Functional, Non-Functional & Ornamental Harmony: What Moves a Song?

Functional Harmony sounds like a phrase you’d find scribbled on a dusty whiteboard in a music college classroom.

It’s all about what’s essential in the harmony and what’s kind of just the glitter on top — the optional ear-candy. That’s exactly the distinction that really shook things up for me: functional chords vs. ornamental ones.

What's the big deal, you say? Well, check out this video of Mohini Dey transcribing on the go; that's a demonstration of what we're pondering over today.

Needless to say, that's a handful of skills in play simultaneously, not just ability to isolate functional harmony — sight reading/writing being one of the many other chops too. As a freelance instrument player working with accomplished artists (more importantly, accomplished setlists), sight reading is an absolute handy chop.

Not so much for your neighbourhood band though.

Ear training takes yearssss. That's not a typo.

And I feel it's a muscle that also requires a regular pump; in other words, it's easy to lose touch. At least that's what I experience. The way we listen is subjective too, and the existence of perfect pitch proves my point. If you don't know about it, Perfect pitch is the ability where a listener can exactly pinpoint the name of the note without any initial reference. YouTuber Rick Beato famously took off after posting a video of his kids doing the same. Back to original plot. We often hear that big triad stack logic: major is a major third + minor third, minor is the reverse, and diminished = two minor thirds stacked. And yeah, cool. That checks out for a keyboard or harmony test. Example - Notes in C major chord (CEG); C to E (a major triad) and E to G (a minor triad).

But harmony goes beyond intervals in isolation. What really matters in a song is how chords move: that underlying push-pull.

Think of a song like a road trip from home (tonic) to a cliff's edge (dominant), and maybe a little detour village on the way (subdominant). The official words you'd scribble on a whiteboard? Tonic, Subdominant, and Dominant. That’s functional harmony at its core.

Tonic is the root, your chill zone — C major in a C major song, let’s say. Then there’s the subdominant (F Major and Dm in C major) which nudges you forward. And finally, the dominant (G Major or B Diminished in C major) pulls you hard to home.

That “gravitational pull” is where music breathes.

Now here’s the thing: function is not about the decoration. You could play Am or Am9—it’s still serving the same role in the progression. That 9th doesn’t change the journey. It changes the color, not the intention.

That’s what I casually call ornamental harmony (I think it'll catch on).

And if you just want to spice things up, you might throw in something like B♭sus4 — weird, out of the key, doesn’t follow the usual rules. Suddenly you’re stepping into that hazy area called non-functional harmony. And now you’re outside that neat tonic-subdominant-dominant map. You’re in adventure land.

Now, depending on which music college you went to — or YouTube channel you binge—you might categorize that B♭sus4 as a borrowed chord, or maybe a chromatic chord. But if I had to explain it to another musician during a jam, I’d just say: “Yeah man, it’s not part of the plan. But it works.”

Further Reading Suggestions

Tymoczko, Dmitri – A Geometry of Music (for functional vs. ornamental spatially)

Kostka & Payne – Tonal Harmony (solid grounding on functional systems)

Arnold Schoenberg – Structural Functions of Harmony (where function-as-gravity gets formalized)

Walter Everett – The Beatles as Musicians (practical breakdown of chords vs. function in pop music)

Hearing Function — Elephant in the Room

I’ve got a recommended workout on functional harmony, but here’s the honest disclaimer: I don’t know what will work for whom.

As mentioned earlier, I truly believe the way we hear music isn’t universal. Some people can pick up dissonance, others don’t even notice, and vice versa. So yeah, when I say I’ve got a workout, I mean it's experimental — not prescriptions.

I call it "1–4–5 Isolation Drill".

(I think it'll catch on too.)

Here’s the gist:

Just use the I, IV, and V chords — that’s tonic, subdominant, and dominant. But ignore major/minor quality for now. Strip it down to function.

So instead of thinking “C major, F major, G major,”

just feel the movement:

C → F → G → C

Home → departure → tension → back home

You could try this in C major (C–F–G), or if the song is in minor key, replace C major by A minor; rest stays the same. Remember it's all about functionality.

The goal isn’t to lock into a key, it’s to get your ears feeling functional gravity. How the song moves. Not how it sounds harmonically.

And yes, this might be uncomfortable for those whose ears immediately grab onto major/minor character. If ignoring that quality bugs you, fair enough. You’ve been warned.

But I’d still argue it’s worth practicing..

Whether you're listening to The Beatles, Beyoncé, or Bach, there's usually some kind of I–IV–V logic guiding the song.

That was the workout. Now back to the original storyline.

We noted earlier how Bbsus4 replacing Am in the progression C - Am - F - G was scandalous from the lens of functional harmony. That's just 'a way' to be not functional; there's more!

Kinds of Non-Functional Harmony

You can do anything in music... as soon as you break away from what our ears have been trained to expect, you’re venturing into non-functional harmony.

And by “trained to expect,” I mean harmony built on stacked thirds — the whole major/minor triad language that Western ears have absorbed over centuries.

It’s not “better,” it’s just familiar. It’s become the default.

But when you step outside that — when you go off-road — that’s when it gets interesting.

“Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden, for example. There's a lot going on harmonically in that song. You don’t need a theory degree to notice — it just feels different. Still melodic. Still singable. You can even argue there's a tonal center in there.

But it’s not functioning in the usual tonic–dominant–subdominant cycle we hear in most pop and rock. And sure, advanced theorists can reverse-engineer a functional framework for it. But when you first hear it, your gut tells you: "Wait… this is not the usual playbook."

And that right there — that feeling — is where non-functional harmony lives.

If we dig a little deeper, here are a few broad categories of non-functional harmony:

1. No Tonal Center

Songs that drift. They don’t settle anywhere.

There’s no “home.” No root that the music keeps returning to. A great example is modal jazz — or even certain parts of modern film scores where the idea is to float, not resolve.

2. Math-Based or Systemic Harmony

Chords or note choices follow pattern — algorithmic, serial, geometric, whatever — instead of serving a key or emotion. You might not be able to hum it, but it's all there on paper. Think 12-tone rows, or some of the more abstract electronic compositions.

3. Quartal or Non-Tertian Harmony

Instead of stacking thirds (C–E–G), you stack fourths ( C–F–B♭), or even seconds or fifths. These chords don’t “pull” the way major/minor chords do. They sit there like textures, not arrows. You’ll hear this in modern jazz, progressive rock, or cinematic writing.

4. Color over Function

Some harmony just exists to create a vibe — not to move. These are chords that don’t “need” to go anywhere. Ambient pads, suspended chords that never resolve, or those dreamy progressions that feel like they’re hovering. You could be listening for five minutes and still not know where “home” is. And that’s the point.

Harmony Type	Example Song/Work	Genre	Notable Feature
Functional	"Let It Be" (The Beatles)	Pop/Rock	Clear tonic-dominant cycles
Ornamental	"Isn't She Lovely" (Stevie Wonder)	Soul/R&B	Extended chords (9ths, 11ths) within functional framework
Non-Functional	"Clair de Lune" (Debussy)	Classical	Parallel motion, impressionistic color over function
Hybrid/Blended	"So What" (Miles Davis)	Jazz	Modal (Dorian), static and functional blends

Anyway,

In the last post, we talked about different categories — diatonic chords, extended chords, chromatic chords, borrowed chords — all that good stuff. That’s one way to slice up harmony.

But to me, functional vs ornamental approach seems rather practical. “Here’s a sound. Now, which chords are moving it? Which ones are pushing the song forward?”

From home base, to the wilderness, to the brink of collapse. The kind of movement where everything gets so tense, you’re either desperate to return… or tempted to burn the map and keep going.

And that decision? That’s on the composer. Case Study: A Structural Lens from Schenkerian Analysis

Schenkerian analysis offers a way of understanding harmony that distinguishes between surface complexity and underlying structure. According to this approach, much of what we hear in a piece — colorful chord extensions, voice-leading motion, or non-diatonic embellishments — may belong to the “foreground.”

The true harmonic function, however, lies in a more reduced “background” framework that often boils down to just a few essential relationships: tonic, dominant, and subdominant.

In this view, many chords that appear sophisticated or striking might not alter the functional core of a progression. For example, Cmaj7, Csus2, or C(add9) would all be understood as embellishments of the tonic function. Similarly, chromatic passing chords might add richness without displacing the primary harmonic motion.

This analytical lens helps reinforce the distinction between functional harmony (those chords that carry structural weight) and ornamental harmony (those that contribute color, voice-leading, or expressive nuance without altering the harmonic foundation).

Strange... I’d known about tonic, subdominant, and dominant for years, but it only clicked when my ears were ready. When I started hearing momentum. When I felt the pull, instead of just naming it.

So in a way, it’s a useless concept. All of them are? Is theory yet another way to evade the actual practice?

Beyond a point, theory doesn’t help.

We're always trying to build groundwork for composers. But the irony is:

A composer can never truly have rules. Because if there were rules, everyone would follow them, and every song would be perfect.

But they’re not. And they never will be.

I mean, look at your favorite songs — do you know what colleges those musicians went to?

Does it matter?

Not to say music school’s useless — you'll make great connections, learn a ton.

But still… my inner college rebel finds ways to show up now and then.

Yet we study harmony, hoping to internalize and work out our musicianship. Because it’s not just "what chord" — it’s why that note, right there, makes a difference.

And,

It’s not always the root.

Now that’s a mic drop. Say Bye!

Anubhav Kulshreshtha

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