So You Want to Write a Chord Progression? Teaching Core Music Theory Using the Phrase Model Handout

Abstract

This article explains and provides suggestions for implementing the Phrase Model Handout, a pedagogical resource found at Music Theory Pedagogy Online. The Phrase Model Handout is a single-page, tabloid-size document that presents an array of harmonic expansions, predominant harmonies, and cadential figurations all within the framework of the phrase. The Phrase Model Handout draws significantly on the pedagogical texts of Laitz, Caplin, and Aldwell and Schachter, and is intended as a supplement to textbooks that do not emphasize harmonic idioms or the linear structures of harmonic progressions. This article contains pedagogical applications of the Phrase Model Handout at all levels and to many topics of the harmony and aural skills sequences, including tonic and non-tonic expansions, harmonic function, harmonic syntax, voice leading, secondary chord usage, chromatic predominants, cadential bass lines, and cadence types.