Unaccented Passing Tone
A passing tone on a weak beat, mainly connective
Related
An unaccented passing tone is a passing tone on a weak beat: it connects two chord tones by step and mainly supplies flow and direction, without stressing the dissonance.
It differs from an accented passing tone: the unaccented one passes, the accented one stresses. The usual mistake is to think passing tones are dispensable — without them, stepwise motion becomes broken leaps; it does not grab the ear, but it decides whether the phrase flows.
Read deeper → passing tone
Sources
- 弱拍经过音的功能，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Non-chord tone"；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.