What is Functional Harmony and Why is it Important?
1. Functional Harmony?
Harmony is one of the fundamental building blocks of music (alongside melodies). It determines how the piece of music feels and whether it sounds satisfying or not. Harmony, in simple terms, is just chords - it's the relationship between the notes that are being played. Those relationships either work well together and make chords that are conventional and sound nice or they don’t work so well together and create tension.
The idea of tension and resolution is an integral part of music creation as it helps us form the musical narrative. Some chords and chord progressions are designed specifically to create tension and then release that tension. These chords are functional, because they serve a specific purpose and so we call this “functional harmony”.
When we read a piece of music, there are certain chords that we will come across that are usually treated in a specific, predictable way in order to build tension and resolve that tension. There are many examples of this, the most common being a dominant 7th chord. A dominant 7th chord is chord 5 in a scale with the 7th added on top of it.
If we take a C major scale as an example (C D E F G A B), note 5 in this is scale is a G and therefore chord 5 in this scale would be a G chord (G B D), if we add the seventh we get (G B D F). This chord is the dominant 7th chord in the key of C! The dominant 7th chord is a functional chord because it creates quite a lot of tension in the music and to release this tension, we normally expect it to return to chord 1 in the scale afterwards. This chord progression (V7-I) is how we typically end phrases if we want the phrase to sound complete and finished.
Another example of functional harmony is the diminished 7th chord. A diminished 7th is built by playing a series of “minor 3rds”, a minor third is a note that is 3 half steps away. So an example of this would be the notes C#, E, G and Bb. This is a chord that can serve the purpose of helping us change to a different key, if we play a diminished 7th and then drop any of the notes in the diminished 7th chord by a half step, it becomes a dominant 7th and we can then resolve this to chord 1. For example if I play the notes C#, E, G and Bb but then drop the C# to just a C, this becomes C, E, G and Bb which is a dominant 7th in the key of F and so I can resolve this to an F chord. Alternatively, I can drop the E to an Eb instead, giving me the notes Eb G Bb C#/Db which is a dominant 7th in the key of Ab and so I can resolve it to an Ab chord. This means that the diminished 7th chord can function as a chord that allows us to access other keys.
One final (more complex) example I will give of functional harmony is a type of chord called the Neapolitan 6th chord. This is a chord that is essentially the b2 chord in a scale in 1st inversion (I realise a may have lost you there). In a C major scale (C D E F G A B) note 2 is a D, note b2 is therefore a Db. A Db chord would be the notes Db, F and Ab. If we want to play this in 1st inversion, we reorder the notes so that the second note in the chord is at the bottom so the Neapolitan 6th in C major would be the chord F, Ab, Db! This chord is more obscure, but is often found in earlier classical music and serves the purpose of being a pre-dominant chord. Which means it's a chord we can use before we play a dominant 7th chord!
While, some of these examples are quite complex chords, the aim here is to show you that we have many chord types in music that serve a specific function and create a tension that we resolve in a specific way in order for the music to sound satisfying!
2. Non-Functional Harmony?
While there are many chord types that are functional and serve a purpose in the music, there are also many chords that are “free choice” and don’t serve any purpose other than because the composer likes them. Being able to make choices about the chords that we play is what gives the music its colour and its emotion.
Functional chords are important because they structure the narrative of the music, but non-functional harmony is equally important for making the music sound unique and full of character.
In a major scale; chord 1, 4 and 5 are major chords, chords 2, 3 and 6 are minor chords and chord 7 is a diminished chord.
C major scale - C D E F G A B
Chord 1: C E G (C major)
Chord 2: D F A (D minor)
Chord 3: E G B (E minor)
Chord 4: F A C (F major)
Chord 5: G B D (G major)
Chord 6: A C E (A minor)
Chord 7: B D F (B diminished)
If we have a 4 bar phrase where we are playing 1 chord per bar; typically a piece of music starts by using chord 1, the phrase may also end with a dominant 7th followed by chord 1 again (to resolve the dominant 7th). This leaves us with a free choice in the second bar. We could choose to use a minor chord (chord 2, 3 or 6), we could choose a major chords (chord 1, 4 or 5) or we could choose the diminished chord (chord 7). The choice that we make will greatly impact the quality of the music and whether the music sounds sad and sorrowful or happy and uplifting.
| C | Am? | G7 | C |
Many musicians don’t like the idea that every chord isn’t a “free choice” and that music can be somewhat formulaic. However, the idea of functional harmony is not to be formulaic but to help create a desired effect. If you want the music to form tension and release then we know how to do that using functional harmony. You can also defy conventional use of these chords to create the opposite effect. It’s a similar concept to “plot points” within story telling. There are certain formulaic elements that are going to happen within a crime novel (for example), but it is how you navigate between these plot points in the story that makes the novel interesting.
Every piece of music from classical to pop uses functional harmony to create desired effect when the music requires it. A great example of this is how we finish a piece of music. From the most experienced composers to those that write songs without knowing any music theory at all, the vast majority of songs will end using chord 1 from a scale. This means that each composer that has written that piece of music has independently decided that at the end of their piece/song, they want to end using a chord 1. Why is that?
Well…the reason is because they want the music to sound finished! Returning home to chord 1 will do that. Does this mean that they didn’t have a choice about which chord they used at the end of their piece?
While it may be true that each composer and songwriter doesn’t have a great deal of choice in the chords they can use to make the song sound finished, they do have a choice about the effect that they want to create in the first place and how conventional the music sounds. Functional harmony is simply a toolbox of effects that composers can use to help them articulate their creativity!
Matthew Cawood
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