Workshop 77 mini-test

1. What does “chasing the changes” mean?

2. How can Em7-A7-Dm7-G7-Cmaj7 be mentally compressed?

3. What is a harmonic landmark?

4. Why should a passing diminished chord usually receive less mental weight than a tonic or dominant destination?

5. What is the difference between global tonality and temporary tonicization?

6. Why are common tones useful for improvising through changes?

7. What does it mean to hear a dominant as an arrow?

8. What are functional, voice-leading, and motivic compression?

9. Why is recovery at the next landmark more useful than trying to reconstruct every missed chord?

10. What is the deepest lesson of Workshop 77?

Answers

1. Treating every chord symbol as an independent problem requiring an immediate new scale, arpeggio, or melodic reset instead of hearing a continuous harmonic journey.
2. Hear Em7-A7 as one ii–V-type packet into Dm, Dm7-G7 as another movement toward C, and the whole sequence as preparation leading to tonic rather than five unrelated chords.
3. A structurally important harmonic point such as a tonic arrival, strong dominant, modulation, phrase cadence, or temporary tonal destination that helps orient you within the larger form.
4. Its purpose is generally connective: it intensifies movement between structural harmonies. Giving it equal melodic/harmonic emphasis can obscure the larger direction and increase unnecessary cognitive load.
5. A tonicization briefly makes another chord feel like a local destination—such as A7→Dm inside C major—while the original key remains the larger home; modulation establishes a new tonal center strongly enough to become the governing context.
6. One pitch can remain while its harmonic meaning changes underneath, allowing the melodic line to remain continuous instead of restarting whenever the chord symbol changes.
7. Hear not merely the dominant's notes, but its directional gravity toward a specific destination—for example A7 as an event pointing toward D.
8. Functional compression groups several chords into a larger harmonic region/destination; voice-leading compression hears them as one continuous guide-tone path; motivic compression lets one recognizable melodic object survive across them.
9. Music is hierarchical. If you know the next structural cadence, tonic, or dominant, you can rejoin the form confidently even if one or two local chord details were missed.
10. The goal is not to process more chords faster. It is to hear fewer, larger harmonic ideas that explain what all those chords are collectively doing.

The central lesson of Workshop 77 is:

Do not ask five times, “What can I play on this chord?” Ask once, “Where is this whole passage going?”—and let the individual chords become the path.