Groove Harmony outline

My plan for an eventual book about harmony and structure in blues, funk, hip-hop and dance music

I recently got involved in some music theory pedagogy discourse on Twitter, about which you do not care. There was some discussion of the fact that I'm planning to write a teaching resource for groove-based popular music, particularly blues, funk, hip-hop and dance music. I thought it would be a good idea to post what I'm planning for it. Note that the title is a placeholder until I think of something better. (Unfortunately, Groove Theory is taken.)

I am not a music theorist by training, and I have no ambition to present a coherent theory of this music. It's more of a set of heuristics and patterns, with a focus on aspects of the music that are not explained well by Western tonal theory or jazz theory. I don't have a plan for publication. Maybe I'll pitch it to an academic press, or to a commercial press, or do a subscriber thing on Substack. I'm open to suggestions on this. Here's the outline.

Introduction

• What is groove?

  • Pieces vs songs vs grooves

  • Groove structures and attention

  • Repetition legitimizes, funk beautifies

• Why Groove Harmony

  • Afrofuturism and the Black Electronic

  • Types of groove harmony

• The politics is in the drums

  • Blues, funk, and hip-hop

  • The white racial frame of music theory

Groove

• Loop structures

  • Binary structures and hypermeter

  • Harmonic rhythm

  • Longer-form grooves

  • Odd-length grooves

  • Deep listen: Miles Davis, "So What"

• The metrical grid

  • Counting and subdivisions

  • Time signatures

  • Tempo: "How fast" vs "how dense"

• Basic drum programming

  • Time-unit box systems and drum machines

  • Radial grids and the Groove Pizza

  • Strong beats and weak beats

  • Syncopation and the backbeat

  • Deep listen: Parliament, "Mothership Connection"

• Polymeter and polyrhythm

  • Polymeter and hemiola

  • Basic polyrhythm: duple vs triple

  • Advanced polyrhythm

  • Deep listen: Kendrick Lamar, "DUCKWORTH"

• Swing

  • Onbeats and offbeats

  • Swing ratio

  • Eighth note swing vs sixteenth note swing

  • Straight and late

  • Deep listen: Ray Charles, "You Are My Sunshine"

• Dilla time

  • Unquantized time vs Dilla time

  • Overlapping grids

  • Warped grids

  • Deep listen: Slum Village, "Get Dis Money"

Harmony

• One note

  • Pitch and frequency

  • Harmonics and tuning

  • Drones and pedals

  • Creative challenge: One-Note Groove

• Two notes

  • Consonance and dissonance

  • Octaves

  • Fifths

  • Thirds

  • Sevenths

  • Other intervals

  • Creative challenge: Two-Note Groove

• Three notes

  • Trichords

  • Triads

  • Creative challenge: Three-Note Groove

• Four Notes

  • Tetrachords

  • Dominant seventh chords

  • Other seventh chords

  • Creative challenge: Seventh Chord Groove

• Five notes

  • Pentatonic scales and the black keys

  • Deep listen: Sonny Rollins, "Sonnymoon for Two"

  • The Lick

  • Creative challenge: Pentatonic Groove

• Six notes

  • The blues scale(s)

  • Minor blues and major blues

  • Creative challenge: Blues Melody

• Seven Notes

  • The diatonic necklace and the white keys

  • The circle of fifths and the diatonic modes

  • The harmonic minor necklace

  • The melodic minor necklace

  • Deep listen: John Coltrane, "My Favorite Things"

  • Creative challenge: Modal Groove

• Making chords from scales

  • Stacking thirds

  • Voice leading and inversion

  • Modal interchange

  • Stacking fourths

Going Further

• Twelve-tone equal temperament

  • The chromatic circle

  • The circle of fifths

• Between the piano keys

  • Pitch bends and cents

  • Blue notes

  • Is the blues based on just intonation?

  • Deep listen: Prince, "Starfish and Coffee"

• Blues tonality

  • The blues scale as chord roots

  • The blues diminished chord

  • Deep listen: Deee-Lite, "Groove is in the Heart"

  • Deep listen: Aretha Franklin, "Chain of Fools"

• Establishing key centers in a groove

  • Loop structures in Everyday Tonality

  • Dual tonicity

  • What if there is no key center?

  • Deep Listen: Mary J Blige, "Family Affair"

I want feedback on this from musicians, teachers, students, music theorists, and anyone else who knows or wants to know about groove-oriented Black American music. Let me know what you think.