Tag: tertian harmony

Modal Harmony: An In-Depth How-To Guide

How to write and play with modal harmony? That’s a good question! Once we grasp the sounds of the modes, how do we actually use them in our compositions and improvisations?

Over certain chords in a functional, tonal chord progression? Sure, that works. “The Dorian mode goes over the ii chord and the Mixolydian mode goes over the V7 chord.”

But we can tap into a mode’s true sound by playing modally or playing within modal harmony. This article is an in-depth How To Guide to writing and playing with modal harmony!

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Chords of the Harmonic Major Scale

The Harmonic Major Scale is probably the least know of the 4 main heptatonic scales (Major, Melodic Minor, Harmonic Minor, Harmonic Major). As we’ve done with the other scales listed above, in this article we’ll look into the chords of the Harmonic Major Scale!

We’ll look mostly at triads and seventh chords but will stray away from tertian harmony to in order to include some other interesting chords of the Harmonic Major Scale.

Let’s get into it!

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Understanding Tertian Triads and Seventh Chords

Tertian harmony describes music and chords constructed with thirds. Based on the diatonic scale, and the basic concept of intervals, these thirds are either minor (an interval of 3 semitones) or major (an interval of 4 semitones). Tertian harmony forms the 4 triads of music as well as 8* of the most common seventh chords.

*There are 8 tertian seventh chords, but only 7 that contain four distinct notes. We’ll get to this later in our matrices.

A closer look at Tertian Harmony

A common way of describing tertian harmony is with the scale degrees of the Diatonic/Major Scale.

So let’s look at the C Major Scale to get a better idea of what tertian harmony is:

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