Exercise

Bass 283 — Tonic pedal

Pedal pointC major

Corpus id bass-283 · cite this id — it is permanent

What it teaches

The tonic pedal: the bass enters as a consonance, holds while the subdominant and the full dominant seventh sound against it, and leaves as the consonance it never stopped being.

The given bass

4/4	bar 1		bar 2		bar 3		bar 4		bar 5
Bass	C3		C3	C3	C3	C3	F3	G3	C3
Figures			6/4		7/4/2

The given bass and its figures (C major, 4/4; ⌒ = tied from the previous note)

The model realization

4/4	bar 1	bar 2		bar 3		bar 4		bar 5
Soprano	G4	A4	G4	B4	C5	C5	B4	C5
Alto	E4	F4	E4	F4	E4	F4	D4	E4
Tenor	C4	C4	C4	D4	G3	A3	G3	G3
Bass	C3	C3	C3	C3	C3	F3	G3	C3
Figures		6/4		7/4/2

The model realization (C major, 4/4; ⌒ = tied from the previous note)

The pedal’s license has two conditions and the exercise keeps both: the held tone enters and leaves as a consonance, and the upper voices are well formed among themselves, as if the pedal were not there. The 6/4 is the subdominant leaning on the ground; the 7/4/2 is the whole dominant seventh standing on it — spelled in full, because the shorthand 4/2 would promise a falling bass the pedal cannot pay.

At the keyboard

This realization is choral — the upper voices exceed a single hand’s span. The left hand plays one note for four bars. Everything the right hand does — neighbor chord, full dominant seventh — is measured against that unmoving ground. Carry it into G major, F major.

Voice-leading patterns this exercise drills

Cite this exercise

Gradus Figured-Bass Corpus, bass-283 — Tonic pedal. v1.0. https://gradusmusic.com/figured-bass-corpus/exercise/bass-283

Corpus v1.0 · licensed CC-BY-4.0 · machine-readable at /api/v1/figured-bass/exercises/bass-283

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