Workshop 59 mini-test

1. What is the difference between displacement and microtiming?

2. Why must centered timing be learned before laid-back timing?

3. What is the “Pocket Triangle”?

4. Why is note release timing important?

5. What is a grace-chord slide?

6. Why should chromatic approach chords not always be analyzed as structural harmony?

7. How can bass and RH arrive at the same harmony at different times?

8. Why should rich neo-soul harmony often use relatively few roots?

9. What is the role of the 3rd in sus→dominant resolution?

10. What is the deepest lesson of Workshop 59?

Answers

1. Displacement changes the actual subdivision/location of the event; microtiming preserves the intended rhythmic location but slightly changes its placement relative to the reference pulse.
2. Because intentional deviation requires a reliable center. Without accurate centered placement, “laid back” becomes inconsistent dragging rather than controlled feel.
3. Timing, articulation, and dynamics.
4. Groove depends on the lengths of notes and silences as well as attacks; identical onset timing with different releases can produce completely different pockets.
5. A quick chromatic approach by one voice or an entire small voicing that resolves immediately into the target chord, functioning mainly as an expressive ornament.
6. Because many such sonorities are momentary voice-leading or ornamental approaches rather than independent functional chord events.
7. Bass can anticipate the root before the RH chord, RH can anticipate before the bass, or bass may land on the downbeat while RH confirms later; staged arrival creates pocket and motion.
8. Because extensions, common tones, suspensions, and inner voice movement can produce great harmonic richness without constant root movement; too many roots can interfere with groove and clarity.
9. The 3rd converts an ambiguous/open suspended dominant into a clearly defined dominant-quality chord, so delaying it creates expressive tension.
10. A deep pocket comes from an exact internal grid combined with controlled relationships among layers, attacks, releases, articulation, and harmonic motion—not from simply playing late.

The central lesson of Workshop 59 is:

The grid can be exact while the music breathes around it. Feel lives in the controlled relationship between pulse, attack, release, and layer.