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Week 14 · Lecture outline

Week 14 — Lecture Outline · Melody and Non-Chord Tones

Music Theory I · MUS 156 Fictional sample

Course: MUS 156 Music Theory I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 14 of 16 (Week 14) · two sessions per week
Objectives: SLO 6 (write and analyze two independent voices) · SLO 7 (translate what you hear into names and notation — the spine)
Sessions: session 1 — teach · session 2 — studio · also the second session: the entire final-exam review family opens (review outline, review deck, study guide, prep tutorial, practice exam)

You already hear this. We're going to name what you already know.

Sung in Aural Skills I: MUS-155 sings this unit's two-voice frame plain, then sings the embellished line over it — the room feels the dissonance lean and resolve before anyone labels it. The suspension you spell here is the suspension your voice hangs onto in Aural Skills.

Week at a Glance

The table below summarizes the unit in one screen.
The unit's big question "Every singer you love adds notes that aren't in the chord — and they always sound intentional, never wrong. What are those in-between notes called, what are the rules they secretly follow, and how do you add your own without breaking the frame underneath?"
By the end of the unit, students can… (1) describe a melody's contour and locate its climax; (2) tell steps from leaps and say what a leap owes the line afterward; (3) identify and label all six non-chord tones — passing tone (PT), neighbor tone (NT), suspension (SUS), anticipation (ANT), escape tone (ET), appoggiatura (APP); (4) figure a suspension with the hyphen (4-3, 7-6, 9-8) and say why inversion figures keep their slashes; (5) spot the augmented-second trap in harmonic minor and fix it two ways; (6) embellish a two-voice frame so the frame still passes the voice-leading check.
Key vocabulary contour, step, leap, climax, non-chord tone, passing tone, neighbor tone, suspension (preparation–suspension–resolution), 4-3 / 7-6 / 9-8, anticipation, escape tone, appoggiatura, augmented second
Materials Deck 14 · the Week 14 chapter · a piano or keyboard in the room · fill-hunt sheets (the second session) · students' own instruments welcome in the studio — Round 4 wants them
Timing note 7 segments ≈ 150 min. Session 1 = Segments 1–6 (75). Session 2 = Segment 7 (75: studio). Scale to your own pacing.

Segment 1 — Ear first: the plain version and the real version (8 min) · Session 1 opens

Hook (no notation on screen yet). Play a tune everyone knows — Amazing Grace works — twice. First time: chord tones only, straight, like a beginner's piano book. Second time: the way an actual singer sings it — sliding through the in-between notes, leaning on the ones that aren't in the chord, landing late on purpose. Ask: "Which one was right?" Both. "Which one would you put on the record?" Unanimous.

  • "Every note I added in round two was a note that is not in the chord. Your ear didn't hear mistakes — it heard style. This week we name those notes, because they're not decoration. They're grammar, and they have rules you already obey by ear."
  • The promise (say it, then put it on the board): "By the end of this week you can label every in-between note in a melody, add your own to a two-voice frame without breaking it, and write the hold-and-lean move — the suspension — with its own figure."
  • Last week you wrote the frame: two honest voices, no parallels, tendency tones resolving. This week the frame gets its wardrobe.

Memory hook: "Chord tones are the skeleton. Non-chord tones are the walk."

Segment 2 — Melody has a shape: contour, steps, leaps, climax (12 min)

Ear first. Play the opening of Danny Boy. Have the room trace the tune's shape in the air with a hand — every hand draws the same rise toward the same peak. That drawn line is the contour, and the top of it is the climax.

  • Contour is the melody's outline — rises, falls, arches. Most great melodies arch: they build to one high point and come home. The climax lands once; that's why it lands.
  • Step vs. leap: a step is a second (major or minor — C4 to D4, E4 to F4); a leap is a third or more. Steps are how melodies walk; leaps are how they gesture.
  • A leap owes the line something. After a leap — especially a big one — a melody usually turns around and steps back the way it came. The leap spends energy; the step-back pays it off. (In a solo, leaps can do whatever they like; in a line — a harmony vocal, a countermelody — unresolved leaps pile up and the line stops singing.)

Misconception + cure:

  • ❌ "A leap anywhere is fine if it sounds cool."
    ✅ Cure: in a solo, sure — that's style. In a line, a leap is a debt: turn around and step. Sing a line with three unresolved leaps in a row and watch the room wince — then sing the same leaps each answered by a step. The rule isn't taste; it's singability, and their own voices prove it.

Segment 3 — The in-between family, part one: passing and neighbor (14 min)

Plain language first. A non-chord tone (NCT) is a note that doesn't belong to the chord sounding under it — added on purpose, approached and left by rule. The two most common fill the two most common gaps. Start from last week's kind of frame — note-against-note, clean:

KEY: C major    METER: 4/4    CLEF: grand
U: | E4/h G4/h | F4/h E4/h | D4/h D4/h | C4/w |
L: | C3/h B2/h | A2/h C3/h | F2/h G2/h | C3/w |

A four-bar, two-voice frame in C major, note against note: the upper voice arches E4 up to G4 and walks home to C4; the lower voice strides from C3 down to F2, up to G2, and home. Tenths and thirteenths most of the way, a bare fifth and octave only at the close — it passes every voice-leading check from last week.

Now the same frame, embellished:

KEY: C major    METER: 4/4    CLEF: grand
U: | E4/q F4/q G4/h | F4/q G4/q F4/q E4/q | D4/h D4/q C4/q | C4/w |
L: | C3/h B2/h | A2/h C3/h | F2/h G2/h | C3/w |

The identical frame, but the upper voice now moves through it: in bar 1 an F4 on the offbeat walks the third from E4 up to G4 — a passing tone; in bar 2 a G4 steps above F4 and steps right back — an upper neighbor tone; in bar 3 the upper voice sneaks onto C4 a beat before the final bar arrives — that one gets named in Segment 4. The lower voice never changes, and the frame still passes the check.

  • Passing tone (PT): approached by step, left by step, same direction — it fills the gap between two chord tones a third apart. Stairs between two floors.
  • Neighbor tone (NT): approached by step, left by step, back where it came from — it decorates one chord tone by stepping above (upper neighbor) or below (lower neighbor) and returning.
  • Note where the added notes sit: on the weak halves of beats. The dissonance passes through between the frame's handshakes — which is why the frame still checks clean, note against note.

Misconception + cure:

  • ❌ "Non-chord tones are mistakes the player got away with."
    ✅ Cure: they're the oldest deliberate craft in melody — approached by rule, left by rule, placed on purpose. Play bar 1 with and without the F4. Nobody votes for the version without. A wrong note is a note with no exit plan; every NCT this week has one.

Segment 4 — The lean and the early arrival: suspension and anticipation (16 min)

Ear first — the lean. Sing a chord with the room holding one note; move the chord under them; make them hold their note one beat too long, then fall one step. That ache-and-release is the suspension — the most expressive two beats in tonal music, and they've sung it in every choir anthem and worship tag of their lives.

  • Three phases, always: preparation (the note is a legal chord tone), suspension (the harmony moves; the held note is now dissonant — the lean), resolution (it falls down by step into a chord tone — the release).
  • Show the classic:
KEY: C major    METER: 4/4    CLEF: grand
U: | A3/h F4/h~ | F4/h E4/h |
L: | F3/h D3/h | C3/h C3/h |

Two bars, two voices in C major: the upper voice reaches F4 over a D bass — consonant, the preparation — and holds it (the tie) while the bass moves to C3. Now the F4 makes a fourth above the bass: the suspension, leaning. It falls one step to E4 — a third above the bass: the resolution. Fourth becoming third over one bass note.

  • THE FIGURE — and the one legitimate hyphen in this course. That move is written 4-3: the interval above the bass at the lean, a hyphen, the interval at the release. The hyphen means "this interval becomes that one over a single bass note." Say the contrast out loud, twice, because it decides quiz questions: slashes stack, hyphens move. 6/4 (slash) = a chord's inversion — a sixth AND a fourth sounding together above the bass. 4-3 (hyphen) = a suspension — a fourth becoming a third. V4/3 is a chord; 4-3 is an event. Since unit 10 we've promised the hyphen meant something; this is it, and it means nothing else.
  • The family: 4-3 (fourth to third — the one above), 7-6 (seventh to sixth), 9-8 (ninth to octave). Same lean, different shelf.
  • Anticipation (ANT): the suspension's mirror in time. Instead of holding the old note late, the melody arrives on the next chord's note early — sneaking onto do while the dominant still sounds, then staying as the harmony catches up. That's the C4 you saw sneak in during Segment 3's bar 3. Country and gospel singers live on this one.

Misconception + cure:

  • ❌ "A suspension is just holding any note."
    ✅ Cure: no preparation, no suspension — and no downward step, no resolution. All three phases or it's something else (hold a chord tone while the chord stays: that's just a long note; land early: that's an anticipation). Prepared, leaned, released — the checklist is the definition.

Segment 5 — The 2×2: escape tone and appoggiatura (10 min)

Plain language first. Four NCTs are defined purely by how you get in and how you get out — step or leap. Put the grid on the board and the whole family organizes itself:

Left by step Left by leap
Approached by step PT (same direction) · NT (turns back) Escape tone (ET)
Approached by leap Appoggiatura (APP) (not in this course's music)
  • Escape tone: step in, leap out — usually stepping up and leaping down, like stepping off a curb. It slips away unaccented.
  • Appoggiatura: leap in, step out — the melody jumps onto a dissonance, usually on the strong beat, leans (the word is Italian for "to lean"), and settles by step. The torch-song note. Play E4–F4–D4 (escape: F4 steps in from E4 and leaps down to D4), then C4–F4–E4 (appoggiatura: F4 arrives by leap from C4 and settles onto E4) — same F4, two completely different jobs.
  • Suspension and anticipation aren't in the grid because they're about when (held late / arrived early), not how you step. Six names total: two fillers (PT, NT), two leaners in time (SUS, ANT), two defined by the grid (ET, APP).

Misconception + cure:

  • ❌ "Escape tone vs. appoggiatura is an arbitrary vocabulary distinction."
    ✅ Cure: the approach and the exit define them — step-in/leap-out versus leap-in/step-out are opposite gestures, and your ear already files them differently: one slips away, one leans in. The 2×2 isn't taxonomy for its own sake; it's the four exits from a dissonance, and each has its own sound.

Segment 6 — The trap, the frame discipline, and the AI-critique moment (15 min) · Session 1 closes (~75)

The augmented-second trap — unit 5 called; it's collecting. In harmonic minor, ^6 to ^7 is an augmented second — in A minor, F4 up to G♯4: three half steps written as a second. It sounds like a minor third but it's spelled as a second, and as a melodic move in a line it lurches — the checker flags it, and centuries of voice teachers side with the checker. The fix you learned in unit 5 is the fix here: melodic minor — raise ^6 too (F♯4 to G♯4, an honest major second) — or reshape the line so it never walks ^6 straight into ^7 (come down from above, or land on ^7 from ^1). Play F4→G♯4, then F♯4→G♯4; the room hears the lurch and the repair instantly.

The frame discipline — your fill can break a frame the frame didn't break. Show the week's cautionary tale. A clean two-bar frame:

KEY: C major    METER: 4/4    CLEF: treble
U: | C5/h B4/h | C5/w |
L: | F4/h G4/h | E4/w |

Two voices in C major: the upper voice steps C5–B4–C5 while the lower walks F4–G4–E4 — a fifth, then a third, then a sixth; contrary motion; clean.

Now a bandmate "improves" it:

```music counterexample
KEY: C major METER: 4/4 CLEF: treble
U: | C5/h D5/q B4/q | C5/w |
L: | F4/h G4/h | E4/w |


The same frame with one added D5 — step in from C5, leap out to B4, a perfectly grammatical escape tone. But it lands **on beat 3, exactly when the bass moves**: now C5-over-F4 strides to D5-over-G4 — **parallel perfect fifths** the plain frame never had. The fill broke the frame. (This example is deliberately wrong — that's the hunt.)

The repair costs one eighth note:

```music
KEY: C major    METER: 4/4    CLEF: treble
U: | C5/q. D5/e B4/h | C5/w |
L: | F4/h G4/h | E4/w |

The identical escape tone moved to the offbeat: dotted quarter, eighth, half. Now the D5 sounds between the frame's handshakes — when the bass moves on beat 3, the upper voice is already on B4, and the fifths never line up. Same note, same gesture, one half-beat left, and the frame checks clean again. The rule of the week: dissonance travels on the offbeats; the frame owns the beats.

AI-critique moment (3 min, live on the projector). Paste into a chatbot: "In A minor my melody walks F4 up to G#4. Any problem? One sentence." Read it aloud. Many tools say "that's fine, it's just a half-step-ish move" — or they fix it by lowering G♯ to G, which quietly destroys the leading tone your V chord needs (unit 11 would like a word). Have the room fix it properly: F♯4, or reshape the line. "All term the tool drafts and you judge. Your tutorial's audit runs on your own knowledge — this is the knowledge."

Why this makes you a better musician

This is the week your fills stop being decoration and start being grammar. When you sing a harmony line and hold your note one beat into the new chord before falling — you're not "adding feel," you're executing a 4-3 suspension, and now you can do it on purpose, in any song, and tell the other vocalist which beat to lean on. When the melody you're learning does something devastating at its high point, you can name the move — that lean is an appoggiatura, that early landing is an anticipation — and steal it for your own bridge. When your countermelody suddenly sounds cluttered, you know the diagnosis: a fill landed on the beat and picked a fight with the frame; move it to the offbeat and the clutter vanishes. And when your minor-key line lurches, you'll hear the augmented second before the choir director does — and fix it with one accidental. The studio is exactly this: hunt the fills in a great melody, then add your own to a frame that has to survive them.

Callback + tease + hand-off.

  • Callback: "Unit 13 built the frame. This morning you dressed it — and every note you added obeyed a rule your ear already knew."
  • Tease: "Next unit — Charts, keys, and the real world: everything cashes in. Charts, keys, transposing for a real singer, the Nashville shorthand — and your Chart crosses the finish line."
  • Hand-off: read the chapter if you haven't; Tutorial 14 with your AI tutor is due before Week 14's second session — the studio's fill hunt assumes its reps. Practice set, quiz, discussion, and the Twenty Fills assignment close the end of Week 14. And one more thing opens with the second session: the complete final-exam review family — review outline, review deck, study guide, prep tutorial, and practice exam, all of it, released at once. There is no study week between the last unit and the final, so the review opens now, while there's still runway. Fifteen minutes with it this weekend buys you a calm finals week. Your Chart: milestone 3 (the lead sheet) is drafted — this week's vocabulary is how you'll polish its melody line, because your song's fills are made of exactly these notes.

Segment 7 — Studio: "Fill hunt" (75 min) · Session 2

Run from the studio sheet (P-studio-week-14). Shape, for planning: plain-or-decorated ear rounds (the same phrase both ways; the room votes and points at the lean) → the fill hunt — every non-chord tone in a printed embellished line gets found, circled, and labeled with the course abbreviations → the lean lab — the room sings suspensions as a section (hold… lean… release) and identifies 4-3 / 7-6 / 9-8 by ear → add your own — groups embellish a fresh two-voice frame by ear, notate it, then swap sheets and run the frame check on each other's fills (parallel hunt + augmented-second hunt, verified against the instructor's key) → the trap round in minor. The studio is the payoff enacted: hear the fill, name the fill, write a fill that survives the check. 20 points, graded in session; async make-up path (full credit) on the studio sheet.

Instructor FAQ — common stumbles

The table below lists predictable Week 14 questions and quick cures.

Student says / does Quick cure
"How is a passing tone different from a wrong note? Both aren't in the chord." Exit plan. A PT enters by step, leaves by step, same direction, and lands somewhere legal. A wrong note has no plan. Play E4–F4–G4, then E4–F4–silence: the second one is what "wrong" actually sounds like — stranded.
Labels every NCT "passing tone." Run the intake/exit interview: how did it arrive, how did it leave? Step-step-same-direction only. Turns back = NT. Leap out = ET. Leap in = APP. Held over = SUS. Early = ANT. Six names, one question each.
Writes the suspension figure as 4/3. One symbol, one meaning: slashes stack, hyphens move. 4/3 with a slash is a seventh chord's second inversion (unit 10). The suspension is 4-3 — a fourth becoming a third. If both symbols lived in the same chart, nobody could read it.
Writes an inversion figure as 6-4. Same cure, other direction: inversions stack (6/4); only suspensions move (4-3, 7-6, 9-8). The hyphen was reserved all term for exactly this week.
"My suspension didn't need a preparation — it still sounds good." Then it's an appoggiatura (leap in, lean, step out) — also a great sound, different name. The preparation is what makes a suspension a suspension: the note was legal, then the ground moved.
"Why does the escape/appoggiatura difference matter on a gig?" Because you'll want to do one on purpose: the ET slips off unaccented (step in, leap away); the APP lands hard and leans (leap in, step down). Tell a singer "lean into the downbeat, then settle a step" and you've called an appoggiatura without the Italian.
"F to G♯ sounds like a minor third — so why is it wrong?" It sounds like one and is written as a second — three half steps, two letter names. In a line it lurches (sing it; the room will agree). Fix: raise ^6 too (melodic minor: F♯→G♯) or reshape so ^6 never walks into ^7. Both fixes are unit 5 alumni.
Adds a beautiful fill that creates parallel fifths. The fill was fine; the placement wasn't. Dissonance travels on the offbeats; the frame owns the beats. Move the fill off the beat (the dotted-quarter-plus-eighth repair) and re-check.
"Is the anticipation just rushing?" It's rushing one voice on purpose while the frame stays honest — arrive on the next chord's note, then hold while the harmony lands beneath you. Rushing is when the whole band does it by accident.

Scope flag

This outline stays inside Week 14's twelve ledger concepts (contour, step vs. leap, leap resolution, climax; PT, NT, SUS, ANT, ET, APP; embellishing the two-voice frame; the augmented second in harmonic minor), building on Week 13's motion types and voice-leading rules, Week 12's phrases, Week 10's slash figures, and Week 5's minor forms. Two-voice work stays framed as a harmony vocal, a countermelody, a bass line that stands on its own; counterpoint proper waits for MUS 158. Retardations, pedal points, and double-neighbor figures are deliberately out of scope — the chapter's resources page points curious students at them. The deliberately wrong example in Segment 6 is tagged as a counterexample and actually fails the voice-leading check, by design. The final-family release note in the hand-off states the week's shape in tokens only; real dates live in the projection.

~ Professor Hemsworth's edition · Kenosis College · built with thecoursemaker.com