Voicing (music)

In music composition and arranging, a voicing is the instrumentation and vertical spacing and ordering of the pitches in a chord (which notes are on the top or in the middle, which ones are doubled, which octave each is in, and which instruments or voices perform each). Which note is on the bottom determines the inversion.

Voicing is "the manner in which one distributes, or spaces, notes and chords among the various instruments" and spacing or "simultaneous vertical placement of notes in relation to each other."^[1]

For example, the following three chords are root-position C major triads voiced differently:

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All three voicings above are in root position, while the first is in close position, the most compact voicing, and the second and third are in open position, which includes wider spacing. In triadic chords, close root position voicing is the most compact voicing in thirds which has the root in the bass. Open and closed harmony are harmony and harmonization constructed from open and close position chords, respectively.

The Psalms chord is noted for its characteristic spacing of an E-minor triad.

Doubling

Octave doubling in John Philip Sousa's "Washington Post March", m. 1-7^[2] Play (help·info).

Non-octave doubling in Debussy's Sarabande from Pour le Piano (For the Piano), m. 1-2^[2] Play (help·info).

Melodic doubling in parallel is the addition of a rhythmically similar or exact melodic line or lines at a fixed interval above or below the melody to create parallel movement^[3] while octave doubling (and doubling at other intervals, also called parallelism^[2]) of a voice or pitch is the number of other voices duplicating the same part at the same pitch or at different octaves. The doubling of an octave is the number of individual voices on each pitch within the chord. For example, in the three images in the introduction above only one pitch is doubled, the G in the rightmost image (above).

J.S. Bach - "Gigue" from English Suite no. 1 in A Major, BWV 806, m. 38  Play (help·info).

Parallelism destroys, creates, or maintains independence of lines; for example, in preference for the practices of his day always requiring and desiring a degree of independence in all lines, in Bach's "Gigue" from his English Suite no. 1 in A Major, BWV 806, m. 38 note that neither thirds (at the beginning) nor sixths (at the end) are maintained throughout the entire measure, nor any interval for more than four consecutive notes, but rather that the bass line is given its own part^[2].

The Italian sixth moving to V.  Play (help·info) Note that the third of the first chord (tonic, C) is doubled.

Consideration of doubling is important when following voice leading rules and guidelines, for example when resolving to an augmented sixth chord never double either notes of the augmented sixth, while in resolving an Italian sixth it is preferable to double the tonic (third of the chord)^[4].

Some pitch material may be described as autonomous doubling in which the part being doubled is not followed for more than a few measures often resulting in disjunct motion in the part that is doubling, for example, the trombone part in Mozart's Don Giovanni^[5].

See also

• Open chord

Sources

1. ^ Corozine, Vince (2002). Arranging Music for the Real World: Classical and Commercial Aspects. Pacific, MO: Mel Bay. p. 7. ISBN 0-7866-4961-5. OCLC 50470629. 
2. ^ ^{a b c d} Benward & Saker (2003). Music: In Theory and Practice, p.133, Vol. I. Seventh Edition. ISBN 978-0-07-294262-0.
3. ^ Benward & Saker (2009). Music in Theory and Practice: Volume II, p.253. Eighth Edition. ISBN 978-0-07-310188-0.
4. ^ Benward & Saker (2009), p.106.
5. ^ Guion, David M. (1988). The Trombone: Its History and Music, 1697-1811, p.133. Musicology: A Book Series, Vol. VI. Gordon and Breach. ISBN 2-88124-211-1.