Week 11 — Readings & Resources · Roman Numerals and Function

Course: MUS 156 Music Theory I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 11 of 16 (Week 11) · two sessions per week
Your primary reading is the Week 11 chapter (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer.

How to use this page

Everything here is a link to an external resource — open it in your browser, the way you'd open any link a friend sent you. Nothing to buy, download, or sign into.

The load is light on purpose: six links, grouped by the unit's three big ideas. One item per group is plenty; all six is thorough. If a link disagrees with the course on a convention (some sites are looser about numeral case, or file minor's five chord under one flat answer), the course convention in the Week 11 chapter wins — that's the field having dialects, and noticing the difference is exactly the judgment this unit trains. This week's list leans interactive rather than video — the numbers skill is a doing skill, and the doing tools below are the best on the open web.

① Roman numerals and harmonic analysis — the system itself

Maps to the chapter's numeral sections and Session 1's Segments 2 and 4.

• Beginning Harmonic Analysis — EarMaster Music Theory Online, ch. 5.2 — the numeral system from the ground up: numerals in major, numerals in minor, why the case and symbols matter, with play-me audio examples throughout. The best single companion read for this unit. Dialect alert: where its minor-key table and ours differ in emphasis, remember the course rule — the numeral reports which seventh degree actually sounds (v natural, V raised). (reading with audio, ~15 min)
• Harmonic functions — Open Music Theory — the tonic/predominant/dominant idea stated compactly, with the family memberships this course uses. Written a notch more formally than our chapter; skim for the three families and the cycle and skip anything about four-voice writing guilt-free (that topic belongs to a later course, not this one). (reading, ~10 min)

② The jobs, by ear

Maps to the chapter's function sections and the studio's loop board.

• Chord Ear Training — musictheory.net — the site plays a chord, you name its quality by ear. Quality-hearing is the case-sensitivity of this unit's numerals (major = uppercase, minor = lowercase), and five minutes a day here makes the studio's loop calls feel slow-pitched. (interactive exercise, self-paced)
• Exercises index — teoria.com — from this index, open Harmonic Progressions (under Ear Training): the site plays a short progression and you identify the Roman numerals — the exact skill of the studio, in drill form, with the answer checked instantly. Start with I, IV, and V only, then add vi and ii as your ear warms up. (interactive ear training, self-paced)

③ Numbers in the wild — real songs, analyzed

Maps to the chapter's fifty-song trick and your Chart milestone.

• TheoryTab library — Hooktheory — a free, searchable library of thousands of real songs displayed with their chords as scale-degree numbers and colors. Search a song you actually play, watch its loop light up as numbers, and you're seeing this unit's whole thesis in the wild. (Browsing is free; ignore any upsell — the library itself is the resource.) A word of care: TheoryTab's crowd-sourced analyses occasionally disagree with what your ear tells you — trust the process from this week's assignment: home first, lean second, numbers last. (interactive library, self-paced)
• Chord Identification — musictheory.net — the eyes-side drill: a chord on a staff, you name root and quality. Root plus quality is nine-tenths of a Roman numeral; this keeps the unit-9/10 spelling reflexes hot while the new function vocabulary settles. (interactive exercise, self-paced)

Pick-one quick path (≈15 min total)

Short on time this week? You've read the chapter — then do exactly these two:

1. Run ten rounds of Harmonic Progressions at teoria.com in group ② (I, IV, V switched on).
2. Look up one song you play in the TheoryTab library in group ③ and read its loop as numbers.

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move pages. If a link fails, tell Professor Hemsworth and lean on the chapter in the meantime — it covers everything the quiz covers. And keep your Chart song close: milestone 2 lives in this week's assignment, and every tool on this page feeds it.