Passing Notes (Non-Harmonic Tones) - Music Theory

What are passing notes? Find out how they work and how best to use them. Melodic notes must either belong to the prevailing chord or should be inessential notes. The most common inessential note is the passing note, which moves by step. When the passing note occurs on the beat the passing note is described as accented; when the passing note occurs between beats it is described as unaccented. In this music theory lesson we learn how passing notes work, how they sound, and what they look like in a piece of music, in order to provide a full explanation.

🕘 Timestamps
0:00 - Introduction to passing notes
0:09 - Why might you want to use passing notes?
1:24 - How do passing notes work?
2:17 - Unaccented vs accented passing notes

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[MusicMattersGB]

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[Moondancer]

Where have you been hiding? Simple, straightforward yet informative tutorial. I’ve subscribed.

[galva]

Thank you for explaining passing notes, and the difference between accented and unaccented ones!

[Etakit]

Thank you! Quick and simple-- exactly what I needed

[NNQThu]

Please never stop posting your lessons! 💚💚💚 Thank you so much for your work!!

[opendoorproperty]

Thank you very much for your post. This was extremely helpful

[princecalebthompson]

Thank you very much. I have learnt quit a lot from your tutorials. You are always keeping very simple .

[NomeDeArte]

So short and clear, I love this videos.

[LEYGSL]

Very informative in such a short, well done and thanks.

[bananabot]

Thanks man it helped out in my music assignment

[mjc]

Automatically subscribed ! Brilliant explanation :) thanks so much

[a.]

The piano thingy made it so much easier to understand. Thank u sir

[britneyk]

thanks for this, kept it short and straight-forward video and very helpful, subscribed

[shannonclarke]

I your video tutorials. I can't wait to order more of them after I absorb the ones I have.

[Advenek]

Thank you!!! Very good explaining and helpful information!!! :)

[johnlowe]

Thanks, nice and clear. Off to have a go....

[jerboaaaa]

Thanks for the lesson! Do you have any tips for passing notes in a bass/chord line? Eg if you have a sequence of chords, sometimes you want to stick an off beat note between two chords, or lead into the next chord by adding a single note on the 4th beat of the previous bar (hopefully I've explained it okay, I'm not entirely sure what I'm talking about).

[PawsAndToeBeansSituation]

Thanks from Northern California 🇺🇸 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

[xiangjiechen]

Is this part of the cadence in the abrsm exam? Great video!

[paladins_hamm]

Thanks so much for this, helped me find an explanation for my composing assignment.