Classical vs. Rock/Pop vs. Jazz Harmony (with Tony Parlapiano)

Christopher: What’s the difference between classical music, rock and pop and jazz?

Well, that’s probably a question with an endless answer! But one of the most significant differences is definitely in the harmony – what chords are being used, and how do the progressions work.

In the clip I’m going to share today from Tony Parlapiano’s Musical U masterclass, he explains, and demonstrates each in a simple and memorable way.

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Tony: So although I’ve been carrying this last name “Parlapiano” around my whole life, it wasn’t until I was an adult that I began playing the piano. And I decided to start learning this instrument while I was already enrolled in college, pursuing a degree in music education, which, looking back, is kind of funny because I didn’t really have one up until that point. I don’t have the typical story of most piano teachers where I started at age six, I just played some low brass instruments in the public school music program.

And when I went to college, I imagined that I would come out being a high school band director. And when you go to college for music, you usually have to choose one of two tracks.

You’re either going to be on the classical track or you’re going to be on the the jazz track. And so I got my start playing the brass instruments on the classical track. And about one year in, I decided to switch.

I was in a jazz improv class, and there was no piano player present. And the instrument that I was playing was euphonium. And it didn’t really have much of a place in jazz music.

And so I decided to move over into, change my focus to jazz. And then also very similar, at the same time that I started playing, I started meeting with friends who were in bands. And I picked up the piano rather quickly, but the music that I was playing with them was jam bands, R’n’B, pop singer/songwriter.

And so I had this opportunity to learn from people who primarily work from these three different frameworks.

And what I learned in classical is, if I were to kind of define the signature sound of each of these genres in classical, it’s all about V7 to I. I’m going to do these descriptions in the key of C, I’m going to convert the letter names. So that would be G7 to C.

And everything in classical, to me, seemed about defining tonic. Where is home? Everything is about bringing our five back home and that dominant tonic relationship.

And when I went to jazz, it was all about the ii-V-I. And what you’ll notice there is if I convert those into letters for the key of C, that would be D minor 7, G7, C7.

I’ll demonstrate these in a moment. But this two five, the two is the setup for the five. But you’ll notice also that everything had a 7th degree of the scale. It was like harmony begins at the 7th degree. And the vocabulary, the entry point for getting into jazz, felt very high. It was challenging for me to just jump into that and be in this world where there was all these fundamentals that I didn’t feel like I really had in place.

And then when I started playing pop music with my friends and in bands and learning songs from some of my favorite artists, I noticed that it was primarily about these three primary chords, I, IV and V.

And the interesting thing about pop that was so different from classical or jazz is when it comes to the V chord, the dominant adding that 7th is really more of an option, not the default. And for this reason, there was a lot more flexibility where a V chord could go to a IV chord.

And these things were not really part of what I was learning. In classical and jazz, whenever you got to that five chord, it was dominant. It needs to come home.

And not only is it possible, but it’s very common. The idea of moving from V chords to IV chords in classical, if we’re in the C chord, it’s all going to be about the dominant taking us home. In jazz, it’s usually sometimes a little bit more colorful, but you’ll have, like a two five one. Or sometimes they make those dominant chords very colorful, something like that. Or they start bringing in a lot more of the chords from outside the key.

But the idea of that two five, it becomes like a harmonic vehicle for transportation. You can just stay in this repetitive cycle of going from two to five chords and then essentially keep moving your one around. So the idea of jazz is that it doesn’t usually stay in one tonal center throughout the entire piece. It tends to explore and kind of frequently change its tonal center, which, again, happens in classical music, too. But it’s a little bit more of a unique characteristics for jazz. And when it comes to pop, that idea of the I chord going to the IV chord, V coming back to the IV, and there’s many variations that you can do that include other chords that we associate with being of these qualities. So that’s a little bit what we’ll get into the next segment here.

And so what I started learning is, in pop, there was. It felt easier to explore harmony, explore melody. I felt like I didn’t have quite as many characteristics that were defining the genre that I had to adhere to.

And when I talk about pop, I’m talking about folk, you know, pop, R’n’B, soul. Some of these things start to be a bridge on the way to jazz. You start getting into blues, you start building your way over to jazz.

And in my opinion, when you’re learning the pop vocabulary and when you’re learning these basic things that I’m going to share with you today. It becomes easy to cross the bridge over into classical and jazz. Everything that you’ll learn here today is going to apply to these other two genres.

But we’re going to break things down into some smaller pieces and really try to understand some things that for 15 years of playing music, I didn’t really understand. And now that I do, it helps me so much.

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Christopher: Wasn’t that neat?

In yesterday’s episode when we had our mini-interview with Tony, I mentioned his skill at simplifying complex things and making them very digestible. And I wanted to pull out this bit from his masterclass because I think it’s a perfect example of that.

No doubt some of those ideas were familiar to you, but it’s rare to see it broken down in such a clear and simple way. And I think often it’s taught in one of those three areas, you know, harmonic theory, and you just have that jazz view on it, or you just have that pop view on it. And I think having the three side-by-side like that is really helpful. And I loved how he demonstrated it.

That was near the beginning of a very in-depth masterclass that was a lot of fun for our members.

If you are a Musical U member, you’ll be able to find that full masterclass waiting for you inside the site right now.

If not, I hope this little excerpt was useful for you and that you take this way of thinking about chords and harmony away with you for the rest of your life. It’s one of those views on things I think that just you can always come back to, and it brings a lot of clarity.

If you want to know more about Tony’s work and what popMATICS offers, check out popmatics.com, we’ll have a link in the show notes.

That’s it for this one. Cheers! And go make some music!

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