5591 / 18210 · Workshop 39 — “Watermelon Man”: Blues-Funk Vocabulary, Dominant Vamps, Riffs as Harmony, and Making Repetition Feel Inevitable Instead of Boring← prev⊞ allnext →
39.21This is a huge arranging principle
Harmony does not always need to be expressed as vertical chord blocks.
It may be encoded horizontally in a riff.
That is why riff-based music can feel harmonically strong with surprisingly few chords.