As a homework task I'm meant to be writing 2 x 4 bar phrases with melody and baseline, going into four parts at the cadences. I'm not sure whether the baseline is meant to be just be the bass note of each chord, or move around as if it's in harmony with the melody. Any opinions? thanks.

On the basis of what you have told us, that sounds to me like two-part counterpoint with harmonic thinking taking over at the cadences. What have you been taught recently? a good teacher should be giving you an exercise to practise your recently acquired knowledge.

Depends on what you've already learned but if you've got that far I'd try to make take into account any chord inversions as though you were writing in 4 parts the whole way through. That would depend on you having learnt some standard progressions first.

errm well we've had 2 AS music lessons, we haven't properly written in 4 parts really, we've just done perfect and imperfect cadences so far so I though maybe the cadences were sort of the point and the rest could be pretty basic?

Thanks for your help both of you.

If you've not been taught anything else then I don't think you can be expected to do anything more than make the root of the chord the bass note.

In distant pre-history, when I took GCE O-level music, we learned lots of cadences and did an exercise in four part harmonization every week for 2 years! Is this stuff no longer on the GCSE syllabus? Or did you go straight into AS level without a preliminary qualification?

Anyway, the answer to your question is that the base line should imply a harmony AND be melodically interesting in its own right.

I think that Sbhoa has the right solution. Write the phrase in hymn tune style and add a bass line using the lowest note of the chords that would harminise so keeping them in root position. Aim for contrary motion between the bass and soprano parts and fill in the four part harmonies for the last two chords. Remember to work out what two chords to use to form each cadence and then add the soprano line accordingly. Good luck! Writing four part harmony is fun nd you will be writing Bach style chorales before you know it.

Writing in two parts was described by Thomas Morley in "A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music", long before chordal harmony was conceived consciously or named. There is a short course with a summary of the rules of Renaissance counterpoint here. The HTML translation doesn't show the musical examples.

From what I've seen of GCSE (and I admit it's not much) you barely need to even know about notation at all.

Thanks everyone...Mad Tom, I personally haven't done GCSE but nearly everyone else in the class has - they did composition but I don't think they had to know much theory.