Workshop 62 mini-test

1. What is side-slipping?

2. How does it differ from a single chromatic approach note?

3. Why should the inside sound be established first?

4. What makes an outside phrase sound related rather than random?

5. What is chordal planing?

6. Why can duration change whether a chromatic sonority sounds ornamental or structural?

7. Why is a stable bass especially useful during outside playing?

8. What happens if everything is chromatic/outside all the time?

9. Why can the same RH voicing sound completely different when the bass shifts by a semitone?

10. What is the deepest lesson of Workshop 62?

Answers

1. Temporarily shifting a recognizable melodic or harmonic object outside the current tonal frame—often by a semitone—before returning.
2. A chromatic approach normally uses one or a few outside notes directly to target an inside note; side-slipping shifts a larger recognizable phrase or voicing as a unit.
3. Because outside tension is perceived relative to an established tonal expectation; without audible home, the departure has no clear meaning.
4. Preserve something recognizable—especially rhythm, contour, interval shape, motif, register, or articulation—while changing pitch level.
5. Moving an entire chord/voicing shape in parallel, often chromatically, so the shape itself becomes the moving object.
6. A very brief dissonance may be heard as an ornament or approach; sustained long enough, the same sonority begins to behave like an independent harmonic region.
7. The bass preserves tonal orientation while the upper material temporarily violates it, giving the listener a reference against which to hear the tension.
8. The contrast disappears; if everything is permanently outside, there is no longer a meaningful inside/outside distinction.
9. Harmonic function is relational: unchanged upper notes acquire completely new interval functions over a different bass, allowing the bass alone to reinterpret the voicing.
10. Outside playing is not the art of abandoning harmony. It is the art of leaving home clearly enough—and returning convincingly enough—that the departure becomes part of the story.

The central lesson of Workshop 62 is:

Freedom sounds intentional when the listener can still feel the gravity you are temporarily resisting.