Workshop 66 mini-test

1. Why are the 3rd and 7th called guide tones?

2. What are the guide tones of Dm7, G7, and Cmaj7?

3. What are the two classic semitone motions in G7→Cmaj7?

4. Why can a progression remain clear without roots if guide tones are present?

5. What is the descending guide-tone line through A7→D7→G7→C emphasized here?

6. Why does tritone substitution preserve dominant function so well?

7. How can altered or outside vocabulary remain harmonically clear?

8. Why should melody notes that are already 3rds or 7ths affect your voicing choices?

9. What is the difference between vertical and horizontal harmonic thinking?

10. What is the deepest lesson of Workshop 66?

Answers

1. Because the 3rd defines major/minor quality while the 7th strongly distinguishes maj7, dominant, minor-7, etc., and their movements often express harmonic function more clearly than roots and 5ths.
2. Dm7: F and C. G7: B and F. Cmaj7: E and B.
3. B→C and F→E: dominant 3rd rises to tonic root while dominant ♭7 falls to tonic 3rd.
4. Because 3rds and 7ths contain enough quality/function information that the ear can infer the harmonic progression from their voice leading and context.
5. G→F♯→F→E.
6. G7 and D♭7 contain essentially the same tritone guide-tone core enharmonically, so the upper tension/function remains similar while the bass root changes chromatically.
7. Let chromatic material ultimately land on a strong structural target—especially a chord 3rd or 7th—so the listener hears where the phrase was going.
8. Because the melody is already supplying chord-defining information; duplicating the same guide tone may be unnecessary, freeing accompaniment to supply the complementary guide tone or extensions instead.
9. Vertical thinking asks what notes fit the chord happening now; horizontal thinking hears continuous melodic/guide-tone lines that pass through a sequence of chords.
10. Harmony becomes much easier to hear, improvise, and arrange when you stop treating chords as isolated stacks and begin hearing the 3rds and 7ths as melodic voices traveling through them.

The central lesson of Workshop 66 is:

A root tells you the address. The 3rd and 7th tell you who lives there, what they are doing, and where the conversation is going next.