The Craft of Contemporary Commercial Music

Chapter 9

Functional Diatonic Harmony

In Chapter 3, you learned that harmonies in Western music tend to be tertian chords that are derived by stacking diatonic thirds above each scale degree in major and minor keys. These chords can be analyzed with chord symbols as well as Roman numerals, which elucidate both the qualities of the chords and the individual scale degrees that represent the chords’ roots. This rather formulaic method of labeling harmonies may at first give the impression that each chord within a key is equal in importance. However, this is not the case; each diatonic harmony plays a specific set of roles or functions within the key. Each chord—indeed, each inversion of each chord—can be thought of as a separate character (as in ...