Workshop 76 mini-test

1. What is the main difference between a chord-by-chord solo and a long-line solo?

2. Why should phrases often cross bar lines and chord boundaries?

3. What is the difference between harmonic resolution and melodic resolution?

4. What makes a cadence function as a comma rather than a period?

5. What is antecedent–consequent phrasing?

6. What are phrase extension, truncation, and elision?

7. Why should a climax usually be reserved rather than stated immediately?

8. How can one tonic cadence be structural while another is only local?

9. What are the beat, harmonic, and phrase clocks?

10. What is the deepest lesson of Workshop 76?

Answers

1. A chord-by-chord solo treats each harmony as a separate local problem; a long-line solo maintains a larger melodic idea whose direction survives several chord changes.
2. Because melody has its own syntax independent of notation boundaries; crossing them creates horizontal continuity and prevents the improvisation from sounding mechanically tied to the chart.
3. Harmony can arrive at tonic while the melodic sentence remains unresolved—for example, landing temporarily on 9 or continuing through the tonic before finally settling.
4. A comma allows immediate thematic/rhythmic continuation; a period is reinforced by stronger closure, longer duration, silence, or clear release.
5. A related pair of phrases in which the first tends to create expectation/question and the second responds or completes it, often using shared motivic material.
6. Extension continues beyond an expected ending; truncation shortens a previously established idea; elision allows one arrival to function simultaneously as the end of one phrase and beginning of the next.
7. Climax depends on contrast and preparation; if maximum register, density, rhythm, or intensity appears too early, there is little perceptual headroom left.
8. The improvisational phrase can continue through an earlier tonic arrival and reserve true closure for a later cadence, creating hierarchy among harmonically similar events.
9. The beat clock tracks meter/pulse; the harmonic clock tracks progression and destinations; the phrase clock tracks where you are inside the larger musical sentence.
10. Improvisation becomes storytelling when individual notes and chords stop being isolated decisions and begin serving a larger phrase whose direction the listener can remember.

The central lesson of Workshop 76 is:

Do not improvise until you run out of notes. Improvise until the sentence has said what it needed to say—then breathe.