Functional Harmony - Music Theory Lesson

Functional harmony is a set of rules you can use to create logical chord progression that sounds a feel right. Here’s how it works, first let’s take a look at this diagram. I ii iii IV V vi viio I C Dm Em F G Am C. Here we show all the chords in the key of C and we number them with women numerals. User and lower for Major and minor. And then the diminished symbol for diminished chord ( And by the way, I’ll have a larger graphic that shows all the chords in each key at the end of this video) So we have all the chords in the key of C, but the question is how do we know what order to play them in? So to start we have a few names for different types chords. The I and iii chord are called Tonic chords. They are like home base, or the nuclease that everything revolves around. Then we have what we call the Dominant chords which is the V and viio. Finally we have Sub-dominates chords, which are the ii, IV and vi. Here’e show things flow. Tonic is our home, or root. From the tonic chords we can go to an