Functional Harmony - Music Theory Lesson

Functional harmony is a set of rules you can use to create logical chord progression that sounds a feel right. Here’s how it works, first let’s take a look at this diagram. I ii iii IV V vi viio I C Dm Em F G Am C. Here we show all the chords in the key of C and we number them with women numerals. User and lower for Major and minor. And then the diminished symbol for diminished chord ( And by the way, I’ll have a larger graphic that shows all the chords in each key at the end of this video)

So we have all the chords in the key of C, but the question is how do we know what order to play them in? So to start we have a few names for different types chords. The I and iii chord are called Tonic chords. They are like home base, or the nuclease that everything revolves around. Then we have what we call the Dominant chords which is the V and viio. Finally we have Sub-dominates chords, which are the ii, IV and vi.

Here’e show things flow. Tonic is our home, or root. From the tonic chords we can go to any chord type that we want. It can be a Sub-dominant or a dominant. The two dominant chords wants to go to the tonic chords and all the Sub-dominant chords want to go to the Dominant chords. Now let’s take a look at the first diagram again with marking under each chords so we know what is Tonic, Sub-Dominant and Dominant.

We start with our tonic I chord. From here we can jump to what ever chord we’d like. If we go to the IV, a Sub-dominate, then the next chord we need to go to is a Dominant. We’ll go to the V seeing how the V chord usually will sound better than the viio. From the V we’ll go back to I chord. Check it out!

Now let's try this, we’ll go from the one to the IV again, but this time we’ll go to an other Sub-Dominate chords like the ii for example. Then from there we’ll go to the V and I. See how it sound now with a few more chords added in.

And check out this example too. I iii vi IV ii V I. We play two Tonic chords, then three sub domains and the V I. or dominate to tonic.

You make hav notice that all of our chord progressions end with a V I. Well that actually pretty normal in wester music, We call those last two chords a Cadence. However, there are a few exception.

You can also go to the vi chord from the V chord. Normally this isn’t allowed in functional harmony, seeing as how a Dominant shouldn’t go to a Sub-Dominate, but this is one of the exception. It also make a really cool sound, because even people how don’t know about functional harmony will expect the V to go to the I, seeing as how music for hundreds of years has followed these rules in Wester culture. First listen to this Standard I IV V I progression, then listen to a I IV V vi.

This is called a “Deceptive Cadence” by the way.

There’s one other cadence we should also look at called the “Playgal Cadence” or the Amen Cadence” (You hear this one at the end of a lot of hymn. With this cadence you go from the IV to the I. Check out this example. I ii IV I.

Okay, now let’s take a look at minor keys. i bio bIII iv V bVI bVII i. All the same rules apply here. It just sound, ya know, minor. Check this out. i bIII iv V i. We just went Tonic, Tonic, Sub Dom, Dom, Tonic. Same as in major!

Okay, there’s that larger graphic I was talking about earlier. Here you can see a bunch of different keys and which chords are Tonic, Sub dom and Dom. So now just try mixing and matching some of this chords following these rules. Let me know if you have any question!!

And one more thing before we go. You don’t actually have to follow all of these patterns when right chord progressions. Feel free to play whatever you think sounds good, but it’s good to know these rules and use them as a general guild line.

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