twocats I'm not going to do chord analysis in the sense that my friend is doing-- as in "what's happening relative to the key". His chord analysis layer in forScore showed I, IV, VI, etc. Since he majored in piano performance he says all that is second nature to him, but that's like adding a non-trivial math step to me. But I can recognize a simple chord on its own without much effort, as in "that's an E major chord".
On the I IV V type of analysis. This is helpful if your music is rather diatonic. Like IV are the 4th, 6th, 8th note of a major scale in that key - in a minor key you could have IVm (or iv). But what if the music uses notes and chords not in that key (so, not diatonic)? Although very often we do have these, maybe with others interspersed: I (stuff, stuff) IV (other stuff) V - kind of like a rough framework of the general path of the music.
But then, even if your music does have that kind of structure, you have to already know them - you must be able to recognize what key the music is in (at that moment) and be able to recognize those principle chords.
I just finished working on a piece my teacher wrote to make the pattern of the "Tristan chord" (sequence) more apparent to students; kept "simple". It's an A B A' B' type pattern where all the A's are block chords, all the B's are like broken chords. There is a level of memorization just knowing this first fact. But the 2nd thing is that it is not diatonic - deliberately. the I IV V doesn't happen except maybe somewhat at the very end.
I did, however, memorize the pattern in the A sections, and that did help me. There are different kinds of patterns in music, which is why I thought of this little piece.
This isn't polished. I put it together shortly after getting the notation, but it might give an idea. I'm thinking of other types of patterns.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/q3duahrhe91p8mo6sd63p/25.03.24a-Chr-Tristan-Pastels.mp3?rlkey=zvhr4oxlu1wmg244jtjxs8wep&dl=0
The pattern starts: Em7b5 (half diminished), E7b5, Eb7b5, Eb7 ...... new sequence: Gm7b5, G7b5, F#7b5, F#7 ... new sequence Bbm7b5.... etc.
Or the pattern is: half diminished chord (Em7b5), raise the 3rd so G to G# for the E7b5, do that same chord a semitone lower, turn it into a straight Dom7 (E7) by raising the 5th ..... do not resolve E7 normally (would be to an A) - instead start the whole cycle again starting a major 3rd higher.
This is the pattern I memorized. It's type of chord with one or two notes sliding over to form a different type of chord, and knowing that pattern. It would be a short step to memorizing the whole thing. The first Chopin I ever did, the Am Prelude, I learned how one chord note slides down to form the next chord note for much of it, and that helped me play the piece. I'd have memorized it more easily had I planned to do that.
I wrote yesterday about my beginnings, where mostly I simply had that book of sonatinas. They were very formulaic: esp. the Clementis. I was predicting what would come next. At that point I picked up patterns without knowing the names of anything, like a child learns to speak grammatically, but might end up saying "I knowed" instead of "I knew".
