PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Songwriting In Praise of Counterpoint_The Grumpy Old Man Blog

Simple Definition of Counterpoint. Great question!

Well, I will try to make it simple and show a simple example below. First a few words.

Counterpoint is usually described as the “internal rhyme” in music, beat by beat, in every measure, on different lines to speak.

Those lines are easy to follow in classical guitar. For example, in playing a Bach piece on classical guitar you will often see a treble melody (top note) and bass melody (lower note), and the middle melody or drone.

These three melodies are interdependent. Without the other two, you would not have the same “chemical” effect in the brain as you are listening to it. More on that “chemical effect” in a second. But for the moment, just understand that when two or three notes are played on top of one another as threaded melodies, they are “counterpoint.” Think of it as a “cross stitch.”

In a symphonic piece, the counterpoint gets much more complicated.

Now, what counterpoint DOES is this: it creates the all-important element of surprise. It is what makes you smile, or gasp, or go “Oh gosh, I wasn’t expecting THAT.” Bach was a master of this. Below is a short section from Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, showing the counterpoint and the first surprise note. (You will see many such surprise notes in Blackbird by Paul McCartney and any number of other clever songs.)

Forgive the childish markup in paint, but look at this setup in Jesu. It is remarkable. It is in G, and goes along for a few bars. Then we hit an Em7. Then right away you get the Major 7th note of the G scale over top of an Em7. Then you get an A note thrown into a G chord, then you get a C chord with an A in it (not a full blown A Minor yet, just a hint of an A Minor) and THEN the C natural moves to C# under a B in the key of G. SURPRISE!

It is this moment that makes you smile or say How Bach! You also get a chemical reaction of elation and surprise, and may even catch your breath and go Ahhh!! when you hear it, because you are surprised, or delighted.

Such is the magic of counterpoint, or the magical use of notes. If you just bang the same note over and over and over you are simply drilling a hole in someone’s skull with a blunt bit.

In pop, numerous prog rock groups have been masters of counterpoint. ELO, YES and Rush come to mind, along with many others. McCartney is a counterpoint genius. On the acoustic guitar, James Taylor is a master of counterpoint in his chord constructions which are all very rich and multi-layered. That is why no one else sounds like him. He is almost always playing weird chords. And that is why he is so great.

In Southern Rock, The Allman Brothers were masters of counterpoint. You had Gregg Allman on the keyboard, and Duane Allman and Dickey Betts playing dual solos with different notes in them. Counterpoint. That is why no one sounds like them, though a few bands tried to copy them, with limited success.

Oh, well, just a brief course on counterpoint.

All of which is to say is someone is playing A D A D A D A D and throwing a pentatontic scale on top of it you are sure to find me asleep.