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6.3
Introduction to Chord
Progressions
6.3.1
Musical Harmony and Monophony
When you hear a tune, you hear a sequence of individual pitches. In the context of tonality, all of those pitches—except scale degree 1—sound restless.
But when you hear a chord, you don’t hear the individual pitches. Even when you finger-pick chord changes on the guitar, or play the chords as arpeggios on the keyboard, you still don’t hear a tune. You hear musical harmony—chords—being unrolled and spread out in time. But they still sound like chords—not a melody.
Your brain processes musical harmony differently from the way it processes monophony, or melody. That’s why there’s no “music” in harmony without melody.
When you hear a chord progression and a tune simultaneously, your brain processes the chords as blends of related tones, a kind of third dimension of music, unfurling and sprawling beneath and around the tune, a colourful sonic panorama. Musical depth.