Workshop 105 mini-test

1. Why is “Which chord contains this melody note?” usually an insufficient composition question?

2. Why should phrase destinations often be harmonized before intermediate notes?

3. What is the difference between functional rhythm and color rhythm?

4. Why is melody + bass such an important test?

5. What does it mean to generate harmony from an inner line?

6. Why should chromatic harmony usually have a clear line or destination?

7. How can harmonic language itself create form?

8. What is harmonic geography?

9. Why can a simple final cadence be stronger than a sophisticated one?

10. What is the deepest lesson of Workshop 105?

Answers

1. Because a melody pitch can belong to many chords. Its harmonic meaning depends on phrase function, bass, duration, surrounding notes, and destination; the pitch alone does not determine the best harmony.
2. Phrase endings, climaxes, and important sustained notes carry more structural weight. Once those harmonic destinations are established, the connecting chords can be chosen according to voice leading and function rather than by harmonizing every surface note independently.
3. Functional rhythm is the rate at which the underlying harmonic role changes—tonic to predominant to dominant, for example. Color rhythm is the rate at which voicings, tensions, suspensions, or upper structures change while the underlying function may remain the same.
4. Melody and bass are the strongest outer voices and often communicate most of the harmonic direction. If they form a coherent musical relationship, middle voices can clarify and color; if they do not, thick chords often only disguise the problem.
5. Choose a compelling horizontal inner motion—such as A→A♭→G—and select harmonies around it, for example F→Fm→C. The progression arises as a consequence of voice leading rather than from a preselected list of chord roots.
6. A chromatic chord sounds more integrated when it clearly continues a bass/top/inner line, prepares a destination, or changes a structural region. Without such a relationship it can sound inserted merely for color.
7. Different sections can deliberately use different harmonic grammars—diatonic versus borrowed, functional versus modal, stable versus chromatic—so the changing harmonic language itself tells the listener that the form has moved into a new state.
8. A large-scale map of tonal distance such as Home → Away → Far Away → Return. It treats harmony spatially and helps organize key regions and chord families into a coherent narrative.
9. After extensive harmonic tension and chromaticism, plain V→I may contain exactly the clarity the listener needs. Complexity derives meaning from contrast; the final act of resolution need not be the most complicated event.
10. Harmony becomes convincing when it grows from the melody’s structural needs, the bass’s direction, and the voice-leading logic of the phrase, so that chord choices feel like consequences of the music rather than decorations added to it.

The central lesson of Workshop 105 is:

Do not decorate your original melody with chords. Build a harmonic world beneath it: give it a home, let the bass show where the ground is moving, let inner voices explain the changes, let tension acquire direction, and make each important arrival feel as though the melody and harmony had been heading toward the same place all along.