Workshop 28 mini-test

1. What makes D Dorian different from D natural minor?

2. What is the characteristic Dorian note?

3. Why is improvising over one chord sometimes harder than over many chords?

4. What are quartal voicings?

5. Why do quartal voicings fit modal harmony well?

6. What happens when D Dorian moves directly to E♭ Dorian?

7. Why does that shift not require a dominant cadence?

8. How do you create form when harmony barely changes?

9. What is the difference between B over Dm13 and A♭ over G7♭9?

10. What is the deepest lesson of Workshop 28?

Answers

1. D Dorian has B natural (6) instead of the B♭ (♭6) found in D natural minor.
2. B natural, scale degree 6.
3. Because chord changes no longer provide automatic contrast and direction; the improviser must generate development through motif, rhythm, register, dynamics, articulation, and density.
4. Voicings organized mainly in fourths rather than traditional stacks of thirds.
5. They create open, harmonically ambiguous sonorities that do not strongly demand conventional functional resolution.
6. The entire modal environment shifts upward by a semitone while the internal Dorian relationships remain the same.
7. Because the movement is a direct modal-center shift rather than a functional tonic-dominant modulation.
8. Use phrase lengths, motifs, rhythmic development, register, dynamics, density, ostinatos, and section contrasts as structural landmarks.
9. B can function as a relatively stable Dorian 13 over D minor, while A♭ is an altered ♭9 on G7 with much stronger functional resolution pressure.
10. When harmony gives you fewer events, you must create more meaning from each note, rhythm, silence, and gesture.

The central lesson of Workshop 28 is:

A single chord can contain an entire world—but only if you learn how to explore it instead of waiting for the next chord to tell you what to do.