Analysis Toolbox

Solfège

Solfège originated 1000 years ago with Guido d’Arezzo as a way to hear and sing scale-degree relationships. Since then, there have been many variations on Guido’s basic system — but the most common versions of solfège taught in music schools today are moveable-do (with la- or do-based minor) and fixed-do.

Rhythmic Solfège

Most Western musicians know Harr’s system of counting rhythms (1e+a) commonly taught in public schools. However, university- and conservatory-trained musicians learn more sophisticated systems that enable greater rhythmic and metrical precision. These systems include Kodály, Gordon, McHose, and Takadimi.

Lead Sheet Chord Symbols & Figured Bass

Whether jazz, rock, pop, or film, lead sheet symbols are the primary way that Western, non-classically trained musicians analyze harmony. Classically trained musicians tend to be more familiar with figured bass, the 17th-century version of lead sheet symbols. 

Both systems can represent any chord, but they unlock different repertoires and suggest different modes of thinking.

Roman Numeral Analysis & Chord Grammar

Roman numeral analysis stems from Rameau’s Treatise on Harmony, showing the influence chord root on harmonic function. Later analysts, notably Hugo Riemann, further systematized Rameau’s theories. These became the basis for how most North American universities taught harmony since the 20th-century: as a kind of “grammar” for how to make chord progressions in the “common-practice” style.

Voice Leading Analysis

Every undergraduate musician learns basic voice leading to connect adjacent chords. This knowledge includes recognizing the four types of motion between voices, avoiding parallel perfect intervals, and so on.

When musicians know more advanced voice-leading analysis, they tend to think of Heinrich Schenker’s and Carl Schachter’s work on the relationship between counterpoint, harmony, and form. However, composers can benefit greatly from alternate perspectives on the subject, including those of Paul Hindemith, Peter Westergaard, Philip Lasser, and others.

Pitch-Class Set Theory

In the first half of the 20th century, many theorists attempted to catalog the new harmonies composers had begun to write. Thanks to the standardization of university curricula, Allan Forte’s system of pitch-class set analysis became the dominant system.

Its primary utility over lead sheet symbols and figured bass is its ability to highlight connections between pitch collections that wouldn’t otherwise be obvious. As with voice-leading analysis, composers can benefit from knowing some of the alternate perspectives on this topic, including those of Howard Hanson, Elliott Carter, Ludmila Ulehla, Jenny McLeod, and others.

Orchestrational Analysis

Most orchestration classes and textbooks focus on what the instruments can play and how to create a balanced, blended sound. A few sources also emphasize orchestral combinations (Rimsky-Korsakov, Brandt) or textures (McKay).

As an analytical practice, orchestration skills mean being able to judge the playability and effectiveness of different orchestrations before an ensemble plays them.

Textural Analysis

Most composers know about “monophony, homophony, and polyphony,” but the study of texture gets much more nuanced than those basic categories.

Despite being one of the most powerful and easy-to-use compositional tools, university courses tend to give it little systematic attention. Key works include George Frederick McKay’s Creative Orchestration, Monte Tubb’s 1987 article in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, and Wallace Berry’s Structural Functions in Music.

Formal Analysis

The study of form explores how music is organized into shapes and structures. It often denotes the study of stock forms, such as sonata, rondo, binary, etc. It can also explore motivic development, syntax, rhetoric, schemas, and other organizational strategies. Notable theorists include A.B. Marx, Arnold Schoenberg, William Caplan, James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy.

Parametric Analysis

A composer, a theorist, and a musicologist respectively, James Tenney, Dora Hanninen, and Jan LaRue each sought to create analytical systems that yielded meaningful insights regardless of style.

Although none of them labeled their work “parametric,” each focused on breaking down music into its component parameters (e.g., sound, rhythm, harmony, etc.) and examining the dialogue that emerged between them. LaRue’s approach is the least idiosyncratic, Hanninen’s is the most abstract, and Tenney’s falls somewhere in the middle.