apply triadic harmony to a ground bass.

Key Notes

  • Triadic harmony is using triad chords to add harmony to a piece of music.
  • The triad is the root, third and fifth of a chord.
  • There are seven chords in the scale. The most used chords are the primary chords I, IV, and V.
  • To add triadic harmony to a ground bass pattern, choose chords which have the bass note as part of the chord.

Vocabulary To Learn

  • triadic harmony: harmony built on thirds, using the root, third and fifths notes of the scale
  • chord: two or more notes played together at the same time
  • root: the main note of the chord and the note the chord is named after (e.g. the root note of a C major chord is C)
  • primary chords: the three main chords in the scale - I, IV and V

Common Mistakes To Avoid

  • When adding chords to a bass line, the chord has to be the same as the note in the bass.

3 Quick Questions (With Answers)

1. Explain the lesson in two key points.

Triadic harmony is using triad chords to add harmony to a piece of music. The triad is the root, third and fifth of a chord.

2. What does this key word mean in this lesson? 'triadic harmony'

harmony built on thirds, using the root, third and fifths notes of the scale.

3. Correct this common mistake.

Mistake: When adding chords to a bass line, the chord has to be the same as the note in the bass. Correction: In most cases the bass note should be one of the notes in the chord, but doesn't always have to be the lowest note of the chord. For a balanced chord sequence most notes in the bass lines should be the root, but not all have to be.

More Lessons In This Unit

Browse all guides in the Year 9 Music guide library.