John Hall

Polychords are a great way of introducing fresh sounding harmony into familiar progressions. We have previously discussed “dominant” polychords in the article Polychords-Harmonic Resources of the Diminished Scale posted on September 30, 2011. I was working with an advanced student the other day and he got me thinking about the possible polychords that could be used to substitute for other standard chords in a key. I decided to work with the ii-V-I progression, since we all know this is a ubiquitous…

The Preludio from Barrios’ La catedral is a beautiful example of idiomatic writing for the guitar that demonstrates good voice-leading and contrapuntal technique. It is quite easy to trace the four voices as they move through the composition in a mostly step-wise progression. Any large skips that are encountered, as in measures twenty-eight and twenty-nine for example, usually occur within the same harmony where the voices exchange chord tones or an octave displacement occurs.

As with the Allegro solemne…

The Allegro solemne movement of Barrios’ famous La catedral is one of the best known and most widely played pieces in the repertory. I have always enjoyed playing it. In order to understand this piece a bit better I decided to do a harmonic analysis. As is always the case I discovered harmonic relationships that I did not notice in the read through. I would like to discuss in more detail some of the more interesting features.

The piece is in B minor and other than the slight excursion into the relative…

We all know that the diminished scale can be used to solo over diminished seventh chords and their associated dominant seven flat nine chords, but what about other harmonic resources contained within this scale? To review, the diminished scale is a symmetrical octatonic scale made up of alternating whole- and half-steps or half- and whole-steps. Either form will work over diminished seventh chords since the chord tones remain intact appearing as every other note but with different passing tones. For…

When working through some of Barry Harris’ ideas on chord/scale relationships it occurred to me that the eight-tone or octatonic scales found in his method can be generated by taking the chord tones of the chord you wish to imply and fill with the notes of the diminished seventh chord that is built one half-step below. For example:

GMaj6 chord tones are G-B-D-E.

The diminished seventh chord one half-step below is F#dim7: F#-A-C-Eb.

Combining these two chords to form a scale gives us:

G-A-B-C-D-Eb-E-F#-G.

…

Continuing with our idea of generating chords from the diminished seventh chord foundation we will now explore the ii-V-i progression in minor keys. I will use the parallel minor key of C minor for the examples in order to make the distinction clear between the major and minor modes. I will start with a common diminished seventh chord voicing as I did previously with the major keys. This will serve as the rootless dominant seventh flat nine chord (V) in our progression. In the first example I started with…

Chord voicings on guitar are seemingly infinite in number. In an attempt to come up with some new ones, at least for myself, I decided to begin with a diminished seventh chord voicing commonly used by guitarists on the inside four strings (B-F-Ab-D) in first position. This will be my rootless 7b9 chord, in this case G7b9. This will serve as my V chord in a ii-V-I progression in C major. By moving two tones of the diminished seventh chord up a half-step (B to C and Ab to A natural) we can generate the ii…

Study 13 from Fernando Sor’s Op. 29 (study nineteen in the Segovia collection) is unusual from a key perspective, at least from a guitarist’s point of view in that it is in Bb major. This key as you know requires quite a bit of barre technique since the open E and B strings are flatted much of the time. This has always been a difficult study for me as my left hand will sometimes fatigue. I have always considered this piece one of the more beautiful of Sor’s studies and thought it would be worth a closer…

Carcassi’s study seven from Op.60 is another very well known piece from this set of studies. I like to use this piece as a way of introducing notes in first position as it contains nearly all of them plus a few higher ones on the E string. I would like to present an analysis of this piece to continue reinforcing concepts in harmony and counterpoint that we studied earlier. There is little in this study harmonically that will be new to us after studying Sor. Although it is a fine example of the use of the…

Study three from Twenty-Five Melodious and Progressive Studies Op. 60 by Matteo Carcassi (1792-1853) has always been my personal favorite from this famous set of studies for guitar. I am sure almost everyone reading this has played through it many times during his or her course of study. The harmony in this piece has always intrigued me. As a student there were many things that I didn’t understand, like that strange sounding chord on the first two beats of measure twenty-three or that unusual cadence on…