Keyboard
Guitar · standard tuning
- 1
- Tonic
- Finale
- 2
- Supertonic
- Sufinale
- 3
- Mediant
- Médiante
- 4
- Subdominant
- Soudominante
- 5
- Dominant
- Dominante
- 6
- Submediant
- Sudominante
- 7
- Leading tone (subtonic when a whole step below)
- Soufinale
Dandrieu's originals shows every line of each table in the keys he wrote, with the plain three-voice right hand. Expanded & updated takes one major and one minor line per table (your labelled lines) and lets you play it in any of the 24 keys, with three harmonies over Dandrieu's bass line:
Basic keeps his chords. Expanded follows your rules. In major keys the tonic is 6/9, dominant sevenths are 9ths, a V triad that resolves home is a 13, an inverted V is a 9, the subdominant is maj13, sus chords are 13sus, ii and vi are m9 and iii is m7(11). In minor keys the tonic is m9, the supertonic (Dandrieu's m6 chords) is m7♭5(11), V–i dominants are 7alt with 7♭9♭13 at the final cadence, a V triad that moves on without resolving is still a 7alt, IV over the raised 6th is 6/9♯11, and diminished sevenths are read as rootless 7♭9 chords. Pentatonic voices each chord with the top-ranked shape from Superimposition Lab.
Rule of the Octave. Under each bar, the arrow shows which way the bass is moving, and a figure (6/4/3, 6/5, 4/2…) marks a bar that follows the Rule of the Octave: the classical chord for that bass degree and direction. Expanded harmony gives those bars your contemporary chord for the slot (up: I6/9, V9/2, I69/3, IVmaj13, V, IVmaj13/6, V9/7; down: V9/7, V9 of V/6, V, V9/4, I69/3, V9/2; in minor the same slots with m9, 7alt, m7♭5(11), 6/9♯11 and v m7(11)). Bars without a figure are the table's own chords, such as the suspensions, pedals and sequences each table teaches, and keep the chord rules. Open "Rule of the Octave" above the table to hear the whole scale in the current key.
Positions. Dandrieu's stacked figures put the octave, the 3rd or the 5th on top. "Top note" starts the line in that position (root or 9th, 3rd, 5th in Expanded), and the voices lead smoothly from there. Play each line in all three.
Patterns. Coloured bands name the galant schemata and cadences in each line: Romanesca, Lament, Prinner, Fenaroli, Do–Re–Mi, Comma, Quiescenza-type pedals, Phrygian half cadences, the cadenza semplice and composta. They also appear as markers in exported MIDI.
Voicing. With Basic harmony, "Octave chords" plays Liszt's texture from Scales in Chords: four notes in each hand, the outer notes an octave apart, the right hand moving in parallel with the left two octaves higher. "Continuo" is Dandrieu's three-voice right hand.
Compare the octaves sets fifteen harmonizations of the same scale side by side in any key: the Rule of the Octave as Dandrieu gives it (Table XXIII), Ewald Demeyere's three-part setting in sixth chords, Liszt's octave from Scales in Chords, Marcel Dupré's Lesson 1 with the scale in the pedal, the soprano and the tenor, and Barry Harris's sixth-diminished scale (major 6° in major keys, minor m6° in minor keys) in drop 2, where every voice walks the eight-note scale, and as block chords with the scale on top. Barry's guitar shapes are true drop-2 voicings on one string set, as in Alan Kingstone's Barry Harris Harmonic Method for Guitar. Five more lines come from C.P.E. Bach's harmonized scales (his 9/7–8/6 suspension chain going up and 7–6 coming down, as realized in Mortensen's The Art of Preluding, and his chromatic descent), your R&B walk-up with passing dominants, and Adam Maness's chord warmups (secondary dominants over a rising chromatic bass, tritone-substitute approach chords, and the descending "Sugar Chords").
Barry Harris Blues is the one page the European tradition could not have written. Barry gave dominant chords their own eight-note scales, the seventh diminished (C7 with B°7: C D E F G A♭ B♭ B) and the seventh flat-five diminished, so a blues, where every chord is a 7th, can be harmonized the way the Rule of the Octave harmonizes a scale. Both scales also appear in Compare the octaves, on the tonic in major keys and on V in minor keys. The blues page plays the 12-bar form (basic or bebop) and three 8-bar forms (“Key to the Highway”, “It Hurts Me Too” with its minor iv, and the gospel 8-bar with ♯iv°7 and VI7), major or minor, in every key: each bar is the chord in drop 2, then every voice moves up one step of its scale to the diminished chord, then glides into the next chord. Minor 7ths use the sixth chord a minor 3rd up and half-diminished chords the minor sixth a minor 3rd up, as Barry taught. "Families" swaps a dominant for the one a tritone away; they share the same diminished chord, which is the minor-third symmetry behind the whole system.
Texture changes how every chord is played, in the audio and in exported MIDI. "Arpeggio" is the unmeasured-prelude style John Mortensen describes for the Rule of the Octave (The Pianist's Guide to Historic Improvisation, ch. 4): each chord rolled up from the bass and back down. "Suspensions" follows his next exercise: whenever the top voice should move by step, it holds the old note for half the chord, then resolves, the way Fenaroli's octave is decorated.
Partimento guitar plays the bass and the keyboard's two upper voices (Nicola Pignatiello's guitar Rule of the Octave, after Fenaroli and Giuliani), so the Top note position you pick carries over to the guitar; the bass folds into the guitar's low range.
Spread (Expanded harmony) is the gospel left hand from the R&B 5 Levels lesson: bass with an open 5th and octave, the close voicing in the right hand above.
Shells. With Expanded harmony, "Shells" voices every chord the way Phil DeGreg and the Power Comping method teach two-handed comping: the left hand plays the bass with the 3rd and 7th (the 6th on 6 chords), the guide tones moving by the smallest step, and the right hand adds two colour notes, at least one of them a 9th, 11th or 13th. "Close" keeps the voicings built from your rules. In the soprano and tenor lines the scale voice is ringed on the keyboard and kept on top of the guitar shape where it can be, and the bass moves against it in contrary motion.
Scales in Chords plays Liszt's study through all 24 keys in two orders: Liszt's own (each major key, then its relative minor, falling by fifths, with two link chords turning each key into the next) and Cory Hall's (each major key, then its parallel minor, rising by half steps, every key closed with V6/4–I).
Kirkman positions fingers every chord the way Joseph Kirkman sets the "Exercise on the Accompaniment of the Scale" (Improved Method for the Guitar, c. 1842): the hand holds one position as long as it can, the position is named (1st, 3rd, 5th…), the guitar bass climbs with the written bass, and the dots show left-hand fingers (1 index to 4 little finger) with any barre drawn across. "Chord Lens" keeps the original shape finder.
Guitar shapes come from the Chord Lens shape finder: four-fret reach, the chord's bass on the lowest sounding string, the 5th dropped from bigger chords, and a pull toward the previous hand position so the shapes move smoothly. The guitar's bass may sit an octave away from the keyboard's. Chord symbols follow your labelling, so "Dm6/F" means D–F–A–B over F. Keyboard drawing, fretboard, sounds and tone colours come from Chord Lens.