Workshop 84 mini-test

1. What is the difference between tonicization and modulation?

2. Why is Am a useful pivot chord between C and G?

3. What makes common-tone modulation smooth?

4. Why can chromatic-mediant modulations sound distant yet voice-lead smoothly?

5. What is sequential modulation?

6. What does it mean to transfer tonal gravity?

7. Why does the new leading tone matter during modulation?

8. How can ambiguity function as a modulation bridge?

9. Why should modulation usually be confirmed after arrival?

10. What is the deepest lesson of Workshop 84?

Answers

1. Tonicization briefly makes another chord sound like a local tonic while the original key remains the larger home; modulation establishes a new tonic strongly enough that it becomes the governing tonal center.
2. Am is vi in C but ii in G, so the same unchanged chord can be reinterpreted when D7 follows and points to G.
3. One or more pitches remain physically unchanged while their harmonic function changes, giving the ear continuity during the transfer from old key to new key.
4. The roots may be remote in traditional tonal relationships, but the upper voices often share common tones and move by semitone, so contrapuntal distance is much smaller than root distance.
5. Repeating a recognizable harmonic/melodic pattern at a new pitch level so the repetition itself establishes a new tonal center.
6. Old tonic/dominant expectations weaken while new leading tones, dominant relationships, phrase endings, bass roots, and cadences begin pointing toward a different home.
7. A new leading tone creates a new semitone gravitational arrow—such as F♯→G—strongly signaling that the ear should begin treating the destination as a tonic.
8. Remove defining features of the old key—especially the 3rd, leading tone, or strong cadence—use sus/pedal/quartal material, then gradually introduce defining tones of the new key.
9. Without repetition, cadence, duration, or structural emphasis in the new center, the listener may interpret the event merely as a temporary tonicization rather than a genuine key change.
10. Modulation is the art of controlling when the old tonic stops feeling inevitable and when the new tonic begins to feel like home.

The central lesson of Workshop 84 is:

Changing key is easy. Transferring the listener’s sense of home—smoothly, dramatically, or deceptively—is the real craft of modulation.