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It’s All About the Bass: Learn to add Drones and Chords to your Favorite Early Music Tunes with Tina Chancey
Whether you’re playing a 13th-century cantiga, a Renaissance dance tune by Arbeau, or one of D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy, it always helps to fill out the piece by adding some chords and double stops. We viol players are lucky to have six strings, a rounded bridge, and and two and a half octave range—we’ve got lots of sounds at our disposal.
Each different era of music has its own accompaniment techniques. In this class you’ll learn to play sustained and rhythmic drones whether you play the tune yourself or accompany a singer; to find different versions of the most common chords on your instrument and how to decide what chords to use, to create arrangements with introductions and interludes that combine playing the tune and supporting chords, and to create obbligato bass parts from a simple ground bass.