Was studying a vocal arrangement to get how its harmony works, felt like I was following, then—bam! Are there good frameworks for understanding tone clusters like these? Like: why every diatonic *except* G# on the first cluster? Should we see the second as an elaborate V of ii?
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i fucking love this arrangement of 715 - CRΣΣKS so one sec i'm gonna try to answer this question despite not knowing anything about harmony really
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okay so played around with this on piano a bit and i think the bare chord progression here with no embellishment is D - A - E, so IV - I - V. so in the first cluster, aside from the B you could argue in terms of voice leading that it’s just notes held from the D
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This is a cool argument! The B doesn't bother me—call it an A9 (lots of 9s in this arrangement; that fits), with some lingering notes from the D.