In traditional Western triad voicing practice, each member of a triad has a certain priority when it comes to doubling up notes when more instruments are sounding than there are notes. Usually, the root gets doubled first, then the fifth, then the third. There are some voicing considerations applied to avoid things like parallel fifths, but I am looking at just sounding one chord to get it to sound balanced. Major and minor triads are essentially treated the same in this regard, and given the huge prevalence of assumed 12-E.T. (and even if not, when youre using some other temperament that approximates these relevant intervals), usually the major third is assumed to be 5/4 and the minor to be either 6/5 or 19/16 depending on who you ask. But in the case of 6/5, thats a utonal triad and the pitches are thus conceived from the root down instead of the root up, as most here know. But, that priority of pitches still gets treated the same between major and minor triads, and Im wondering who here has experimented with flipping the priority on minor triads to double the traditional fifth of the chord before the root because that fifth is technically the starting point of utonal chords. Do you think that this sounds more balanced, for example in 4-part harmony, to double the fifth of minor chords more preferentially than the root?
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 23:52:56 +0000