Etude

Your assignment is to compose a short etude for your instrument. Here are the guidelines:

1. Your etude should be at least 4 harmonic cycles (begin with tonic, arrive eventually at dominant and start a new cycle).
2. Use chord progressions that include our new friends the iii, vi, and viio6 chords (or their minor counterparts).
3. Single line writing only, please. If you are a voice major, you may do this for piano or enlist the help of an instrumentalist to perform your piece.
4. No non-chord tones. This will essentially be an arpeggiation study.
5. Your etude should be in compound time and use rhythmic units from Chapter 10 of your aural skills rhythm book.

Click here for a brief tutorial on this subject.

To create an etude with a greater degree of melodic phrasing and interest, try starting with a simple tune, and use those notes as "guide" notes for your arpeggiations. Notice in the example below how the bassoon part utilizes the "melody" to direct it's shape. Click here to here this example.