Find out all about harmony, chord functions, substitutions, chord progressions
Chord transformations occur when a chord voicing is altered and transforms that chord into a different one. For example, if you have a C major chord and the move the tonic half-step down, you will get the inverted Em chord… Read More »Chord Transformations
Another good way of thickening the melodic line, or to create a harmonic melody, is to use block chords. These are usually played in rhythmic unison with the melody, or very close to it. The name of this harmonic device… Read More »How to Use Block Chords in Your Music
This harmonic device consists in moving a chord or a harmonic interval and maintain the relative distance between pitches, or put another way, it’s when all the voices of a chord move in the same direction. It can be used… Read More »Parallel Harmonic Movement
It refers to a note that is sustained over a long period of time. More often than not, it starts on a consonance and throughout the chord succession, or progression, the note is sustained as a dissonance until it resolves… Read More »How Pedal Point Can Be Used In Your Music
This device can be used as means of creating, releasing and/or prolonging tension while the underlying harmony changes until it resolves to a new chord or harmonic context. It is used as an effect to increase the interest and depth in a… Read More »Harmonic Anticipation and Suspension
A cycle in a chord progression occurs when the root motion of one chord to another follows a fixed interval – in thirds, fourths, fifths, etc. As an example, you could start on C major and then use one of… Read More »Cycle Chord Progressions
In a chord progression, the involved chord tones move according to certain melodic tendencies. When one writes harmonic progressions or successions, special attention should be paid to the outer voices of chords and their implicit melody since the outer voices… Read More »Chord Connection and Voice-Leading
It is the interplay between chords that creates a sense of movement that can be more or less dynamic and/or static. Probably, the most obvious way to achieve harmonic movement is through harmonic rhythm, that is, how fast you change… Read More »Harmonic Movement and Chord Progressions
This is a technique that makes use of existing material, be it from chords or melodies. As you will see, it is not a simple inversion or mirroring technique because the harmonic functionality in the chord progression will be… Read More »Cadences and Negative Harmony
This harmonic device is basically a method to create small chord progressions, or just one chord that will lead to a target chord. This technique implies that you consider first the target chord and then figure out what chord could be… Read More »Back Cycling
These chords either lead to or act like secondary dominant chords that, in effect, resolve to the dominant chord before the tonicized chord (*see note). For that reason, they are also referred to as pre-dominant chords. If we consider the… Read More »Augmented Sixth Chords
Harmonic cadences are used to prepare and reinforce the tonic but other diatonic chords can also be reinforced. The dominant chord that exists in the tonality we are using is called a primary dominant. But if you wish to emphasize… Read More »Secondary Dominants
Considering the C major scale, its natural dominant chord is the G7 and we have been extrapolating chords that can be used to replace its function. Commonly you will find references to a substitute of the V7 chord, abbreviated to… Read More »The Sub-7 Dominant Chord Substitute
The importance of the tritone to functional harmony was already discussed and considering that chords can be replaced in their function, as long as they share common tones, it is not hard to imagine that the dominant chord (V7) and… Read More »Dominant Chord Substitutions
As the name implies, a chord substitution involves using a chord in place of another. However, it is not just any chord as usually the substitute chord replaces the original one in respect to its function in a given harmonic… Read More »A Simple Guide for Chord Substitutions
These next concepts will crucial to understand not only tonal harmony but also to understand how we can use this knowledge to escape the tonal pull exerted by certain chord types and instead work in an atonal or modal context.… Read More »The Importance of the Tritone in Harmony
We perceive sound as a whole but even if the fundamentals of that sound are not present (1st and 2nd overtones, etc.); our brain can still reconstruct the fundamental tone. However, if we continue to remove the following overtones, gradually… Read More »The Close Relationship Between Tonic and Fifth
A harmonic movement from one chord to another is called a chord progression and a cadence is a harmonic device that refers to the form of ending a musical thought. Cadences may appear in the end of a phrase or… Read More »Harmonic Cadences
A cluster is a chord built by at least three adjacent tones of a scale. In this form they are similar to chords by seconds as the adjacent tones usually correspond to second intervals as clusters can be based on… Read More »Clusters
Polychords may be built with materials from different tonalities, modes, synthetic scales, etc; and then such materials are explored according to musical context and intentions of the composer. But the provenance of materials for polychordal and polyharmonic technique is not… Read More »Polychords and the Harmonic Series
