Harmonic Progression printable pdf download

music theory for musicians and normal people by toby w. rush

Harmonic Progression

how did composers of the common

practice period decide which order

to put chords in? did they just throw

them down on paper haphazardly?

as a matter of fact, there are certain chord progressions that appear more

frequently, and there are others that are avoided pretty consistently. while

the choices were always based on what sounded good to the composer,

theorists can find a pattern in their choices that we can use to easily remember

which chord progressions work and which ones don’t.

one way to understand this pattern is to think in terms of root movements. a root movement

is the basic interval between the root of one chord and the root of the next chord. you

˙ ˙

don’t have to worry about the interval’s inflection, just its distance and direction.

˙ ˙

A to B is down a seventh,

for example, to determine the root movement

but since octaves don’t matter,

here, we look at the root (not bass) of each

we invert it to up a second .

chord and figure the interval between them.

so here’s the pattern: common practice

period composers generally used root

movements of up a second, down a

that’s not say that they

third, and down a fifth!

never used other root

movements, but it didn’t

happen very often.

sequences of chords that

don’t follow this pattern

remember... since

are called retrogressions,

inflection doesn’t

and they are considered

matter, we can

unstylistic.

ignore accidentals

when we figure the

root movements.

“Unstylistic” is a

polite way of saying

“The composers didn’t

do it so you shouldn’t

so, for example, a g chord to an

do it either”!

e chord is down a third, but so is

g to e flat, and g sharp to e flat!

there are also four simple exceptions to this pattern:

vii° I

any chord can

tonic can move

any chord can

and the leading-tone

move to tonic,

to any chord,

move to dominant,

triad must move to tonic.

let’s try it...

say you have

a supertonic

chord and

you are trying

to decide what

chord to use

to follow it.

iii

vii°

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Harmonic Progression

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