Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Upon successful completion of the course students should be able to:

1. Identify and create musical examples that change key, pitch center, and/or mode.

2. Compose progressions that include chords with secondary functions.

3. Create chord progressions using secondary dominants and borrowed chords to harmonize melodies.

4. Analyze individual sections of common contemporary song forms.

5. Compose a melody and baseline that outlines a given chromatic chord progression.

• Improvise modal melodies

• Improvise chord progressions using chromatic chords

• Harmonic melodies using chromatic and diatonic chords

The instructor should make the criteria for assigning a course grade and for evaluating student progress clear at the beginning of the term. The individual instructor will determine the methods of assessment. Assessment methods may include:

Qualitative examinations
Quantitative examinations
Homework assignments
Music presentations
Class participation
Composition projects
Small group work/problem solving
Concert reports

• Tonality and modality

• Borrowed chords

• Secondary dominant function and tonicization 

• Key areas and harmonic modulation

• Form

  • Binary and ternary

  • Verse-Chorus

  • Strophic

  • 32-bar song form

  • Verse-refrain

• More chord connection practices