Harmony

An exploration of the harmonic language of rock is presented, relying heavily on corpus data. Chords in rock are overwhelmingly root-position major and minor triads. The commonly-used triads are those within the “supermode”—a global scale containing all scale degrees except flat-2 and sharp-4. With regard to harmonic progression, rock shows an almost equal frequency of “classical” harmonic motions (descending fifths and thirds, ascending seconds) and “anti-classical” ones (ascending fifths and thirds, descending seconds). “Flat-side” chords (bVII, bIII, bVI) tend to cluster together, as do “sharp-side” chords (ii, vi, iii), suggesting something like the major/minor organization of common-practice music, though it is much more of a continuum in rock. Other topics addressed include common harmonic patterns, linear and common-tone logic, cadences, tonicization, and pedal points.