{ "count": 8, "total_matching": 8, "total_published": 28, "offset": 0, "limit": 50, "filters": { "topic": "harmony" }, "items": [ { "slug": "borrowed-chords-and-modal-mixture", "title": "Borrowed Chords: Modal Mixture in Practice", "dek": "Mixture borrows chords from the parallel mode. What the common borrowed chords do to a phrase, how they resolve, and where labelling fails.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "modal mixture", "borrowed chords", "chromatic harmony" ], "level": "advanced", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1465, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/borrowed-chords-and-modal-mixture/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/borrowed-chords-and-modal-mixture.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=borrowed-chords-and-modal-mixture", "excerpt": "An F minor triad in C major requires an A flat, which the key signature does not give. Unlike a secondary dominant, the chord is not pointing at another key: F minor is the subdominant of C minor, and C minor is C major’s parallel mode. The tonic has not…" }, { "slug": "cadences-and-phrase-endings", "title": "Cadences: How Phrases End in Tonal Music", "dek": "Authentic, half, plagal and deceptive cadences, and the real reason a close sounds strong: what happens in the bass, the top voice and the metre.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "cadence", "phrase structure", "tonality" ], "level": "intro", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1260, "reading_time_minutes": 6, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/cadences-and-phrase-endings/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/cadences-and-phrase-endings.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=cadences-and-phrase-endings", "excerpt": "Music has punctuation, and it is made of harmony. A phrase ends when the harmony, the bass, the metre and the melody all agree that something has finished. That agreement is a cadence, and its strength is not a matter of taste: it comes from four or five…" }, { "slug": "figured-bass", "title": "Figured Bass: Reading Intervals Above the Bass Line", "dek": "Figures name intervals above the bass, not chords. What each shorthand means, how accidentals override the key, and what the player decides.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "figured bass", "basso continuo", "inversion" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1269, "reading_time_minutes": 6, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/figured-bass/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/figured-bass.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=figured-bass", "excerpt": "A figured bass is a bass line with numerals underneath it, and the numerals are not chord symbols. Each one names an interval above the note it sits under, counted from that note. The player supplies the rest. Understanding what is written and what is…" }, { "slug": "functional-harmony", "title": "Functional Harmony: Tonic, Predominant, Dominant", "dek": "Tonic, predominant and dominant describe what a chord does to a phrase rather than what it is. This is how the three harmonic jobs divide the work.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "chord function", "tonality", "harmonic analysis" ], "level": "intro", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1280, "reading_time_minutes": 6, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/functional-harmony/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/functional-harmony.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=functional-harmony", "excerpt": "A chord chart tells you which chords a piece uses. It does not tell you why the piece moves. The labels tonic, predominant and dominant answer the second question: they describe what a chord does to the phrase it sits in, not what notes it happens to contain…" }, { "slug": "modulation-strategies", "title": "Modulation: How a Key Change Is Confirmed", "dek": "A modulation is not a chromatic chord; it is a new key confirmed by cadence. The routes into one, and how to read them off the page.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "modulation", "pivot chord", "key relationships" ], "level": "advanced", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1510, "reading_time_minutes": 8, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/modulation-strategies/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/modulation-strategies.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=modulation-strategies", "excerpt": "A piece that ends in G major and began in C major has modulated. The change of key is not a single event on one beat but a process spread over several, and the process has a rule: a key exists when its tonic has been confirmed by a cadence. Everything else…" }, { "slug": "secondary-dominants", "title": "Secondary Dominants and How Tonicization Works", "dek": "A secondary dominant makes any chord a temporary tonic. How to spell one, where it turns up, and what cancels the effect.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "secondary dominant", "tonicization", "chromatic harmony" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1247, "reading_time_minutes": 6, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/secondary-dominants/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/secondary-dominants.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=secondary-dominants", "excerpt": "In C major, a D major triad contains an F sharp. The key signature does not supply it and the chord is not an error. For as long as it sounds, the music treats G as a temporary tonic, and the D major triad is the dominant of that temporary tonic. Analysis…" }, { "slug": "seventh-chords-and-resolution", "title": "Seventh Chords and How They Resolve in Tonal Harmony", "dek": "The chordal seventh falls, the leading tone rises, and the tritone at the centre of V7 resolves by step. What each diatonic seventh chord is for.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "seventh chords", "dominant seventh", "resolution" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1396, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/seventh-chords-and-resolution/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/seventh-chords-and-resolution.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=seventh-chords-and-resolution", "excerpt": "Adding a seventh to a triad changes what the chord is for. A triad can sit still; a seventh chord cannot, because the added note is a dissonance with a destination. That single fact explains the behaviour of every diatonic seventh chord in tonal music…" }, { "slug": "voice-leading-in-four-parts", "title": "Voice Leading: Why the Rules Exist in Four-Part Writing", "dek": "Parallel fifths, tendency tones, spacing and doubling, read as solutions to one problem: keeping four lines heard as four lines.", "topic": "harmony", "topic_name": "Harmony", "tags": [ "voice leading", "part writing", "counterpoint" ], "level": "intermediate", "date": "2026-09-25", "updated": null, "words": 1340, "reading_time_minutes": 7, "url": "https://musics.name/articles/voice-leading-in-four-parts/", "markdown_url": "https://musics.name/articles/voice-leading-in-four-parts.md", "json_url": "https://musics.name/api/article.json?slug=voice-leading-in-four-parts", "excerpt": "Part-writing rules usually arrive as a list of prohibitions, which makes them feel arbitrary and easy to resent. They are neither. Almost all of them follow from a single aim: four voices that behave like four voices. Once you can hear what a broken rule does…" } ], "next": null, "generated_at": "2026-09-24T23:18:22+00:00" }