Unlocking The Mysteries of Diatonic Harmony - Art of Composing

4/15/2020 Unlocking the Mysteries of Diatonic Harmony - Art of Composing
Unlocking the
Mysteries of
Diatonic Harmony
OCTOBER 24, 2011 By Jon Brantingham
Do you feel like your

understanding of diatonic
harmony is missing
https://www.artofcomposing.com/08-diatonic-harmony 1/15
something? On one hand, it

makes sense. I mean, it’s only
seven chords… right?
On the other hand, some composers seem to be able to take
those chords and do incredible things with them, while you
keep repeating the same old patterns.
Diatonic Harmony =
Amazing Chord
Progressions
A solid understanding of diatonic harmony will allow you
to explain and write chord progressions.
It will also give you the ability to venture into chromatic

harmony without much effort.
It all starts with a few simple concepts.
Intuition vs Theory
There are two ways of using harmony. The first way
is intuition. The second way is using theory.
Intuition for the most part is guided by your experiences

listening, your ability with whatever your chosen tool is
(Piano, pen and paper, DAW). It makes music live in the
moment.
There is a problem though.
Sometimes you end up with a good chord progression, and

sometimes you don’t.
This is how most people start, and sadly, where most people
stop. They believe harmony to be a confusing subject. The
theory books are all too dry and hard to follow.
The key is to bring in the second way of thinking about

harmony.
Functional Harmony: The

Purpose of Chords
Functional Harmony is a way of thinking about the purpose
of chords – both in relation to each other, and to a main
harmony.
In tonal music, we usually have a note, that is more stable

than the others. This is the home key or tonic. Functional
harmony gives us a way of moving to and from tonic, in an
orderly fashion.
To start off our discussion, we will look at basic concepts with

harmony, the major and minor scales, and then functional
harmony within the realm of diatonic harmony.
After that we’ll talk about some chromatic harmony.
The Vertical Lens

Harmony is, in its most basic form, the sound created by
more than one note or tone being played together. Put three
notes together and you start to have something a little more
tangible. In fact, triads, or notes built off of thirds are the

building blocks for western diatonic harmony. You may have
seen these before:
These 4 chords are the basis for most harmonies. Add one
more note, and the possibilities start to become exponentially
greater. Add more notes, and phew… it gets crazy.
But harmony doesn’t just stop with the vertical lens.
The Horizontal Lense

The next way to look at harmony is horizontally. This can
itself be split into more than one category. One way to look at
harmony is the “implied harmony” in a melody line. Listen to
this example:
If you look at the first two bars, the notes that fall on the
strong beats are C, E, G, and C. This strongly implies
the underlying harmony is C major.
The last note in the 2nd bar is a Bb, which implies the
harmony changes to C7.
C7 tends to lead to F Maj because C7 is the dominant
chord of F Maj.
In the last two bars, there is a common melodic phrase
of 3-2-1 or E to D to C.
This also strongly implies there is a Cadential Six Four
chord (I haven’t talked about cadences yet, but you can
find more info about them on this site).
The last two chords are normally a V to a I so in this
case a G to a C. Listen to the example below, I think it
will be much clearer.
Diatonic Harmony
I am a huge fan of Romantic music. I love the way it winds in
and out, with extended chromatic passages and dramatic
dynamics. But to understand this type of music, you need a
firm grasp on the simpler, diatonic harmony. So what am I
talking about when I say diatonic harmony?
Two Scales – Major

and Minor
Tonal music is based off of two main tonalities. Major and
minor.
I don’t feel that a history lesson is all that necessary right

now, so I am going to ignore other modes
like phrygian, locrian and mixolydian.
You can still be diatonic within any of these modes, however

functionality is really a feature of the major and minor scales.
Notice the locations of whole steps and half-steps in the

scales. This is what gives them their unique tonality.
Major
Minor
When we talk about diatonic harmony, we are talking about

the harmonies built off of each scale degree in thirds. We
have mainly two different types of chords – triads and
seventh chords.
When you stack chords on all of the notes, you get the
diatonic harmony of that scale. For now, we aren’t going to
worry too much about 7th chords, except for the dominant
7th, which is the most common 7th chord.
The Different Ways of

Being Minor
One word about minor diatonic harmony. Composers
use three different types of minor scales in tonal music –
harmonic minor, melodic minor and natural
minor (relative minor). The one we are really concerned with
right now is the harmonic minor scale, which has a minor 3rd
scale degree, a minor 6th scale degree and a raised 7th
scale degree. Listen to the difference between the three
scales.
Harmonic Minor Scale
Melodic Minor Scale
Natural Minor Scale
The harmonic minor scale is used most often for

harmony – hence the name. This is because the raised
leading tone allows us to have a major dominant
7th chord.
You can also think of harmonic minor as borrowing the

dominant chord from the major scale. This makes it a little
easier to understand, especially since the triad built on the
third degree, the mediant, is not an augmented chord. It uses
a lowered 7th.
Melodic minor and natural minor are used most often in

the melody. In the harmonic minor, there is an augmented
2ndbetween the 6th and 7th tones. This frequently gives the
melody an uneven, stilted feeling. Good if you want to write
something middle eastern sounding. Bad if you want to write
like Mozart or Beethoven. The melodic minor and natural
minor get rid of this by either raising both the 6th and 7th or
lowering them.
Major, Minor and

Dimished
The chords in diatonic harmony only come in a few different
flavors. Major, minor and dimished.
In major diatonic harmony, the chords are:

I – Major
ii – minor
iii – minor
IV – Major
V – Major
vi – minor
vii – diminished
In minor diatonic harmony, the chords are:

i – minor
ii – diminished
III – Major
iv – minor
V – Major
VI – Major
vii – diminished
You can pick up on a few things from this.

1. The Major chords are written in capitals, minor chords
and diminished in lowercase. You also frequently see M
for major and m for minor.
2. The tonality for the most part flip flops for the
scales. Ibecomes i, iii becomes III, vi becomes VI. V
and vii don’t really change, and that is because the of
the leading tone remaining a half step above. It is also
important to to point out that the III uses a
lowered 7th tone, also known as the sub-tonic.
Functional Harmony
Explained
On to the good stuff. When you first look at the chords that
comprise diatonic harmony they don’t mean much. Just a
bunch of letters and numbers. But most of them serve
specific functions. These functions, just like formal
functions, move you along in the harmonic scheme of the
music.
The primary harmonic functions are Tonic

Function, Dominant Function and Pre-Dominant
Function. To help visualize this, we’ll start filling in a chart,
that puts everything into clear order. This chart was designed
by Dimitri Tymoczko for his book, A Geometry of Music:
Harmony and Counterpoint in the Extended Common
Practice (Oxford Studies in Music Theory). An excellent
book, and I recommend it to anyone.
Tonic Function
Based off of the name, you can probably guess that the tonic
function is fulfilled mostly by the chord built off of the first
scale degree.
Tonic serves as “home base” for tonal music. It is both

where tonal music starts, and where the music ends. It may
not end on the same tonic as it started… but it will end on a
tonic.
In addition, the chord built on the 6th scale degree can also
serve the tonic function in certain cases. This is not so
apparent by it’s name, sub-mediant. Let’s add these both to
the chart.
Dominant Function
The dominant function is represented by a chord built off of
the fifth scale degree. Hence the name dominant. But like
tonic, it also has another chord that can function in the same
way – the diminished vii.
The purpose of the dominant function is to create harmonic

instability and at the same time, confirm the tonic. It does this
mainly through the use of the leading tone (7th scale degree)
moving to tonic (1st scale degree). Sometimes the
diminished vii is not a dominant function is certain diatonic
sequences, which we will talk about later.
One more thing, the diminished 7th is usually found in

first inversion. An inversion is just taking the note on the
bottom, and moving it up to the top. For triads there are two
inversions and for 7th chords there are three. These
are annotated with little numbers to the side of the
harmony, called figured bass. I won’t go into too much detail
about figured bass for now, this is not a post about part
writing.
Pre-Dominant Function
The purpose of the last function, pre-dominant, is to prepare
the dominant. It leads us to the dominant. In diatonic
harmony, this is represented by the ii chord and the IV chord.
Pre-dominant functions are usually built directly off of the 4th

scale degree. This would leave most people to believe
that IV is the most common pre-dominant harmony.
But ii in first inversion (ii6) is actually more common.
So how do we use this chart? Follow these simple

guidelines:
You can always move rightward from one chord to

another by any amount.
Chords can move leftwards only along the arrows.
When I moves to vi and back to I, it is normally to a I6.
The short dash lines represent common neighbor and
passing chords for tonic. They usually move back to I.
vii6 also usually moves back to I, either as a neighbor
chord, or as a dominant function.
Listen to this example. The first chord progression just runs

straight through the chart. The following chord progressions
just remove chords, I don’t add any. It shows you the power
of this simple chart. This is not by any means all you can do,
just a short example.
What is really cool about this chart, is that is works pretty

much the same way in minor.
Introducing
Chromatic Harmony
I promised some chromatic harmony, so here it is. The most
common types of basic chromatic harmony are pre-dominant
functions, either built off of the dominant of the dominant or
the 4th scale degree. What does that mean?
Who’s Dominating Who?

Think of it like this. If tonic is C, then it’s dominant is G. Well,
if G were the scale being used, it too would have a dominant,
which would be D. This is a very common and strong
harmony, but is really effective. The reason is because it
raises that 4th scale degree, in this case F, to F#. It really
makes it want to move to the dominant harmony. Listen to
the difference of a ii-V-I progression, and a V/V-V-I
progression.
The next type of common chromatic harmony is also pre-

dominant, this time using something called modal mixture.
Modal Mixture
Modal mixture sounds mysterious, but it really isn’t. It’s
basically just mixing the harmony from the major scale and
the minor scale. A very common one is called the Neapolitan
6th. It is a ♭II6 chord. It has a really cool sound. Listen to the
example.
That covers a lot of diatonic harmony, but there is still more.

We haven’t even talked yet about the types of harmonic
progressions. That will have to wait for another day, this
article is getting pretty long.
Experiment
The best thing you can do to really learn diatonic harmony is
use the chart to experiment. Find out what sounds good and
what doesn’t. Try out different inversions, and look for them
in the compositions of the masters. Also try experimenting

with modal mixture. That’s where it really starts to get
interesting.
More articles like this

one
Melody or Harmony First?
Podcast: Understanding Diatonic Harmony
Build Your Craft: Learn the Melody and Chord
Progression in Mozart’s Lacrimosa
Harmony Charts
Major
Minor

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4/15/2020 Unlocking the Mysteries of Diatonic Harmony - Art of Composing

Do you feel like your

something? On one hand, it

It will also give you the ability to venture into chromatic

It all starts with a few simple concepts.

Intuition for the most part is guided by your experiences

There is a problem though.

Sometimes you end up with a good chord progression, and

The key is to bring in the second way of thinking about

Functional Harmony: The

In tonal music, we usually have a note, that is more stable

To start off our discussion, we will look at basic concepts with

After that we’ll talk about some chromatic harmony.

The Vertical Lens

tangible. In fact, triads, or notes built off of thirds are the

But harmony doesn’t just stop with the vertical lens.

The Horizontal Lense

Two Scales – Major

I don’t feel that a history lesson is all that necessary right

You can still be diatonic within any of these modes, however

Notice the locations of whole steps and half-steps in the

When we talk about diatonic harmony, we are talking about

The Different Ways of

Harmonic Minor Scale

Melodic Minor Scale

Natural Minor Scale

The harmonic minor scale is used most often for

You can also think of harmonic minor as borrowing the

Melodic minor and natural minor are used most often in

Major, Minor and

In major diatonic harmony, the chords are:

In minor diatonic harmony, the chords are:

You can pick up on a few things from this.

The primary harmonic functions are Tonic

Tonic serves as “home base” for tonal music. It is both

The purpose of the dominant function is to create harmonic

One more thing, the diminished 7th is usually found in

Pre-dominant functions are usually built directly off of the 4th

So how do we use this chart? Follow these simple

You can always move rightward from one chord to

Listen to this example. The first chord progression just runs

What is really cool about this chart, is that is works pretty

Who’s Dominating Who?

The next type of common chromatic harmony is also pre-

That covers a lot of diatonic harmony, but there is still more.

in the compositions of the masters. Also try experimenting

More articles like this

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