Introduction
What is described here is a theory of harmony that departs from the historically conventional understanding of musical harmony. In departing from conventional theory, we will gain a new perspective which makes more sense of the meaning of each harmonic moment throughout all aspects of musical practice—compositionally, harmonically, melodically, performatively, improvisationally, perceptually, interpretatively. The theory is not presented as a replacement of conventional harmonic understanding, but which supplements it. What results is an understanding of harmony and melodic construction far less complicated than the conventional approach and geared not only for improvisation but also composition. However, speaking for myself, this perspective makes more sense to the degree that for me personally, I no longer think in terms of the old perspective. Knowing the old perspective is essential however for grasping what is described here.
Traditional theory allows for a formally rigorous understanding of basic diatonic structures which we then exploit in quartonic theory. But the conventional tonic centred thinking of traditional music theory forces us to adhere to musical form that often confuses us when presented with other musical phenomena that we know function in a musically pleasing way, but which is overlooked as ‘odd’ or peculiar, or mysterious. Key modulation being only one of those ‘odd’ phenomena. This suggests that traditional harmonic theory is too strongly diatonic—imposing structures and constraints on composition and even melody construction, that are exactly that…’constraining’. And where it’s not (as in jazz and other altered tone composition), any chromatic deviation from the diatonic is viewed as deviating (as in deviant) from some necessary diatonic centre…the tonic. Applying tonic centres across compositions interpretively forces compositions to adhere with an idea of cadence that is not consistent with psycho-musical experience. The fact that key changes do make tonal sense remains unexplained by traditional theory. There are approaches to key change formalisation, but they are obscure.
The first thing one notices in Quartonic Harmony is a potentially confusing shift in our simplification of chord understanding. Instead of spelling chords from the perspective of a tonic centre, we apply the same unified naming convention across all chords, and this is what fundamentally re-frames our understanding. Our point-of-return to traditional theory then, is in chord spellings—we do ignore tonic centres thinking harmonically with respect to chord structure, but not in the naming of chords. For example, where we analyse the Phrygian Minor 13th chord, which typically ought to include the flat 9 and flat 13, we will retain that conventional spelling; in this case Phrygian Minor b13 b9. While in our quartonic understanding we drop that need to reflect back in relation to a tonic. Conventionally, the spelling for minor 7 chords is 1-b3-5-b7 when we reflect back into the Ionian mode. We instead think in terms of the first, third, fifth and seventh degrees of the Phrygian mode, and similarly for the extensions 9th, 11th, and 13th. It is important to note that the purpose of doing this is to simplify our mental criteria in melodic construction, and not for the purpose of adopting some exotic modal orientation, nor to challenge established methods.
Dropping the need to see compositions as adhering to a tonic centre relaxes the need to rigorously analyse a track prior to, say, improvising on that track. The motivation for analysing tracks with the intention of improvisation over those tracks, is only from a need to simplify one’s key centric thinking as applied to that track in the first place. The argument is not that chord analysis is too complicated but that this added condition on grasping a piece ‘properly’ is unwarranted altogether. Such ‘artists’ are prohibited from grappling with a track from that perspective without first conducting such analysis. The result is a performance that adheres to scale-centric ideas without treating each moment with harmonic integrity—each moment independently—rather seeking to impose a usually relaxed unity. So, quite ironically, it is seen to be the result of lazily simplifying the piece in disregarding harmonic integrity at each instant. (This is not a judgement of any ‘artist’ per se. It is a judgement of my own understanding and approach to those contextually analytical performances that adhere to tonic centre.)
If Giant Steps teaches us anything, it is not that there is some mystical way of understanding theory so that tonic flexibility might be revealed, but that tonic centres are arbitrary. Modulation to relative tonic centres will be ignored also. In the key change theory discussion, we are, initially, only concerned with those ‘surprising’ modulations. For now anyway.
The remaining text in this introduction are organised to ground the perspective given in quartonic harmony. All of it can be ignored for now, and you can jump directly to the first section “Diatonic Forms” and return to these arguments later if necessary.