Advanced Harmony

During the past half century many students have come my way asking for help with harmony. Some have been performers who have simply struggled to understand what was going on in the harmony of the music they were playing. Some have been composers who have desperately wanted to extend their harmonic vocabulary. Some have been frustrated that they could hear harmony in their head but could not write it down. Others have wanted to be successful in harmony exams and have felt dumbfounded by the text books they had encountered.

This course is a crystallisation of these many and rich teaching experiences, through which I have discovered the need to be clear and logical about the learning of harmony and the need to simplify concepts that are often presented in a more complicated way than they need to be.

For me, harmony has become a lifelong passion and a central part of my playing, improvising, composition and teaching for well over 40 years.

That’s why we created this comprehensive online course in harmony here at Music Matters. It brings together everything I’ve learned — not only as a performer, composer and improviser, but as a teacher working with students at every level, from beginners to advanced. The course distils this experience into a clear, step-by-step curriculum focused on what really matters: the practical essentials of harmony.

Building on our earlier Basic Harmony course this Advanced Harmony course covers:

• How to use Appoggiaturas, suspensions, and inessential notes/non-chord tones well – their formation, resolution, and expressive use in harmonic writing.

• How and when to use chord inversions, Roman Numeral, Leadsheet and Figured Bass notation – including the correct use of second inversion chords and 6/4 progressions.

• How to harmonising scales and melodies – exploring primary and alternative chords, inversions, and harmonic rhythm in major and minor keys.

• How to use various modulation techniques – pivot chords, pivot notes, and chromatic approaches to move between keys smoothly or dramatically.

• How to embrace advanced harmonic vocabulary – including secondary dominants, diminished and half-diminished chords, Neapolitan and augmented sixth chords, and extended harmony.

• How to apply harmony and analysis – writing in multiple parts, recognising harmonic patterns, and analysing music from different stylistic periods.

And, crucially, we always tie this back to practical music-making — whether you’re arranging, composing, improvising, or simply trying to understand what makes the music you love work. This is why we’ve also produced an ebook, which summarises the key points and also offers examples to illustrate each point.

This is not a dry academic exercise. It’s a living, breathing toolkit for musicians.

Whether you’re a performing musician, or aspiring composer — or simply someone who wants to understand harmony properly — this course is designed to give you the foundation you need, taught in a way that is clear, structured, and musically useful.

In essence, this course is everything I wish I’d had when I first sat at the organ bench, trying to make musical sense out of thin air. It’s the result of a lifetime of study, performance, and teaching — and it’s now here for you.

If you’re ready to transform your understanding of music — and unlock the creative freedom that comes with real harmonic fluency — I warmly invite you to join us. I look forward to seeing you inside the course.