Harmony for Songwriters
A course by Adrián SuchowolskiComposer, Music Producer
A course by Adrián Suchowolski, Composer, Music Producer
Harmony for songwriters, exploring diatonic chords, modes, functional harmony, secondary dominants, tritone substitutions, modal interchange
Learn harmony in a hands‑on way and give your songs a wider range of colors. In this online course, Adrian Suchowolski walks you through functional and modal harmony on piano and guitar, showing how these ideas actually feel when you're writing music.
You start with the basics songwriters really use: the major scale, diatonic chords, triads, sevenths, inversions, voicings, and the usual extensions and suspensions. From there, you get a clear sense of how tension and release work through tonic, subdominant, and dominant roles, and how those shifts give a song its emotional pull.
Then you jump into modes, minor keys, and the practical differences between modal writing and functional harmony. It becomes easier to decide when you want a firm tonal center and when it's better to hover on a pedal note or a simple vamp. Later, you try out tools like secondary dominants, tritone swaps, modal mixture, and diminished chords—useful tricks for smooth key changes or little harmonic surprises that still make musical sense.
Everything is shown on real instruments, always with songwriting in mind, whether you're working in pop, rock, folk, jazz, film music, or anything else. A downloadable PDF gathers all the theory and charts so you can keep experimenting with your own songs.
What will you learn in this online course?
4 lessons & 3 downloads
What's included in this course?
You’ll get comfortable using harmony as a real songwriting tool, starting with basic diatonic triads and moving toward richer, more colorful chords. Along the way, you’ll work through major scales, chord degrees, triads, sevenths, extensions, suspensions, inversions, and voicings, and you’ll start to hear how tension and release actually shape a progression. All of it is hands‑on at the piano and guitar, where even a tiny shift in a bass note or voicing can change the mood of a song in surprising ways.
You’ll dig into the seven modes, minor keys, and the contrast between modal writing and more traditional key‑centered thinking. There’s room to play: Dorian vamps, Phrygian or Lydian flavors, Mixolydian grooves, and the minor scales you’ve bumped into in classical pieces. Then you’ll move into heavier harmonic tools—secondary dominants, tritone substitutions, modal interchange, diminished chords, and how they open doors to new keys. To wrap it up, you’ll get a downloadable PDF and a set of creative exercises to help you study songs you love and fold these ideas into your own music.
Recommended software & tools for this course
Who is this online course for?
Songwriters and composers who want hands‑on harmony tools, producers curious about deeper chord colors, and musicians of any style who can already play a bit of piano or guitar and want their progressions to move, build tension, and land cleanly—without getting buried in theory.
Requirements and materials
You don’t need heavy music theory. If you can play a few basic chords on piano or guitar, count to seven, remember simple times tables, and you have an instrument plus a way to watch the videos and open the PDF, you’re set.
Reviews
- 5 months ago
Hola Adrián, gracias por el curso ya que es un era lo que necesitaba para crear melodías y adentrarme más en el solfeo de una manera práctica . Felicidades
Although Adrián was born in Madrid, his influences are wide-ranging, from Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney to Ryuichi Sakamoto, Schubert, and Mahler. Everything he enjoys listening to finds its way into his creative process.
Suko has performed extensively in Madrid’s indie rock scene, appearing at venues such as Sala Villanos, Sala Clamores, Moby Dick, and Sala Moe. His music, however, has taken him far beyond his hometown. He occasionally collaborates with artists in Los Angeles and Minneapolis and has toured the United States alongside his friend, the acclaimed saxophonist Nelson Devereaux.
Content
Harmony for Songwriters
- Introduction
- Functional Harmony Basics
- Modes and minor tonality
- Advanced Functional Harmony
- Final project
What to expect from a Domestika course
Learn at your own pace
Enjoy learning from home without a set schedule and with an easy-to-follow method. You set your own pace.
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Learn valuable methods and techniques explained by top experts in the creative sector.
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Get front-row seats
Videos of the highest quality, so you don't miss a single detail. With unlimited access, you can watch them as many times as you need to perfect your technique.
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Ask questions, request feedback, or offer solutions. Share your learning experience with other students in the community who are as passionate about creativity as you are.
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FAQs
Yes, this course is designed for intermediate students who already understand basic music theory and want to deepen their knowledge of functional harmony, diatonic chords, modal interchange, and advanced chord techniques.
You should be comfortable with reading music, basic major and minor scales, and simple triads. Prior experience with chord progressions and piano or digital audio workstations like Logic Pro is helpful but not essential.
You'll learn how to construct diatonic chords and triads by stacking thirds within a major scale, and how these chords function within a key to create progressions and harmonic movement.
Yes, the course teaches modal interchange techniques, showing you how to borrow chords from parallel modes to add color and variety to your songwriting and arrangements.
Absolutely. The course explores chord inversions, voicing techniques, and how to apply them effectively both on piano and within digital audio workstations like Logic Pro.
You'll gain practical tools for building advanced chord progressions, including functional harmony, modal interchange, secondary dominants, and substitutions, enabling you to craft more expressive and professional-sounding music.
Yes, you'll learn how to construct and use seventh chords, chord extensions, and suspended chords to enrich harmonic texture and complexity in your music.