Workshop 113 mini-test

1. What is “chord collection syndrome”?

2. What are several possible governing logics for a progression?

3. How is a bass-line progression different from a function-first progression?

4. What creates coherence in modal harmony?

5. Why can chromatic-mediant progressions work despite remote roots?

6. What is a harmonic constitution?

7. What is a harmonic route bank?

8. Why should rare harmonic resources remain rare?

9. Why is voice leading often more important than the exoticism of a chord label?

10. What is the deepest lesson of Workshop 113?

Answers

1. Choosing a sequence because each individual chord sounds attractive without establishing a convincing relationship between successive chords or a larger directional logic.
2. Functional gravity, bass-line motion, inner/top-line voice leading, common tones, pedal/modal center, loop pattern, cycle of fifths, symmetrical division, or a deliberate hybrid of these.
3. A function-first progression derives primarily from roles such as tonic, predominant, and dominant; a bass-line progression may use less conventional harmonic functions because the continuous lowest voice provides the primary coherence. The two approaches can overlap.
4. A stable tonal center, characteristic modal degrees, pedal or repeated harmonic behavior, melody, and consistent sonority vocabulary. A modal progression does not require conventional V-I gravity to be coherent.
5. Their individual chord roots may be distantly related, but the upper voices can share common tones or move by semitone/whole step. Smooth voice leading can make a chromatically remote root relation sound inevitable.
6. A deliberately limited set of harmonic rules for a piece: its tonic family, predominant/dominant vocabulary, permitted borrowed colors, rare surprises, and perhaps explicitly forbidden habits. The limitations create a recognizable harmonic world.
7. A small collection of alternative harmonic pathways to the same structural destination—for example direct V-I, ii-V-I, borrowed iv-I, backdoor, tritone-substitute, or leading-tone diminished approaches to tonic.
8. Scarcity creates significance. If tritone substitutes, altered dominants, borrowed chords, polychords, and chromatic mediants occur constantly, they cease to function as distinctive events and simply become the ordinary harmonic language.
9. Listeners hear continuity through moving voices. An exotic chord connected by compelling semitone/common-tone lines can sound natural, while familiar chords with arbitrary jumps can sound disconnected.
10. A progression becomes music when its chords behave as consequences of a shared logic—function, line, center, pattern, or destination—rather than as individually attractive objects placed beside one another.

The central lesson of Workshop 113 is:

Choose the law before choosing the exceptions. Decide whether your progression is being pulled by function, drawn by a bass line, held together by common tones, suspended over a pedal, or organized by a modal or symmetrical world. Then let individual chords emerge from that logic. A surprising chord becomes convincing not because theory permits it, but because the music around it makes you hear why that chord had to be the surprising one.