Harmony for absolute beginners

By Ausra Motuzaite-Pinkeviciene (get free updates of new posts here)​​​​​

Do you need harmony when you are a beginner on the organ?

Some people do. They need it in their church service playing or for analyzing pieces that they play.

So how do you learn harmony if you are an absolute beginner?

It's hard, isn't it?

Victoria asked my help in understanding  Vidas' Harmony for Organists Level 1 course. She couldn't understand the material Vidas presented in his videos and PDF training.

She also needed help in understanding my videos some of you may remember from this blog.

So I agreed to help her. To take her by the hand and spell out each chord, teach her the reasoning behind each chord so that she could practice those exercises on her own, to give her feedback when she was doing something wrong, to encourage her to practice further.

I had four lessons with her, talked in person using a telephone.

We used some material from Vidas' course.

Here's what I taught her:

Open and closed position
Melodic position
Voice ranges in harmony
T, S, D chords and inversions
D7 chord
VII7 chord and its resolution
Cadences in F major and D minor
Cadence in G major
Harmonic position
Diatonic sequences
Chromatic sequences
Transposing sequences

I see this material might be helpful to many other beginner students who are struggling with harmony.

So I'm releasing my Harmony Review for Beginners audio training (50 % discount is valid until April 5).

Note that it's NOT for people who know how to harmonize a tune, how to play cadences, how to improvise in various keys using chords.

This is for absolute beginners who would not understand Vidas' Harmony for Organists Level 1 course but need help in harmony (yes, you do need to know how to read notes in the treble and bass clefs).

Hope this helps.