Neeraj K asked 9 years ago
Hi Jon,
Hope you are doing well!
Could you please through some light on Liquidation? I dont think we have covered this topic in brief till Lesson – Continuation Phrase. Is this being covered in next lessons?
Thank you
1 Answers
Jon Brantingham Staff answered 8 years ago
Thanks for getting to this one Joel. Sometimes messages slip through the cracks for me, and don’t get to them in time. You are correct.
The best way to think of it, is taking away “characteristic elements” so if you have a rhythm that is a dotted 8th and 16th, just making it a quarter note. Or like you said, having a simple step-wise melody moving downwards. Whatever makes it simpler.
Thank you Joel! The concept is so much clearer now. 🙂
No worries!
Specific notes used will very often depend on where in the piece as a whole the liquidation is used. If it’s at the end of an authentic cadence, you will very often find that the final notes of the liquidation will end up resolving to the root note (either from the 7th to the 1st or the 2nd to the 1st scale degrees; so b->c, or d->c in C major). In other cases, the notes used will more often simply be chord tones, if the chords coincide with the melody, or passing/neighbour tones if the chords and melody don’t quite coincide.
As with anything in music, feel free to experiment to as great an extent as you like to achieve the sounds you want, and don’t be afraid to step out of the traditional approach taught here when you feel it would suit your music better. 🙂
Hey Joel! Thank you very much for helping me out. I had thought of it as the slowing down technique. I was also wondering if Liquidation concept also explains what specific notes could be used to liquidate besides the slowing down technique. For example b resolves to c. Just thought if this is the time to know what resolves into what and why. And if those notes are used in liquidation.
Liquidation is often a slowing down of the music, a simplification as Jon mentions in the video. You can use a simple, plain step-wise melody here or take an existing melody and reduce it down to, for example, just the quarter notes, or just the notes that fall on the beats. The latter will tend to tie in better with your existing parts, but the former is just as appropriate.