Workshop 21 mini-test

1. What should you ask first when the global key is unclear?

2. What does Em7♭5-A7-Dm represent?

3. Why are dominants useful signposts?

4. What notes define A7’s guide-tone tritone?

5. Why is half-diminished often an important clue?

6. Why can two remote-looking chords sound smooth?

7. Why is scale-per-chord thinking inefficient in ambiguous harmony?

8. What should you memorize before every passing chord?

9. Why is simplification an advanced skill here?

10. What is the deepest lesson of Workshop 21?

Answers

1. Where is the current harmony trying to go?
2. iiø–V–i in D minor.
3. A dominant strongly predicts a root a fifth below, so it points toward a likely local destination even when the global key is unclear.
4. C♯ and G, normally resolving toward D and F in D minor.
5. Because a m7♭5 chord often functions as iiø and therefore signals an upcoming minor ii–V–i cadence.
6. They may share several upper notes or move important voices by only semitone/whole tone even while the roots move substantially.
7. Because the harmony may pass through several local centers too quickly; guide tones, destinations, and local packets provide much less cognitive overhead.
8. The form and the structural destination chords.
9. Because it reveals which chords carry structural meaning and which merely decorate or connect those points.
10. When tonal gravity is ambiguous, the safest navigation system is not a global scale—it is local destination, guide-tone motion, and form.

The central lesson of Workshop 21 is:

When you don’t know where “home” is, follow the arrows. The resolutions will tell you where you are.