Workshop 107 mini-test

1. What is the main difference between chord filling and inner-voice writing?

2. Why are common tones and semitone motion so useful?

3. What is a suspension?

4. Why can an altered dominant be understood as counterpoint rather than as a complicated chord symbol?

5. What is role promotion?

6. When is a countermelody most appropriate?

7. Why is three-part writing such a valuable practice format?

8. How can inner voices create modulation?

9. Why should counterpoint density be style-dependent?

10. What is the deepest lesson of Workshop 107?

Answers

1. Chord filling asks which pitches complete a vertical sonority; inner-voice writing asks how a particular voice travels horizontally from one meaningful note to another. The resulting chord should emerge from coherent lines whenever possible.
2. They produce continuity with minimal motion. Common tones preserve identity while other voices change, and semitone motion creates especially strong directional tension/resolution without requiring large physical or perceptual jumps.
3. A note prepared in the previous harmony is held into a new harmony where it becomes dissonant or tense, then resolves—often by step. Examples include F held from G7 over C before resolving to E.
4. Tensions such as A♭, E♭, or D♭ over G7 acquire musical meaning primarily through how they resolve—A♭→G, E♭→E, D♭→C, etc. The altered chord is therefore a collection of moving voices with destinations, not merely a static exotic sonority.
5. Moving a previously subordinate inner voice into the foreground—for example turning a hidden chromatic line into the main melody or a countermelody later in the piece. This creates thematic unity through changing roles.
6. When the main melody leaves enough perceptual space—during rests, held notes, repeated notes, or sparse phrases. A continuously active countermelody beneath an already busy melody usually competes rather than supports.
7. Bass + inner voice + melody forces you to hear three independent lines and makes unnecessary duplication impossible. It exposes weak voice leading while still providing enough information for rich harmonic implication.
8. A common tone can bridge old and new tonal centers, or a chromatic inner line can gradually introduce pitches belonging to the destination key. This makes modulation feel like continuous voice motion rather than an abrupt sequence of unrelated chord roots.
9. Walking bass, bossa interlock, funk riffs, and odd-meter layers already consume rhythmic/contrapuntal space. The number and independence of additional voices must therefore adapt to the groove rather than follow one universal counterpoint rule.
10. The middle of the texture should not exist merely because chord symbols contain extra notes. Inner voices become musically valuable when they behave like restrained melodies—holding, approaching, suspending, resolving, remembering, and occasionally stepping forward to speak.

The central lesson of Workshop 107 is:

Once the melody and bass are strong, resist the urge to fill the gap between them. Listen into that empty space and imagine another musician living there. Give that musician a line with memory and direction, and let the chords appear as the temporary vertical result of several voices that all know where they are going.