16th Century Counterpoint - 2 Voices, 1st Species Primer

Originally Posted by Dead Chicken

Okay,
I did the next assignment (New baseline), I brought it up one octave to keep it more comfortably in the 'middle' range. I felt a little more at ease knowing what to do this time around. Hopefully I did it right.

EDIT: Uploaded a corrected fist assignment in my original post.

I don't think you can begin with a perfect fifth when the cantus firmus is in the upper part: it doesn't fit with the mode.

DC - Very good work on the secondand good work fixing the 1st. Very melodic bass!

M is D pointed something which I should clarify - you can start on a fifth but the correct mode must be established. So you have for the Ionian mode on C ( eg our C major scale) only two choices for the P5 - if G is the first bass note then any C above it is the only choice for the P5, if C is the first melody note, then you cannot use the P5. Why? Well, as you wrote in your exercise the bass note F forms a correct interval, but does NOT establish the Ionian mode. Rather, you establish Lydian, the white keys on the piano F to F or solfege - do re mi fi sol la ti do (fi means the fourth tone is raised ti the seventh tone raised).

For your first assignment you caught the parallel octaves - great! Unfortunately you chose the P 4th. Recall that P4, with 2 voice one-to-one counterpoint, is considered a dissonance. So for measure 10 you have a choice of 3s, 10s, or 6s (if you moved to P5 you would have parallel 5ths).

Very good work DC, good lines and except for one or two slips, very good counterpoint. I'll be doing another thread soon on this. Be ready!