Tutorial No 5Assembly of a piece in ternary form  (AABA) with 3 part counterpoint.

Ternary form involves 3 sections, usually labeled A, B and either C or A2. Section A may be repeated to form the pattern  A A B A2. Section A starts in the tonic key, but modulates to the dominant or relative minor. Section B presents a contrasting theme, then section A2 is usually similar to section A, but staying in the tonic key instead of modulating.

This tutorial shows how to put together the A A B A2 fragments horizontally for the violin melody line, and then add two more tracks below, each with the same A A B A2 pattern. The second track is a counter melody on viola, the third is the bass line on cello.

  1. Open the Musical Discovery Composing Board from the main MENU :-
    Create ->  Compositions -> Composing Board.
  2. Click the drop-down box labeled Fragment Lists at the top of the screen, and select Tutorial 5 - Ternary Form.
  3. A total of 9 fragment icons should appear at the foot of the screen, labeled Study in Ternary form - Violin - theme A,  and so on. Right-click on each in turn, and click the green Play Fragment button to listen to them.
  4. Assemble the top violin melody part onto the top row of the grid, by dragging the icons for the violin fragments onto it. The ternary form for this piece will be A A B A2, so  drag the Theme A icon twice, into the first and second squares. Then drag theme B, lastly drag theme A2
  5. Click the orange button Assemble fragments,  then hit the play button to listen to the melody of this piece.
  6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 for the viola part, dragging the icons into the second row, underneath the corresponding themes of the violin part.
  7. Repeat steps 4 and 5 for the cello part, dragging the icons into the third row, then listen to the finished work.
  8. The tracks may be given more meaningful names than the default track 1,  track 2 etc. Simply type  Violin  over the top of Track 1Viola for track 2, and Cello for track 3, all in the squares at the far left of each row in the grid.
  9. Look at the staff notation for your assembled piece, by MENU Edit -> Staff View.  The music is clearly in A major, judging by the accidentals, the harmonic structure, and the ending note. But the key signature shows no sharps or flats, i.e. C major!  So correct this by typing A into the key signature box at the top of the screen, then click the OK button beside it.  The key signature of three sharps should appear at the start of every clef, and the accidentals should disappear.
  10. Click the Forward button at the foot of the screen, to move along to bar 6.  This shows a top Ab where it should show a G#.  These notes sound the same, they are called enharmonics. But in the key of A major, this note should definitely show as G#. So click the button Enharmonics by key, and this should fix the problem, and all other similar enharmonic errors in this piece.
  11. If you wish, you may save the resulting finished piece onto the database. Firstly, set up the cataloguing information by MENU Edit -> Melody Data    and filling in the title, filename, and other data. Then click the green button Save to Disk (database).