I was shown the error of my ways and learned what works, what doesn’t and how fast playing should feel so easy when you do it correctly.

Once I found Cracking the Code, that of course changed. I was pushing an inefficient technique to the max. On my best days I could play a couple measures of 16ths in the 170bmp range, just before I tensed up and it crumbled. I eventually arrived at respectable speeds. I just thought I needed to work on it more since “practice makes perfect” as the flawed proverb says. Anything that ever seemed difficult for me to play, I never thought of changing my approach or analyzing why it might be difficult. And even though work ethic is typically a good thing, it was the opposite for me in this situation. I am a horribly non-intuitive individual. So all of my electric guitar playing, picking in particular, is self taught. While I was formally trained as a classical guitarist in college, I never had any lessons before that. Now contrast that with my technique…that is another story. After all, people tend to get good at what they do an awful lot of, and for several decades I was training my ears for hours most days. I’m proud to say I developed really good ears. I could learn by ear and play their solos note for note ( …just not up to speed). That all included songs by Petrucci, Eric Johnson, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Joe Pass, Yngwie, Al Di Meola, Brad Paisley and the list goes on. In my formative years, nearly any piece of music I wanted to play that had no sheet music available (this was pre-internet) I had to transcribe myself. Nearly my whole life (from age ~5 to now, 38) I’ve played a lot by ear and done formal ear training (solfege) at college. I’ve had plenty of people (college music professors included) comment that they thought I had great ears. TL DR: This would only be true if you play what you’re learning by ear with correct technique and not all of us are that intuitive. Even if you’re only able to improvise a hypothetical bassline, that’s all you need for determining the inversion of the chord.I’ll vote no.

Worried about your voice-leading skills? That’s OK.

Now all that remains is to identify the chord as a predominant in a minor key – using the bassline fa, sol, do to form a cadence. By relating the bass voice to the known spelling of the solfege for the chord, they are able to determine that the chord is inverted. Still, they still have to figure out the inversion. In this example, the student first considers two chords that are often mistaken for each other, but using interval recognition, determines that it’s not fully diminished because of the presence of the major third. The bassline – re, sol, do – is particularly helpful to imagine here. In this example, the student listens to all the intervallic relations and imagines a predominant context for the chord. If you struggle to play the piano accurately, just play slowly. Don’t worry if you are a poor pianist or improviser. This will get you in the right headspace for success.

Play seventh chords on the piano a lot.

There is more than one function for some of them.

Review the harmonic functions of the seventh chords.

Review the table from Unit 25 that details the intervallic relations within all the compound seventh chords.

Review your solfege for every seventh chord until it is indelibly memorized.

This chapter will walk you through the kind of thought process that will lead to this kind of contextualized chord recognition.

This week, we will take our practice to a new level of independence by having you improvise your own “solutions.” In Unit 27, we practiced on the piano how seventh chords typically resolve. Compound Seventh Chords and the Harmonic Big Picture Finding Your Own Picture Through Piano ImprovisationĪ big step in the cultivation of a professionally trained ear is to be able to make your own harmonic contexts for compound seventh chords by memorizing and internalizing how they work in music.

Aural training in pictures