Series

Suspension — the series

2 essays on one idea, from the one that introduces it to the one that assumes the rest.
  1. Struck, a suspension's roughness falls whether or not it resolves, and the step itself sends it back up. One 4–3: C5 prepared over a C chord, tied over G3, D4 and G4, and stepping to B4, each moment 1 s. Roughness, Plomp–Levelt over eight partials of every pair weighted by the product of their amplitudes. Sustained: suspension 0.327, resolution 0.325. Struck, with a T60 of 12 s at middle C: suspension 0.149, resolution 0.054, and with the note left hanging 0.024 at the same moment.

    A tied note is the oldest thing in its own dissonance

    A suspension is taught as a dissonance that resolves, and the sum is done on a chord symbol with no time in it. Put the time back. On voices or an organ, a 4–3 is no smoother after its step than before: of eight spacings, two fall and four rise. On a piano the tied note was struck a chord ago, so it supplies under a third of the roughness it is blamed for, the fall to the resolution is the clock's, and the step itself makes the sound about three times rougher than leaving the note where it was.

    part 1 · harmony
  2. A trill between a suspension and its resolution stays rougher than the chord struck once, all the way through. One 4–3 on a struck instrument, T60 12 s at middle C: C5 over G3, D4 and G4 for the one second of the suspended chord. Mean roughness over the chord: tied 0.077, struck once 0.119, trill to the upper neighbour D5 at 8 notes a second 0.108, trill to the resolution B4 0.141. Trills are read per whole cycle of two notes.

    A trill is half a consonance unless it borrows its own resolution

    A struck suspension loses roughness because its tied note is old, and the obvious repairs are all things a player already has. Three of them fail in ways nobody would predict. A re-strike under about nine decibels below the chord is smoother than the tie it replaces. No rate of trill stops the fading, because the three notes under the trill are what is fading. And a trill on the upper neighbour spends half its time on a chord note: only the trill that alternates a suspension with its own resolution gives back more than a single strike.

    part 2 · harmony

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