Below are the Write Like Mozart Week 2 Notes that I sent my students last year when we took the Write Like Mozart class together. I include a summary of figured bass notation, a summary of part writing rules, and some information on how to check your part writing electronically. This is the second post in this series.
For this week, I created two summary documents can print for your reference.
First, we have a cheat sheet for understanding and naming chord inversions with their figured bass notation:
The second is a sheet summarizing the rules offered in Weeks 1 & 2 for part writing:
Week 2 assignments are fairly straightforward, but I did find myself double checking some things when my answers came up different from the professors. The summary above helped me codify some of the “rules” I had forgotten when I made some minor mistakes.
Also, although I’ve not tried it yet, there is an interesting online tool to help check your SATB writing. It was created and posted in the forums for the January 2014 Write Like Mozart Class.
http://www.terdina.net/Mozart/
In theory, you get your music program (e.g., NoteFlight, Sibelius, etc.) to export your homework as an XML file, and you can upload it to that website to have it check some rules.
BTW, for those of you using Sibelius, there is a plugin that will check for parallel 5ths or 8ves. Look for it to help you avoid those problems.
Keep learning & keep writing!