Day Six: Internalizing Chords

Build beautiful chord progressions, and then sing them.

Some Perspective on the Tradition of Harmony

We've experienced that a single tone is only useful in a musical context when it forms an interval with another tone. Similarly, a chord is only useful musically when it forms a chord-connection with another group of tones. We see yet again that musical tension is created by juxtaposing two units. During a chord connection, three forces are brought to life within us: the rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic.

Rhythmic. Rhythm, this "all-pervading" element of music, is active each time you sing an interval or play a series of chords. It is impossible to ignore harmonic rhythm. The first sound, and the movement that it creates within us, is connected to each consequent sound as they unfold in time. This fact is part of the life of embodied music. 

Melodic. The intervals between the notes of each voice of a chord connection can be heard as intervals in the horizontal direction. This dimension will be looked at in greater detail during the lesson on cadences and counterpoint. The purpose of learning counterpoint is to be able to think of solutions to musical problems, i.e., how to write a song.

Harmonic. This is where we're focusing our discussion. Some chords are more stable than others, and each chord connection activates a certain degree of harmonic energy in the ear.

First an important bit of history. The harmony that we're covering is really a style of composition known as the Common Practice Period which covers the late Baroque from about 1650 until the late Romanticism of 1900. This is the era of tonal music. Since the end of the last century we've seen a return to tonal music with contemporary musicians rediscovering new possibilities outside of the style we all study in harmony class. But it is an excellent ground to build on since there is a great amount of inspiration and tradition to draw from. What better way to learn music than directly from the masters themselves?

All conventional theories of harmony are derived from the major and minor scales, and any chromatic harmony is forced into that rigid system. For composers who wish to dive deeper into vistas not previously seen or heard, keep this perspective in mind. We should free ourselves from the diatonic scales, and seek to understand harmony from the point of view of the chromatic scale, not via major or minor (or even the modal scales). As I mentioned the best way to do this is by returning to the laws of sound (by listening) and deriving the rules of music from there. As always it depends on your goals, but starting with diatonic fundamental harmony is the way most composers today begin. 

As a conductor most of the repertoire I was studying used the harmonic language of the common practice period. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven. Earlier music (Renaissance and Medieval) does not fall into that style—that music uses the pure intervals in a different way. Similarly, chords written by composers after Wagner and Schoenberg can be more easily understood based on their intervals, and it seems that that is how those composers thought compositionally. The harmony of Debussy marks a pretty significant turn in musical history. Let’s liberate ourselves from the chamber of diatonicism and start to hear music based on what we live as stable, what contrasts and goes against that stability, and the forces of harmony that build from there.

The Minor Chord Functions

We saw in yesterday's post on chord progressions a chart that shows how the diatonic triads are organized in the major mode based on their function (Figure 15 of this article). Today I'm including the same diagram but for the minor mode. As you'll see there is a beautiful symmetry between the two, even though the chords differ on their quality (for example, the mediant chord is major in the minor mode, but minor in the major mode). 

Don't ever get bogged down by the particular qualities of music theory. What's most important is your lived experience. 

Remember what a predominant chord feels like, how a dominant chord is charged toward the tonic. Learn how the mediants and submediants are more ambiguous than the predominant and dominant chords based on their sound, and how they can function as either one due to their ambiguity.

Seventh Chords

Any of the diatonic chords can be made into seventh chords by simply adding a major or minor seventh above the root of the triad. The quality of the seventh will be determined by the notes that are available in the major or minor scale. The most common seventh chord used is the V7 chord. In major, the ii7 and IV7 are common, and beautiful for establishing stability.

The V7 of C major and its inversions.

When you use a seventh chord, make sure the seventh resolves downward. Consider the minor seventh interval: sing G-F ascending. Doesn't it want to resolve to G-E? G-E is more stable because the combination tone that it creates is none other than a C two octaves below. Stability. The ground, the earth. The F-E motion is the downward resolution that you want to obey in your chord writing because of this natural tendency.

Get inside the notes.

Here are some more advanced chord exercises.

1. Arrange the following 8 triads (D f# e c Db7 eb Bb7 B) for 4 voices using any inversion, but try and make it as smooth as possible.

2. Take any 4 triads or seventh chords (a triad with a minor or major seventh above the root). Write them with the following progression: stable, more tense, less tense, stable. Understand that the stability is only determined by the sound of the chords in relation to each other. Identify their intervals. How are they built? Practice singing each chord. Then, make it a phrase. 

When studying chord progressions, always listen at a deeper level by asking the question, how does the tension articulate? A musical articulation is a impact and a resolution, so ask yourself, where (what notes) are the harmonic impacts and resolutions?

Singing is the most direct way to approach the inner life of a musical note.

Singing is probably the most direct way. If you walk away with anything from this course, it’s to just sing more. Sing what you’re working on, and you’ll find natural phrasing. And it’s because the origin of the sound is coming from you, it’s a direct expression of your soul. When you sing a phrase or an interval, whatever is moving within you is probably moving within others in the same proportion. 

Singing Chords

Writing chord progressions and then singing them helps you get in touch with musical tension, the highest level view of how music touches us. In my video

Music doesn't contain anything, there are no characters inside of it, no images, no visible light. It is structured sound. The structure of the sound is what can move our inner life to such a great degree, compelling Gustav Mahler to say, "A symphony must be like the world."

Many people, including musicians, say that music "tells a story." What is more compelling to me is the expansion and contraction of musical tension. This comes from the intervals themselves. In a piece, music expands to a point of maximum tension before relaxing and resolving back to the silence that preceded it.

Practice Examples for Study

From Schoenberg's Theory of Harmony. Play these chords or study them to dive deeper—this entire progression uses diatonic chords! The variety of chords makes music worth practicing. Note, he’s a theorist who doesn’t use lowercase Roman numerals to label the minor chords, they are all uppercase to show the degree.

There are many different ways to harmonize a melody. This is also taken from Schoenberg's Theory of Harmony, in the section on chorale harmonization. Melodic Harmonization:

Check out the soprano voice in example 222. Each phrase is D-C-D-Eb. The phrases end on the fermatas. Over and over. As you can see, Schoenberg harmonizes those same three notes differently each time. The Eb is harmonized as the third of C minor, or the tonic of Eb major. Each cadence approaches these two tonalities differently. It’s a great study to get a sense of how diatonic chords offer a field day in the playground of musical composition.It all started with one note, and now we’re here! There is much more to come. The foundations will always bring you closer and closer to sound.

This post is part of 14 Days of Harmony, a free course for musicians who want to deepen their understanding of harmony, and learn how to develop their connection with sound as a result. You can view the entire course here.

Next day: Cadences

Previous day: Chords and Progressions