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Week 11 · Lecture outline

Week 11 — Lecture Outline · Roman Numerals and Function

Music Theory I · MUS 156 Fictional sample

Course: MUS 156 Music Theory I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 11 of 16 (Week 11) · two sessions per week
Objectives: SLO 5 (analyze diatonic harmony with Roman numerals and figured bass) · SLO 4 (spell and identify triads and sevenths — now doing their jobs in a key) · SLO 8, one component (The Chart, milestone 2: your song's progression drafted in numbers)
Sessions: session 1 — teach · session 2 — studio + Chart clinic

You already hear this. We're going to name what you already know.

Sung in Aural Skills I: bass-line singing — do–fa–sol–do under this morning's progressions, then the functional cycle arpeggiated on solfège; MUS-155 sings the bass line your analysis names in this class, the same morning.

Week at a Glance

The table below summarizes the unit in one screen.
The unit's big question "Your band plays the same four chords as fifty other songs — in a different key every night. What are those chords actually DOING that works in any key, and what do you call them so any musician, anywhere, knows instantly?"
By the end of the unit, students can… (1) analyze diatonic triads and sevenths with Roman numerals in major and minor, with case and symbols encoding quality (I vs. i, vii°, III+); (2) sort any diatonic chord into its function family — tonic, predominant, dominant — and trace the cycle T→PD→D→T through a real progression; (3) attach inversion figures in analysis (6, 6/4, 7, 6/5, 4/3, 4/2) and name the bass note each one implies; (4) explain why V is major in minor keys (the raised ^7 — unit 5's ti), and name vii°7's actual diatonic home (harmonic minor); (5) describe a song's harmonic rhythm and tell it apart from tempo; (6) draft their Chart song's progression in Roman numerals (milestone 2).
Key vocabulary Roman numeral, case (upper/lower), ° and + symbols, tonic function, predominant function, dominant function, the functional cycle, figures in analysis (6 · 6/4 · 7 · 6/5 · 4/3 · 4/2), the dominant pair (V7 and vii°), vii°7's diatonic home, harmonic rhythm
Materials Deck 11 · the Week 11 chapter · paper keyboards from Week 1 · loop boards (the second session) · a piano or keyboard in the room · students' Chart songs (chosen last unit) on their phones
Timing note 8 segments ≈ 150 min. Session 1 = Segments 1–6 (75). Session 2 = Segments 7–8 (75: studio ≈ 55 + Chart clinic ≈ 20). Scale to your own pacing.

Segment 1 — Ear first: the fifty-song trick (8 min) · Session 1 opens

Hook (no notation on screen yet). Play a slow loop at the piano: C — G — Am — F, two bars each, no announcement. Watch the room. Somebody will start naming songs by the third pass — this loop carries dozens of hits, worship anthems, and graduation ballads. Ask: "How many songs did you just hear?" Collect titles. Then the twist: play the same loop in G (G — D — Em — C). "Same songs?" Yes. Every head nods. Different letters. Same songs.

  • "If the letters change and the song survives, the letters were never the point. What stayed the same is what each chord does — and this morning we name that."
  • The promise (say it, then put it on the board): "By the end of this week you can hear a progression twice and call it in numbers — and once it's numbers, you can play it in any key on earth."
  • Point at the arc: unit 9 built triads, unit 10 stacked sevenths, and today those chords get jobs and job titles. This is the vocabulary the rest of the course — and every band you'll ever play in — runs on.

Memory hook: "Letters name the spelling. Numbers name the job."

Segment 2 — Roman numerals in major: case carries the quality (12 min)

Plain language first. A Roman numeral answers two questions in one symbol: which scale degree is the root (the numeral itself) and what quality is the chord (the case and any symbol). Uppercase = major. Lowercase = minor. A little ° = diminished. A + = augmented. That's the whole code.

  • Rebuild unit 9's harmonized C major scale on the board, now with its full name tags: I C–E–G · ii D–F–A · iii E–G–B · IV F–A–C · V G–B–D · vi A–C–E · vii° B–D–F. Say the pattern out loud — major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, diminished — and remind them it's the same in every major key. That's why the numbers travel and the letters don't.
  • Worked example (walk it): in G major, what's vi? Count to ^6: G-A-B-C-D-E. Build the triad from the key's own notes: E–G–B. Minor — so it's written lowercase: vi. One numeral, and a musician in Nashville, Kenosis, or Seoul knows the chord without asking the key first.
  • Interaction (2 min): call degree + key, class answers numeral + quality: "^4 in D?" → "IV, major — G-B-D." "^2 in F?" → "ii, minor — G-B♭-D." "^7 in C?" → "vii°, diminished — B-D-F."

Misconception + cure:

  • ❌ "Upper versus lower case is just handwriting style — vi and VI are the same chord."
    ✅ Cure: the case IS the quality. In C major, vi is A–C–E, minor. Write VI and you've named an A major chord — a different chord that isn't in the key. The case check costs one second; skipping it rewrites the harmony.

Segment 3 — Chords have jobs: tonic, predominant, dominant, and the cycle (13 min)

Ear first. Play I in C and stop. "Does the music need to go anywhere?" No — that's home. Play V and stop mid-air. Everyone leans. Play IV. It's not home and it's not desperate — it's packed for the trip. Those three feelings are the three function families, and the room just sorted them by ear.

  • Tonic (T) — home, rest, arrival: I, with vi and iii as its quieter cousins.
  • Predominant (PD) — packs the bags, sets up the tension: ii and IV.
  • Dominant (D) — the lean that has to land: V and vii°.
  • The functional cycle: T → PD → D → T. Home, away, lean, land. Play I–IV–V–I slowly and narrate it; then play I–ii–V–I and show that swapping family members (IV → ii) keeps the story intact. Most of the music they play loops this cycle for three minutes at a time.
KEY: C major    METER: 4/4    CLEF: bass
| <C3,E3,G3>/w | <F3,A3,C4>/w | <G2,B2,D3>/w | <C3,E3,G3>/w |

Four whole-note chords on the bass staff — C–E–G, then F–A–C, then G–B–D, then C–E–G again: I, IV, V, I in C major. One full lap of the functional cycle: home, away, lean, land.

Misconception + cure:

  • ❌ "Function means where the chord sits in the bar — beat one is tonic, beat three is dominant."
    ✅ Cure: function is the chord's job, not its seat. V is dominant on any beat, in any bar, at any tempo. Position tells you when a chord happens; function tells you what it wants. (The two interact — that's harmonic rhythm, Segment 6 — but they are different facts.)

Segment 4 — Roman numerals in minor: one sharp changes the story (14 min)

Ear first. Play a minor loop the room knows in its bones: Am — F — C — G. Then play Am — Dm — E — Am and lean hard on the E major. Ask: "Which loop pushes home harder?" The second — and the push is one accidental doing it.

  • The natural-minor deck, in a minor: i A–C–E · ii° B–D–F · III C–E–G · iv D–F–A · v E–G–B · VI F–A–C · VII G–B–D. Point at the case doing honest work: three majors (III, VI, VII), the diminished ii°, and — as written — a minor v.
  • The raised seventh. Unit 5 taught that when minor music drives toward home, ^7 rises — te becomes ti. Harmonically that one raised note turns E–G–B into E–G♯–B: V, major. It also creates vii° on the raised note itself (G♯–B–D). Play v→i, then V→i. The room will tell you which one means it.
  • The loop Am–F–C–G, in numbers: i–VI–III–VII — all four chords straight out of natural minor, which is why so much radio minor sounds smooth rather than driven. The two dialects coexist: natural minor's easy circle, harmonic minor's raised-^7 push. The analysis writes what actually sounds: v when the seventh stays te, V when it rises to ti.
  • Name III+ once, calmly: raise ^7 with III's spelling on the board and you get C–E–G♯ — III+, augmented, the + doing for augmented what ° does for diminished. It's rare in the wild; it exists; move on.
KEY: a minor    METER: 4/4    CLEF: bass
| <E3,G3,B3>/h <E3,G#3,B3>/h |

Two half-note chords on the bass staff: E–G–B, then E–G♯–B — the dominant triad in A minor before and after the seventh rises. One sharp turns v into V, leaning into meaning it.

Misconception + cure:

  • ❌ "It's a minor key, so the five chord is minor."
    ✅ Cure: only if the music stays in natural minor — and when minor music drives home, it almost never does. The raised ^7 (unit 5's ti) makes V major in minor keys. That G♯ in the key of A minor isn't a wrong note on the chart; it's the engine.

Segment 5 — The dominant pair, and vii°7 comes home (14 min)

Plain language first. In every key, two chords share the dominant job: V(7) and vii°. They're a pair for a physical reason — spell them side by side in C major: V7 is G–B–D–F; vii° is B–D–F. Three shared notes, and inside them the shared tritone B–F — unit 7's itch, now employed. That tritone is the lean; both chords own it; both resolve it home.

KEY: C major    METER: 4/4    CLEF: bass
| <G2,B2,D3,F3>/w | <B2,D3,F3>/w |

Two whole-note chords on the bass staff: G–B–D–F (V7), then B–D–F (vii°). Everything in the second chord lives inside the first — the leading tone, and the tritone B–F that gives both chords their pull.

  • The honest version of a rumor: students will hear that "vii° is just V7 missing a note." Closer than most rumors — vii° is V7's upper three notes, no root. But it's a real chord with its own name, its own bass note, and its own uses (especially vii°6, passing between I and I6 — the studio plays one). Give the resemblance its due and the chord its dignity.
  • Sevenths in minor. Stack sevenths on natural minor in A minor and read the quality parade: i7 A–C–E–G · iiø7 B–D–F–A · IIIM7 C–E–G–B · iv7 D–F–A–C · v7 E–G–B–D · VIM7 F–A–C–E · VII7 G–B–D–F. Pause on VII7: G–B–D–F is a dominant-seventh-quality chord that natural minor builds all by itself. Then raise ^7 and the dominant machinery proper arrives: V7 E–G♯–B–D — and on the raised note itself, vii°7: G♯–B–D–F.
  • vii°7 finally gets its diatonic home. Unit 10 made a point of this and now it pays off: in any major key, the seventh chord on ^7 is viiø7 — half-diminished — because the key can only supply a minor seventh above that root. The fully diminished vii°7 needs a diminished seventh above its root, and only one scale in this course hands it over diatonically: harmonic minor. G♯–B–D–F in A minor: diminished triad, diminished seventh, every note earned. The spooky chord has an address, and the address is harmonic minor.

Misconception + cure:

  • ❌ "ø7 and °7 are the same chord with different fonts."
    ✅ Cure (unit 10 callback, now with a map): viiø7 = diminished triad + minor seventh — major keys build it on ^7. vii°7 = diminished triad + diminished seventh — harmonic minor builds it on the raised ^7. Different chord, different sound, different home. The symbols are a spelling of that difference, not a typographic mood.

Segment 6 — Figures ride along, harmonic rhythm, and the AI-critique moment (14 min) · Session 1 closes (~75)

Plain language first — figures. Unit 9 gave inversions their shorthand (6, 6/4) and unit 10 extended it to sevenths (7, 6/5, 4/3, 4/2). In analysis, those figures simply ride on the numeral: ii6 is the ii chord with its third in the bass; i6/4 is the tonic triad with its fifth in the bass; V6/5 is V7 with its third — the leading tone — in the bass. Numeral names the chord and its job; figure names the bass note under it. (Slashes, as always: a hyphen means a suspension, and suspensions are unit 14's story.)

  • Worked example: in C major, V6/5 = G–B–D–F with B in the bass. In A minor, i6/4 = A–C–E with E in the bass. Two seconds each once the unit-9/10 reflexes fire.

Harmonic rhythm. Play I–IV–V–I as whole notes: chords change every bar. Now play the same lap twice as fast — two chords per bar — without changing the tempo. Ask what changed. Not the speed of the beat; the speed of the harmony. Harmonic rhythm = the rate at which chords change. A hymn moves chords nearly every beat; a pop loop holds each chord for a bar or two; a ballad's bridge might sit on one chord for eight. Same tempo, different walk.

AI-critique moment (3 min, live on the projector). Paste into a chatbot: "In the key of A minor, what quality is the chord built on the fifth scale degree? One sentence." Read the answer aloud. Many tools flatly say "minor" — technically true only in natural minor, and missing the raised-^7 story that governs how the chord actually behaves when music drives home. Have the room fix it: v (minor) from natural minor; V (major) the moment ^7 rises — and the raised form is what you'll meet on most charts. "All term the tool drafts and you judge — your tutorial's audit runs on your own knowledge again this week, and this exact flattening is on its watch list."

Why this makes you a better musician

This is the unit where you stop memorizing songs and start storing them. A progression heard twice becomes four numbers — and four numbers transpose themselves: the singer wants it in E instead of C, and you're already playing, because I–V–vi–IV never changes its name. On a gig, "it's a one–five–six–four" communicates in five syllables what a letter-by-letter chord list can't say in twenty. When the worship leader calls "to the four" mid-song, you know the destination and the job — the bags are packed, the five is coming. And the number habit is a direct deposit on unit 15, where the Nashville Number System — the numbers-first chart language working players use every day — turns out to be exactly this morning's idea in street clothes. The studio will prove all of it: loops called in real time, then transposed on the board by numbers alone.

Callback + tease + hand-off.

  • Callback: "In week 1 a note got an address. This morning a chord got a job title — and the job titles are the same in every key."
  • Tease: "Next unit — Cadences and phrases: where progressions land. The places music breathes have names, and your ear has been predicting them for years."
  • Hand-off: read the chapter if you haven't; Tutorial 11 is due before Week 11's second session — the studio calls progressions at speed and assumes its reps. Practice set, quiz, discussion, and the Call It in Numbers assignment (with Chart milestone 2 inside it) close the end of Week 11. Bring your Chart song to the studio — the clinic works on your music.

Segment 7 — Studio: "Name that progression" (≈55 min) · Session 2

Run from the studio sheet (P-studio-week-11). Shape, for planning: home-or-away ear warm-up → the loop board (gig-style loops called in Roman numerals in real time, majors and minors) → transposition-by-numbers relay at the board → the dominant-pair corner (V7 vs. vii°, then vii°7 in minor, by ear). The studio is the payoff enacted: hear it twice, call it in numbers, play it in any key. 20 points, graded in session; async make-up path (full credit) on the studio sheet.

Segment 8 — The Chart clinic: your song, in numbers (≈20 min) · Session 2 closes

The studio sheet's final round, run as a workshop. Pairs: one hums the bass line of their Chart song (chosen last unit, milestone 1) while the other listens for home — where the song rests on i or I — and for the lean — where it wants to land. Together they pencil a first draft of the section's numbers. This is scaffolding for Chart milestone 2 (progression drafted), which lives inside this week's assignment and closes the end of Week 11 — students leave the studio with a draft already breathing. Circulate; the commonest rescue is a student whose "home chord" is actually the loop's second chord (the song starts away from home — plenty do; that's worth saying out loud to the whole room).

Instructor FAQ — common stumbles

The table below lists predictable Week 11 questions and quick cures.

Student says / does Quick cure
Writes VI for the minor chord on ^6 in a major key. Case = quality, every time. ^6 in C major carries A–C–E, minor: vi. VI says "A major," which C major cannot build. One-second check: is the third of the chord major or minor above the root?
"Why do we need numbers when letters already work?" Letters die at the key change. Numbers survive it. The same four songs in C and in G proved it in session 1 — and unit 15's Nashville charts are this exact idea as an industry standard.
"Is vi tonic or is it its own thing?" It's in the tonic family — home-flavored, restful — but it isn't home itself. Family names describe the job; only I (or i) is the actual couch.
"In A minor, is the chord on E called v or V?" Which seventh degree is sounding? G natural → v. G♯ → V. The analysis reports what the music does, and driving-home minor music raises te to ti far more often than not (unit 5, cashing in).
"So vii° is just V7 without the root?" Same three upper notes, same tritone, same job — but its own name, bass, and habits. "Cousins who carpool" is fair; "the same person" is not.
Writes vii°7 in a major-key analysis. The major key only supplies a minor seventh above ^7: that chord is viiø7. The fully diminished vii°7 is diatonic to harmonic minor — it needs the raised ^7 as its root and a diminished seventh above. Unit 10 flagged it; this unit houses it.
"Harmonic rhythm — so, the tempo?" No: how fast the chords walk, not how fast the beat runs. Same tempo can carry one chord per bar or four. Clap the beat with one hand, wave each chord change with the other — two different speeds, felt at once.
Confuses the figure with the chord ("V6/5 is a different chord than V7"). Same chord, different bass. The numeral is the chord and job; the figure is which member is downstairs. V7, V6/5, V4/3, V4/2: one dominant seventh, four floors.

Scope flag

This outline stays inside Week 11's twelve ledger concepts (Roman numerals in major and minor, case/symbols encoding quality, the three function families and the cycle, figures in analysis, V7 and vii° as the dominant pair, the diatonic sevenths in minor with vii°7's harmonic-minor home, harmonic rhythm), building freely on units 4–5 scales and units 9–10 chords and figures. Where progressions land — the names of stopping points, phrase shapes, and the like — belongs to the next unit and is teased only as Cadences and phrases. The Nashville Number System is named once as a unit-15 forward-reference, never taught or assessed here. The Chart clinic scaffolds milestone 2, which is graded inside this week's assignment, not in the studio.

~ Professor Hemsworth's edition · Kenosis College · built with thecoursemaker.com