Is Rock modal or tonal? Is there any use talking about the “dominant” in blues? Where does a chord sequence begin and end? This book stems from the need, common to both attentive listeners and performers, to find a rational and coherent directionality in the most common harmonic sequences in pop-rock music, and to discover a system of harmonic analysis that allows to understand its underlying syntactic logics. Years of research and practice have led the authors to draft a theoretical scaffolding capable of dealing with the grammar and harmonic syntax of the pop-rock repertoire, and of comparing these to the rules of classical harmony from a functional perspective. The text – accompanied by more than 160 QR codes for access to multimedia content – proposes a rigorous and codified method that allows the reader to penetrate deep into the mechanisms of pop-rock harmony, without neglecting the daily practice of harmony in musical writing. After forty years of popular music studies, alongside the various manuals devoted to classical and jazz harmony, the time is ripe for a volume dedicated to pop-rock music.

Enhanced by more than 160 QR codes for access to multimedia content