Analyses
Pieces from the repertoire read closely: the score, the sound, and the harmony explained with the same concepts as the topics. Every claim about a chord is checked by the engine before it is published, as on every page of this site.
- Bach's Prelude in C major, and harmony without a melody
Johann Sebastian Bach, 1722. Four bars with no melody at all, only broken chords, and for that reason the harmony lies exposed as nowhere else. The bass steps down, the inversions make the path, and every chord is heard note by note.
- Greensleeves, and the minor key that will not settle on one scale
traditional English melody, 16th century. Eight bars of a traditional melody in E minor, in six-eight, where the sixth and seventh degrees appear now natural, now raised, and the harmony uses the major seventh-degree chord of the natural minor and the dominant of the harmonic minor within the same passage.
- The twelve-bar blues, the form that is a harmony
traditional form, no author, early 20th century. Twelve bars, three chords, all of them dominants, and a form that has been repeating for a century; the analysis of a structure that belongs to nobody and that every popular musician plays.
