Workshop 39 mini-test

1. Why can F7 act as tonic even though F7 would traditionally be V7 of B♭?

2. What is the difference between chord quality and harmonic function?

3. What is F Mixolydian?

4. What is F blues scale?

5. Why is A♭ important over an F7 tonic?

6. Why can a riff establish harmony without block chords?

7. What is the difference between F7 and C7 when F is already established as the blues center?

8. How can F7 resolve internally without changing root?

9. Why is AAB useful in blues phrasing?

10. What is the deepest lesson of Workshop 39?

Answers

1. In blues/funk language, repeated F bass, riff vocabulary, form, and duration establish F as home; dominant-seventh quality does not require conventional dominant function.
2. Quality describes the chord's interval structure; function describes its contextual job and directional behavior.
3. F-G-A-B♭-C-D-E♭.
4. F-A♭-B♭-B-C-E♭.
5. It supplies the expressive blue ♭3 against the chord's major 3rd A, often moving A♭→A.
6. A riff can repeatedly establish the root, chord tones, characteristic tensions, and rhythmic identity, allowing the ear to infer the underlying harmony horizontally.
7. F7 is functioning as tonic/home; C7 has genuine dominant function and creates stronger pressure to return to F.
8. Change E♭→D, turning an F7-type tonic into F6/9 color without changing the F bass/root.
9. It creates clear statement–repetition–answer rhetoric, making repetition structural rather than redundant.
10. The sound of a chord does not determine its function by itself; function emerges from time, form, bass, repetition, and destination.

The central lesson of Workshop 39 is:

Blues teaches one of harmony’s most important truths: a chord can sound tense and still be home.