Reddit reviews Harmony and Voice Leading

The progressions

I IV vii° iii vi ii V I

and

i iv VII III VI ii° V I

are the major and minor versions of what I was taught to call a "descending-second" sequence. (Some people call the same thing a "descending fifths sequence".) The latter bits of these sequences seem pretty similar to the progressions that you've provided for us here.

In a sequence, you can repeat the same melodic pattern on different scale degrees. An example of the minor-key version of this sequence in popular music is Fly Me to the Moon.

There are other kinds of sequences as well, such as the descending-third sequence that you'll see in the first six beats of Pachelbel's Canon in D (I V vi iii IV I).

It's good to practice playing sequences, as they're a common harmonic pattern. A popular voice-leading textbook includes these keyboard exercises on diatonic sequences which you might want to practice. The textbook recommends practicing these in every key up to four sharps and flats, in both major and minor unless otherwise specified.

Harmony and Voice Leading, Aldwell & Schachter.

If someone says their song is "in Gm", that implies the tonal center is the G minor chord and other chords used from the G minor scale obey some basic conventions concerning how one chord progresses to another chord.

As an example, the most common chord progression in all of Western music is known as the I-V-I progression (read one-five-one). The I chord is the "tonic" and the V chord is the "dominant" of whatever key you're in. In G minor, the tonic is a G minor chord and the dominant is a D major chord (for reasons that are beyond the scope of a simple reddit comment), so instead you have i-V-i (lower case roman numerals indicate minor chord qualities).

If you were to extend the progression, you would of course want to select chords that sound good one after the other. You can obviously just do this by ear, but it turns out that the reason certain chords sound good together is due to something called "voice leading".

Basically, imagine that each note in a three note chord is a "voice" that wants to continue in a pleasing, logical progression. There are a few ways such a voice could do this:

1. Move either up or down by a scale degree
   
   
2. Leap up or down to a scale degree two or more steps away
   
   
3. Stay on the same note while other voices progress in one of the two previous motions
   
   The basis for these conventions stems from hundreds of years of Western music tradition, but is still mostly followed today in almost all pop music (with some notable exceptions concerning perfect fifths). If you want to understand this at a deeper level, I strongly recommend you study writing four-part harmony. Four-part writing is standard in every theory textbook, so if you can read music you can learn it straight out of something like Steven G. Laitz's The Complete Musician or Aldwell and Schachter's Harmony & Voice Leading.

When I was a student we used Harmony and Voice Leading by Aldwell & Schachter. It's an incredibly robust textbook.

I will say that having been through that book (and already having a BMus) really made diving into The Jazz Theory Book an absolute joy. You're right that having a strong foundation is helpful before reading it.

Great, hope it was helpful. To better understand voice leading try a book like Harmony and Voice Leading (3rd Edition), or another book on tonal harmony. I bet your local library will have some, and a universiy/college library with a music program def. will.

It's actually an intro to his theories and it's written in a very modern and clear way so it doesn't require any prior knowledge of Schenker. I forgot that it assumes good knowledge of classical voice leading though so if he doesn't know that yet I would get him this http://www.amazon.ca/Harmony-Voice-Leading-3rd-Edition/dp/0155062425 (3rd or 4th edition is fine) which is my second favorite book. Again that book is very modern and clear and covers pretty much everything someone will ever need to know about voice leading and counterpoint, which is a must for improvising, composing and memorizing pieces.

It really depends if he has interest in composing and understanding and analyzing pieces. If he does the Schenker book is going to be amazing to him and also this book http://www.amazon.ca/Classical-Form-Functions-Instrumental-Beethoven/dp/019514399X.

If he doesn't have much interest in analyzing and composing then I'm not sure which books he should get. Maybe just the Harmony and Voice Leading one. Anyway those books are pretty expensive, maybe try to get them at a library or some pdf online to make sure he likes them before you buy them.