Along with the books, there are interactive applications that not only help create music, but understand it.
Chord Superstructures
Neighboring Chords
And they are constantly being updated :)
All books include example videos to listen to and bring the explanations to life.
For all instruments:Harmonic and melodic. Not just for guitar or piano.
No sheet music:Everything is explained visually with diagrams, arrows, and colors.
Permanent access + updates:Buy once and receive all future versions.
Self-explanatory diagrams:The graphics speak for themselves, but each one includes a written explanation.
What you'll find
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Inversions and drop voicings
Before adding chords, I show you how to get the most out of a single one: inversions of triads and four-note chords, drop 2, drop 3, and drop 4, and the difference between open and closed chords.
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Magic Glue Index
An attempt to measure how alike two chords are: how many notes they share and whether they belong to the same scale. I go through combinatorics to count how many chords exist and arrive at the familiarity index.
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Suspended chords: sus2 and sus4
I show you where sus2 and sus4 chords fit in: a sus4 before a major chord, a sus2 before a minor one, and the suspension on the fifth degree. Also which ones are diatonic and which aren't.
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Neo-Riemannian theory and neighbor chords
My first system, neighbor chords: moving a single note of a chord with the P, R, and L operations. Generation by generation I build a harmonic proximity map and add secondary dominants and 2 → 5 → 1 to it.
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Extended pyramid and modulation
I expand the pyramid from the first book with diminished and augmented chords. Then I take the chords from Pachelbel's Canon and transform them with tonal functions, secondary dominants, 2 → 5 → 1, and pivot chords.
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Bartók axes
The opposite of everything before: the Bartók axes, which link chords that share almost no notes, with poles a tritone apart. I show you how to bring that system back to tonality, always in chord symbols and with no sheet music.
Book details
- Author
- Brian Callipari
- Format
- PDF (digital book). There's also a print edition, in Spanish only.
- Pages
- 218
- Languages
- Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Turkish, and Japanese
- Who it's for
- It's for you if you've already read Illustrated Harmony and want to go deeper; you need to be able to play major, minor, diminished, augmented, and dominant chords.
What musicians are saying
Hey Brian, just wanted to reach out. I studied music composition at Berklee and I genuinely wish I had your books back then. Not because my professors were bad, but because your visual approach would have cut my learning curve in HALF. Picked up Tensions Illustrated last week and it's brilliant. The way you map out tensions over chord types is something I haven't seen anyone else do this clearly. Respect man.
Brian I have to be honest with you. I almost didn't buy your books because I've wasted SO much money on music theory courses and books that promised everything and delivered nothing. Bought Harmony Illustrated on a whim and I literally sat there with my mouth open. After 20+ years of playing guitar I finally see the bigger picture. This is not an exaggeration. You cracked the code man
THE COLORS. Thats what gets me. The way you use color to show relationships between notes and chords... my brain just GETS it now. Bought all of them btw 😅
Bro I showed your Harmony Illustrated to my guitar teacher and he literally ordered a copy for himself on the spot 😂 said he wished he had something like this when he was studying. Thats the best review I can give you honestly
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