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The use of parallel fifths (or fourths) to refer to the sound of traditional Chinese or other kinds of Eastern music was once commonplace in film scores and songs. Since these passages are an obvious oversimplification and parody of the styles that they seek to evoke, this use of parallel fifths declined during the last half of the 20th century.
The terms quartal and quintal imply a contrast, either compositional or perceptual, with traditional harmonic constructions based on thirds: listeners familiar with music of the common practice period are guided by tonalities constructed with familiar elements: the chords that make up major and minor scales, all in turn built from major and minor thirds.
In music theory, contrapuntal motion is the general movement of two or more melodic lines with respect to each other. [1] In traditional four-part harmony, it is important that lines maintain their independence, an effect which can be achieved by the judicious use of the four types of contrapuntal motion: parallel motion, similar motion, contrary motion, and oblique motion.
The use of perfect fourths and fifths to sound in parallel with and to "thicken" the melodic line was prevalent in music prior to the European polyphonic music of the Middle Ages. In the 13th century, the fourth and fifth together were the concordantiae mediae (middle consonances) after the unison and octave, and before the thirds and sixths.
It can be viewed in a counterclockwise direction as a circle of fourths. Harmonic progressions in Western music commonly use adjacent keys in this system, making it a useful reference for musical composition and harmony. [1] The top of the circle shows the key of C Major, with no sharps or flats. Proceeding clockwise, the pitches ascend by fifths.
It is a four-note blues scale melody in G minor, [9] harmonised in parallel fourths. The riff, played on a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar by Blackmore, is later joined by hi-hat and distorted organ, then the rest of the drums, then electric bass parts before the start of Ian Gillan 's vocal.
Among all regular tunings, all-fourths tuning E-A-D-G-C-F is the best approximation of standard tuning, which is more popular. All-fourths tuning is traditionally used for the bass guitar; [5] it is also used for the bajo sexto. [8] Allan Holdsworth stated that if he were to learn the guitar again he would tune it in all-fourths. [9] [10]
Parallel harmony is frequently used in house music and other electronic music genres. Historically, this resulted from producers sampling chords from soul or jazz and then playing them at different pitches, or using "chord memory" feature from classic polyphonic synthesizers.