Harmony 2 gives students the essentials for understanding music. More
Harmony Department
The Harmony Department provides an essential foundation for every Berklee student. The courses that comprise our curriculum are at the very core of the Berklee experience and are the result of a realization that was revolutionary at the time: that theory can be understood and taught by examining and analyzing contemporary popular music.
The musical world is a much different place than it was when Berklee was founded, but our commitment to giving students the tools to understand and create their music is as strong as ever. The radical increase in stylistic diversity since the 1950s gives us an ever-broader field to survey, but the Berklee harmony program provides the skills you will need to navigate in a changing envirnment.
After learning the basics of music theory, students learn how to analyze the harmony and melody of contemporary music and how to use this knowledge to create their own compositions and performances. In addition to weekly assignments, students will write at least one project a semester that they record with student project bands, collaborating with their fellow students, or at a MIDI workstation.
The core (required) harmony courses cover the spectrum from fundamentals, such as scale knowledge and chord construction, to more specialized topics that pertain to particular styles. Harmonic and melodic analysis, as well as ear training, are an integral part of all the courses. Rather than being dry or abstract, analysis will help students understand and retain the sound of chord progressions and to understand the underlying principles that make them compelling.
First-semester placement is based on music placement test scores, taken during students' initial week at the college. Students who arrive at Berklee with extensive practical experience or study at another music school or a Berklee-affiliated international school may be placed in a higher level of harmony to start, but everyone who attends Berklee will have the benefit of some study in the Harmony Department.
Besides the required four semesters of basic harmony, the department offers electives for those interested in furthering their studies:
HR-325 Reharmonization Techniques
HR-231 Harmonic Analysis of Rock Music
HR-335 Advanced Harmonic Concepts
HR-345 Advanced Modal Harmon
HR-241 Harmony in Brazilian Song
HR-355 The Music of the Yellowjackets
HR-251 The Blues: Analysis and Application
HR-361 World Music Elements for the Contemporary Musician
"The essence of the Harmony Department is music fundamentals as they play out in notation, chord progression, melody, and bass lines. In any other school, they call it theory. And it is theory, but it's much more practical than an ordinary theory class would be. We teach students to take apart the music they listen to and understand how it's put together. They take the music apart like a watch, see what the pieces are and what they're doing. Hopefully, the students learn from that and use that knowledge to create their own music, a watch of their own—but one that still runs."
"The essence of the Harmony Department is music fundamentals as they play out in notation, chord progression, melody, and bass lines. In any other school, they call it theory. And it is theory, but it's much more practical than an ordinary theory class would be. We teach students to take apart the music they listen to and understand how it's put together. They take the music apart like a watch, see what the pieces are and what they're doing. Hopefully, the students learn from that and use that knowledge to create their own music, a watch of their own—but one that still runs.
"What I do in class is a combination of a lot of things. I play lots of examples of all different types of music, music from all over the past hundred years with heavy weighting toward the last 25 or so. The other thing I do is have my students bring in music they are listening to and working on, and we use their music as a tool for exploring the concepts that we need to cover. I've often said that I can teach you something about music from anything. If a song has one chord in it, I can teach you some harmony from that. So if they bring in a Lenny Kravitz tune, we're going to be talking about the bass line, and we're going to learn what the notes are in the bass line and why the bass player played those notes. We're going to learn why the chord progression sounds cool—there's a reason some chord progressions are cooler than others. We're going to listen to the notes in the melody and talk about what those notes are and what relationships they have to the chords and the bass line.
"But it's not just familiar music. I want my students to have a deepened ability to understand what they're hearing. For example, if they hear an unfamiliar piece of music, especially in a style they haven't typically played before, I would like them to perceive the musical elements in that style so they can gain some appreciation for what's new to them. If you can do that, you can grow for the rest of your life. It's one thing to be an expert in your chosen style; it's something very different to be able to grow over a lifetime as a musician and renew yourself."
B.A., Williams College
M.M., New England Conservatory of Music
Freelance jazz pianist and vocal accompanist
Composer and arranger for dance, theater, film, and video
Released three CDs with the Joe Mulholland Sextet, including Eye Music, 2001
Member of Martin St. Collage, an improvisational music/painting/dance ensemble, 1990–1998
Member of the Big & Phat Jazz Big Band and the Indigo Invention Group
Music director, Windhover Center for the Performing Arts; composed and recorded sound design and songs for original productions of Peer Gynt, Dogtown Common, and Battle for Pigeon Cove Harbor
Performances at the Regattabar, Top of the Hub, Scullers, and the Waterfront Jazz Festival, among others
Music director for Didi Stewart and Friends, 1987-1998
Taught jazz piano and ensembles at Brown University, 1985-1997
Composed and performed in Tango Suite for the Northeast Youth Ballet
Created electronic scores for "Intersections" and "My Backyard," modern dance pieces premiered in 2004 and 2005
Well-recorded, captures a unique artist and her incredible band at the peak of their collaboration.
Milestones
Miles Davis
You can't turn around without hearing or hearing about "Kind of Blue" (which is fine!), so assuming you're all set there, enjoy this masterpiece. The rhythm section groove on the title cut is like a 40-foot Cadillac and the solos are amazing. And that's just the beginning......
The Great Paris Concert
Duke Ellington
Where do you start with Duke??? But you can't leave him off the list, so why not this?
The Complete Pablo Solo Masterpieces
Art Tatum
The greatest ever, no contest. Just when you think you have him figured out, he scares you to death all over again. Touch, technique, kaleidoscopic harmonic sensibility, unparalleled rhythmic subtlety, and a great cross-section of classic American songbook tunes.
Better Get It in Your Soul
Charles Mingus
A great collection showing several facets of this restless, relentlessly creative virtuoso bassist/composer/arranger. Humor, pathos, ecstacy, drive. And if you've read this far, let me just say: Stravinsky, Debussy, the Beatles. Beethoven, the Neville Bros, STEVIE WONDER, Jimmy Smith........
"My whole career as a professional musician has been about playing diverse styles of music. I've been fortunate enough to have the kind of training that lets me move pretty easily from one kind of style and performing group to another. So when I teach harmony, I try to show how much of the harmonic structure of music is the same from one style to another. The things that differentiate styles are often superficial."
"I've had some astonishing teachers over the years. One of them, trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, who worked with Ray Charles, was a formative influence when I was a teenager in Detroit. He really explained swing articulation to me one night so that I got it, and that made all the difference to me. He was also very encouraging, and to be encouraged as a young person by someone that legendary gives you the courage to pursue music.
"My whole career as a professional musician has been about playing diverse styles of music. I've been fortunate enough to have the kind of training that lets me move pretty easily from one kind of style and performing group to another. So when I teach harmony, I try to show how much of the harmonic structure of music is the same from one style to another. The things that differentiate styles are often superficial.
"I often give my students the form of a tune and a specific chord progression and ask them to pick a key and write their own piece—to choose a style and create a rhythmic motif that will serve as a basis for the melody. It always astonishes students to hear all the stylistic diversity that comes back into class from the same chord progression. Students get three things from this project. First, they're working hands-on with the material in creating their own piece; second, by hearing the same chord progression over and over again, and having worked with it themselves, they learn to hear it and recognize it in other music; and third, they begin to appreciate the stylistic diversity that's possible from the same harmonic font of possibilities."
B.M., New England Conservatory of Music
M.M., New England Conservatory of Music
Composer, conductor, and pianist
Performances with Marcus Belgrave; Brass Attack; Amanda Carr; East Side Horns; George Garzone; Jimmy Giuffre; Gregory Hines; the Hojnacki, Pejrolo, and Skeete Trio; the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra; the John Allmark Jazz Orchestra; the Kenny Hadley Big Band; Al Martino; Steve Marvin; the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra; the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra; and Matt Wilson
Principal guest conductor of the Claflin Hill Symphony Orchestra
Recordings include "New Orleans March," MMC New Composers Series, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, Robert Black conductor, (MMC Recordings); "Symphony No. 1," Midnight Tolls, Prague Dvorak Symphony Orchestra, Julius Williams conductor (Albany Records); "Toon, Variations and Fugue," Musique que Faire Plaisir, Berlin Saxophone Quartet (BIT Musik Werke)
Compositions include choral music, orchestra, band, and chamber music, including All Through the Night: The New Christmas Carol Musical
Citation for special artistic merit in musical composition from GEMA (the German performing rights organization)
Musical director, conductor, and keyboardist for over 50 theater productions, including opera, musical theater, and ballet; productions at the Charles Playhouse, the Stuart Street Playhouse, the Providence Performing Arts Center, Theatre by the Sea, Worcester Foothills Theatre Company, the Cutler Majestic Theatre, the Colonial Theatre, and the North Shore Music Theatre
Top Five Thought-Provoking Books I’ve Read in the Last Year
1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Colombus
Charles C. Mann
… a survey of the breadth and depth of pre-Colombian American culture
The Dhammapahda
… the teachings of Sakyamuni, the historical Buddha
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy
… the Shiva myth – rebirth through destruction, told in a tale of the wild west
Professional Writing Division MIDI Lab
This lab consists of 12 fully configured workstations and a separate similarly equipped studio for live overdubbing to provide you with hands-on access to professional music technology.
For Further Information
For further information about the Harmony Department, please call (617) 747-8468.
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