Exercise

Bass 284 — Tonic pedal, minor

Pedal pointA minor

Corpus id bass-284 · cite this id — it is permanent

What it teaches

The tonic pedal in minor: the dominant’s stack over the ground carries its sharp inside the figures — ♯7/4/2 — and the drone darkens everything it holds.

The given bass

4/4	bar 1		bar 2		bar 3		bar 4		bar 5
Bass	A2		A2	A2	A2	A2	D3	E3	A2
Figures			6/4		#7/4/2			#

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

The model realization

4/4	bar 1	bar 2		bar 3		bar 4		bar 5
Soprano	E4	F4	E4	G♯4	A4	A4	G♯4	A4
Alto	C4	D4	C4	D4	C4	D4	B3	C4
Tenor	A3	A3	A3	B3	E3	F3	E3	E3
Bass	A2	A2	A2	A2	A2	D3	E3	A2
Figures		6/4		#7/4/2			#

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

Over the tonic ground the dominant seventh must announce its raised tone where it actually sits — a seventh above the pedal — so the figure reads ♯7/4/2. That "seventh" is the leading tone wearing an interval-name the pedal forces on it: it owes no fall, and rises to the tonic exactly as G♯ always must. The figures count from the bass; the obligations belong to the chord.

At the keyboard

This realization is choral — the upper voices exceed a single hand’s span. The sharp rides inside the stack: ♯7 names G sharp, a seventh above the ground. Find it before playing — over a pedal, accidentals hide in the middle of figures. Carry it into D minor, E minor.

Voice-leading patterns this exercise drills

Cite this exercise

Gradus Figured-Bass Corpus, bass-284 — Tonic pedal, minor. v1.0. https://gradusmusic.com/figured-bass-corpus/exercise/bass-284

Corpus v1.0 · licensed CC-BY-4.0 · machine-readable at /api/v1/figured-bass/exercises/bass-284

Loading…