Workshop 68 mini-test

1. What is harmonic rhythm?

2. Why can the same chords feel radically different at different rates of change?

3. What should happen to voicing density as harmonic rhythm becomes faster?

4. What are root rhythm, functional rhythm, and color rhythm?

5. Why can a prolonged dominant be more tense without adding alterations?

6. What is harmonic syncopation?

7. Why don’t four walking-bass notes necessarily mean four harmonic events?

8. What is the difference between functional acceleration and color acceleration?

9. How can harmonic rhythm shape repeated choruses without changing the melody?

10. What is the deepest lesson of Workshop 68?

Answers

1. The rate and placement at which meaningful harmonic changes occur.
2. Faster changes increase information, direction, and cognitive/aural activity; slower changes allow sonorities to become environments and make individual changes more structurally significant.
3. It should generally become simpler and thinner—roots, shells, guide tones, and compact shapes—because context supplies much of the missing information.
4. Root rhythm is how often bass/root identity changes; functional rhythm is how often tonic/predominant/dominant or other structural function changes; color rhythm is how often extensions, voicings, suspensions, or upper structures change within the same broader function.
5. Simply sustaining dominant expectation longer gives the ear more time to experience unresolved gravity, so duration itself can increase tension.
6. A harmonic field changes on an offbeat or otherwise unexpected metric location rather than at the normal downbeat/phrase boundary.
7. The bass can move melodically through chord tones and passing notes while the larger harmony remains one chord; bass-note rhythm and harmonic rhythm are separate clocks.
8. Functional acceleration increases the rate of actual harmonic-direction changes; color acceleration can increase voicing/extension activity while the underlying root or function stays the same.
9. Early choruses can use slow, simple harmony while later choruses progressively add two-per-bar movement, passing chords, dominant chains, or compressed turnarounds, making the same melody feel increasingly intense.
10. Harmony has rhythm. The duration, placement, and rate of chord changes can shape tension and form just as strongly as the chord choices themselves.

The central lesson of Workshop 68 is:

Before asking for a more interesting chord, ask whether the chord you already have is arriving at the right moment—and whether you have allowed it to stay long enough to mean something.