How to analyze a piece
A layered method for understanding any song or piece, from form and key to harmony, melody, rhythm and sound.
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Content under musical review. It may contain inaccuracies.
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A layered method for understanding any song or piece, from form and key to harmony, melody, rhythm and sound.
Advanced
To analyze a piece is to ask why it sounds the way it does. You don't need a score: with your ears, your guitar and an orderly method you can work out the form, the key, the chords and the melodic ideas of almost any music. What you learn this way feeds straight into how you play and compose.
For practice, analyze this original eight-chord progression. Listen to all of it before thinking about names:
Where does it feel at rest? Where is the tension highest? Those impressions are the first piece of data.
The chords are Am, F, C, G, Am, Dm, E and Am. All but one belong to A natural minor; the seventh has G♯, the leading tone of harmonic minor:
String 6, Open: E2 · 5 · Fifth
Open the key's harmony map and find each chord with its degree:
Harmony in A minorIf you work out a chord by ear and don't know its name, enter it in the chord finder by frets, from the sixth string to the first:
Identify a chord from its fretsA layered method, inspired by LaRue:
In the example: i – VI – III – VII – i – iv – V – i. The first half steps through natural-minor chords; the second ends with an authentic cadence thanks to the major V borrowed from harmonic minor.
Always use the same template: one row per section, with columns for bars, chords, degrees, cadence, melody and notes. Comparing several pieces in one style reveals recurring patterns: progressions, phrase lengths, arranging devices. That comparison teaches more than anything.
Cook warns that an analysis isn't a list of names but an explanation of how the music works. The same chord can be a secondary dominant, a modal borrowing or plain colour depending on context. Ask what each chord prepares, what expectation it sets up and whether the piece fulfils or dodges it. A deceptive cadence, for instance, only makes sense once you've felt the expectation of the authentic one.