Workshop 12 mini-test

1. What is the difference between counting 3/4 and feeling one large pulse per bar?

2. Why can bass-chord-chord sound stiff?

3. What role can beat 3 play in jazz waltz?

4. What is hemiola across two bars of 3/4?

5. How can a secondary dominant be used rhythmically in 3/4?

6. Why should not every bar contain three chord attacks?

7. How can harmony and bass arrive at different moments?

8. What is the difference between 3/4 and 6/8?

9. What should happen before you deliberately avoid beat 1?

10. What is the deepest lesson of this workshop?

Answers

1. Counting 3/4 tracks the three quarter-note beats; feeling one large pulse treats the whole bar as a larger rhythmic unit, allowing freer phrasing.
2. Because identical attacks on beats 1, 2, and 3 every bar make the meter overly explicit and predictable.
3. It can act as an anticipation/pickup into the next bar or harmony.
4. Regrouping six quarter-note pulses as 2+2+2 instead of the normal 3+3.
5. Place it briefly on beat 3 as a harmonic pickup into the next bar’s destination.
6. Space and syncopation keep the meter light and allow melody and harmony to move independently.
7. RH can anticipate the next harmony before LH bass changes, or LH can move first while RH delays.
8. 3/4 normally has three main quarter-note beats; 6/8 normally has two large dotted-quarter beats, each subdivided into three.
9. You must first internalize exactly where beat 1 is.
10. Jazz waltz is not about constantly emphasizing three beats; it is about letting longer melodic and harmonic phrases float across a stable triple-meter foundation.

The central lesson of Workshop 12 is:

In 3/4, freedom comes from knowing the bar so well that you no longer have to advertise where the bar is.