Introduction
This will be just a quick lesson summarising the different musical or harmonic systems that are commonly found in Jazz. When transcribing or analysing a song’s chord progression, you would typically approach it from a macro to a micro perspective. First, look at the harmonic framework within which the song is set (macro), then look at the actual chords used (micro).
Musical Systems
When trying to determine what kind of musical system a song is using, you need to look for three things:
- Whether the song uses functional harmony or not
- Whether the song has a tonal centre or not
- Whether the song is diatonic (that is, in a particular key) or not
Based on these three characteristics you can determine if the song is one of four musical systems that is most widely used in Jazz:
- Tonal
- Modal
- Pedal Point
- Atonal
I have separate lessons on all of these musical systems, so I’m not going to repeat myself here. This is just a summary lesson that brings them all together and shows you how they are related. Below is a table outlining each system.
Below is another table showing the type of chord progressions you would typically find under each type of Musical System.
