Harmonic Function

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En provenance du cours de Berklee College of Music

Musicianship: Tensions, Harmonic Function, and Modal Interchange

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Berklee College of Music

Musicianship: Tensions, Harmonic Function, and Modal Interchange

195 notes

Cours 3 sur 4 dans Specialization Developing Your Musicianship

After a tremendous response from learners on Coursera, Berklee Online has created a Developing Your Musicianship specialization, and this course is the third course in the series. If you have a general understanding of music theory or if you have completed Developing Your Musicianship I and II, this course will continue to help you understand musical concepts, enabling you to create and perform contemporary music. Taught by Berklee College of Music professor George W. Russell, Jr., the course includes four lessons that delve into an intermediate level of harmony and ear training. The course will introduce you to new key signatures, and explore how they are constructed. You will continue to train your ear, learning to differentiate between the various intervals and chords that were explored in Developing Your Musicianship I and II. You will learn how to borrow chords from parallel tonalities (modal interchange), and how to write more common chord progressions. The course culminates with an assignment that asks you to compose and perform a composition using popular chord progressions. As with Developing Your Musicianship I and II, this course is designed to share the joy of creating music.

À partir de la leçon

Lesson 1

This week, we will explore the key of Eb Major and B minor. We will also learn about chord tensions and harmonic function, or, in other words, how chords function within a tonal center. We will continue to develop our ears by aurally identifying chord progressions and chord qualities.

Eb Major and Chord Tensions8:12

Harmonic Function4:34

Ear Training Practice with Chords6:29

Ear Training Practice with Chord Progressions5:46

Rencontrer les enseignants

George W. Russell, Jr.
Professor
Harmony/Piano

[MUSIC]

What we're going to talk about now is harmonic function.

What is harmonic function?

Simply put, harmonic function describes

the relationship of a chord to its tonal center.

Let me say that again.

It describes the relationship of a chord to its tonal center.

In other words, how that chord typically functions in a tonal center.

How that chord be acting and stuff.

Maybe I shouldn't have said that?

Well, I already said it.

But anyway, how that chord functions.

And if you'll notice, when I was introducing chord

qualities in Developing a Musicianship 2 and 1,

I would often use the one chord,

[SOUND] the four chord, [SOUND] and the five chord.

[SOUND] And I did that because a lot of music is built upon these three chords.

They are the three main chords.

The one chord [SOUND] is what we call the tonic.

That's home base.

Its function is to create a nice stable place to be, [SOUND] home base, tonic.

Then you go to the five chord [SOUND] that is your dominant chord,

that's your dominant chord.

And what makes that chord so unique is it always feels like, in this case,

I'm in the key of E flat, so my B flat [SOUND] is my dominant chord.

Its function is, [SOUND] it almost feels like it wants to go back to one.

[MUSIC]

And that's because of that note, [SOUND] the D natural,

which we call the leading tone.

It's the seventh degree and it feels like [SOUND] it wants to go to one.

That its function, it takes us back home.

[SOUND] So we have home, one chord, then we have,

which is a tonic then we have the five chord

which is a dominant chord and it takes us back home.

So we have home [SOUND] and then we go to the dominant chord [SOUND] five chord,

takes us back to the tonic, the one chord.

[SOUND] Then there's the four chord.

In the key of E flat, [SOUND] the four chord will be A flat.

[SOUND] Now here's kind of, what we like to say, far away from home.

He is the subdominant.

The subdominant [SOUND] is one step below the dominant, [SOUND] sub,

below, get that?

You have the dominant.

[SOUND] The subdominant is below, one step below.

And he's far away from home, [SOUND] okay,

he's far away because of the harmonies take you there.

That A flat there, [SOUND] the fourth degree,

[SOUND] kind of takes us a little bit further away from the tonal center.

[SOUND] He is the subdominant.

So we have tonic, [SOUND] home, [SOUND] subdominant,

[SOUND] far from home, [SOUND] dominant, one step back closer to home,

[SOUND] and that dominant will take us through it.

Harmonic function, how chords function in the tonality.

[SOUND] Tonic, one chord, subdominant,

[SOUND] four chord, [SOUND] dominant five chord.

[SOUND] Home, [SOUND] far from home, [SOUND] one step away from home.

Now we're going home.

[SOUND] Tonic, subdominant, [SOUND] dominant, [SOUND] tonic.

[SOUND] Hundreds of songs are based upon those three chords.

[MUSIC]

Tonic, subdominant, dominant, tonic, tonic,

subdominant, tonic, dominant and tonic harmonic function.

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