How to Write Five-Part Harmony - Music Theory

Many musicians have received a grounding in writing harmony in four parts but very few have received help in relation to writing in five parts. This music theory lesson, as a first step, takes a passage of four part harmony and explains how to rewrite it in five parts, exploring the opportunities and pitfalls that commonly present themselves. By the end of this video you will feel able to tackle basic five part block chord harmony.

⬇️Download the files

🕘 Timestamps
0:00 - Introduction to five-part harmony
0:35 - Explaining and playing the example exercises
1:51 - Chord progression analysis
3:02 - How to approach writing a piece of five-part harmony
5:54 - Notation options to consider
7:49 - Writing five-part harmony
18:16 - Conclusion

🎓 Learn Music Online with Music Matters
Learn music theory, aural tests, composition, sight reading, orchestration and more! Prepare and practice for music exams and diplomas with Music Matters Courses. Whether you're just getting started with learning music, or you're an experienced musician looking to expand your abilities - we have something for you in our course library. With hours of step-by-step training, our courses will truly help you elevate your musicianship skills to the next level.

👥 Social Media

🔗 Affiliate Links

#MusicTheory #MusicMattersHarmony #TheAllRoundMusician

[MusicMattersGB]

Learn Music Online - Check out our courses here!

[g.p]

Gareth lectures, plays and sings on the fly for over 20mins with out a single um, ah or stumble. So watchable.

[carlstenger]

Brilliant video! Because the choirs I have written for in the past were rather limited in resources, I've always, always written choral work in traditional SATB 4 part style. I'd never considered the problems associated with writing for 5 part (or 6 or 7 part). I've written a couple of pieces for 2 choirs (in antiphonal style), but that posed no problems since the two choirs rarely sang at the same time and when they did, they were singing the same notes--so there were no doubling problems to consider. You've given me a new problem to tackle. I'm going to grab some chorales and hymns and work on rearranging for 5 part. That should keep me off the streets (and out of trouble) for a month or two. Thanks!

[davidwhite]

Thanks for this, Gareth:

It would be interesting to have at some point a video on writing for full orchestra from four part and five part sketches

[NomeDeArte]

4:05 How funny how an excelent teacher almost can read a pupil mind. Thank you for all the knowledge you share Garret, I learn SO much in this amazing channel. THANK YOU

[jayducharme]

Your presentation illustrates why I love writing music: it's a giant puzzle to be solved.

[thierrycourteille]

Always excellent....
Best regards from France

[deplinenoise]

Good stuff! I’ve been curious how the rules of engagement would change as you introduce more instrumentation into a piece.

[markchapman]

In avoiding an A-B consecutive octave (between S2 and B) in the second half of bar 1, you committed one with D-C# earlier (between S2 and T). You can of course argue that this is a lesser "sin", being between inner parts, but also you could give the tenor an A (A3, not A4, of course) instead of a C# and have neither a parallel nor a doubled leading note. That would have the added benefit of making the tenor line a bit less dull. I've found it useful, when in doubt, to write out tables of each possible change of note between chords, and tick them off as you use them, keeping a careful eye on the one from 5th of chord 1 to 5th of chord 2. As a side note, composers like Kodaly and Rachmaninoff didn't seem to regard themselves as restricted to avoid consecutive 5ths in more than 4 parts.

[armansrsa]

Hi There! Great video. On watching it a second time, I saw you tried to avoid octaves by choosing C# instead of A in the second chord but your new 2nd soprano part has created parallels between the 1st chord and the second chord with the Tenor part. Both move from D to C#

[stefanodigarbo]

Dear Gareth, that was another amazingly enlightening video. Thank you so much! I have a question and a humble request for you.
The question is, how do you view vocal lines crossing in 5P harmony, as in S2 occasionally singing a lower note than A? Mr GF Haendel used to do that frequently.
The request would be, if you wish, to dedicate a video to writing 3P or even 2P harmony, that is, what best to drop when you have less than four lines to be happy with. Hope you can do that someday.
Till then, thanks a lot and all the best!
Greetings from Italy!

[stephenbashforth]

Hi Gareth - a really helpful insight to how to go beyond 4 parts. I guess there is also opportunity to add rhythmic variety / variation. the fifth part you scored stayed within the bounds of the 4 part chord quality (major triad stayed as triad/ 7th chord stayed as 7th ); would adding / writing for more voices enable use of extended chords? if the piece used quartal voicings (fourths not thirds) can one mix fourths and thirds ?

[armansrsa]

This is such a great video thank you. Do you have any videos regarding voice leading and how it relates to accompaniments? I play piano and guitar and sing and have studied 4 part harmony so know how to write for 4 parts but I get confused when thinking about accompaniments. Do accompaniments also need to have good voice leading within the arrangement ? Writing in 5 parts is helpful because it allows for a bassline, a baritone vocal which is what I am and a 3 part chord in the upper register. Can I use the principles in this video to write this arrangement or would that be overkill since the accompaniment is in the background. Would the vocal and bassline be the only two independent "parts" or would the accompaniment be part of the voice leading? Hope I was clear in my question. Thanks again

[James-iolj]

Mitigated slightly by contrary motion. Best bet to temporarly move into the minor with a sharpened A.

[tunekeysus]

I would like to see about subject the pantonality, and pantonal music

[kasrakkkk]

Always wondered how it should be.
And, you had a parallel octave (:

[SteveKirkUK]

Hi Gareth,

I'm not sure if this is covered by the comments below about extended chords but one obvious solution to adding a fifth part/voice to an existing four part harmony would be to treat the existing soprano part as S2 and add a new S1 soprano part above the existing part? (Rather than squeeze it between the existing S and A parts). Granted, if you have a melody line in the top line I can see this woudn't work but in your examples where it's more of a chord sequence, I can't see why not to do this.

Am I missing something?

Thanks

[drmdjones]

You didn't mention the consecutive 8ves between your first two chords. True these are not as offensive since they are between inner voices, but still worth a mention.

[thynature]

Are there parallel octaves between tenor and alto in the first two chords? 🤔

[deplinenoise]

A thought on the “B not up for negotiation” it seems to me that if you allow some chord extensions (9/11/13..) in the harmony this would be a lot richer and easier. For example on minor chords the 7 sounds quite gentle to me, and doesn’t really transform the harmony much.