The Harmonic Processions Theory
The hierarchy of chords and scales in music harmony
A theory of consonance and dissonance for the modern composer and music theorist
Coming in early 2026
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About the Harmonic Processions Theory
The Harmonic Processions Theory is a system for classifying all 350 possible sets—commonly referred to as chords or scales—found in Western music. The name reflects the system’s structure in which harmonies process sequentially from simple to complex, revealing shared origins and interrelationships. This journey traverses a gradient from consonance to dissonance and organizes sonorities by distinct harmonic flavors, that is, modalities.
Guided by mathematical principles, the theory of Harmonic Processions unveils an expressive world, elegant in its logic. It serves as a powerful tool for composers, music theorists, musicologists, and enthusiasts seeking to explore the nature of music harmony. More than a theoretical framework, it is a practical reference—a catalog of harmonic swatches or a harmonic color wheel—designed to aid in identifying and understanding the character and potential of all chords and scales.
Why This Book?
Painters have color swatches, color wheels, and gray scales. Architects consult reference books on the properties of steel, concrete, and timber. Chemists have the Mendeleev’s periodic table of elements. But what do composers have to guide their harmonic explorations? How do they find that perfect chord or scale—one suitable for the occasion, not too cliché but also not too jarring—something with a base of vanilla, a touch of melancholy, yet still bright and open?
Music students learn about harmony gradually from various sources. As children, they encounter happy and sad chords (major and minor). Guitarists soon discover the richness of added 7ths and 9ths, while the pianists spend hours practicing the harmonic and the melodic minor scales. In college, students meet the pentatonic and the diatonic modes. Venturing further—perhaps while playing in a wind ensemble or orchestra—they encounter the octatonic and the whole-tone scales, unlocking yet another layer of harmonic depth.
Many college programs require music majors to take post-tonal theory, a course that dazzles and confounds with interval-class vectors, hexachordal combinatoriality, and transpositional symmetries. Amid this strange and exhilarating landscape, one steadfast element emerges: the list of set classes—the complete catalog of 350 possible chords and scales encountered in Western music. Among them are the familiar major chord and major scale, the hexatonic, the octatonic, the chromatic scale, and many others, repeatedly used by composers and catalogued by theorists. Still many more remain like distant stars: identified by a number but unnamed and unexplored. With barely a six-digit interval vector assigned to each set, there is little to indicate the character, the modality, the flavor, or the level of dissonance of these sonorities. If this system is meant to be the composer’s periodic table or a color swatch book, it is not particularly inviting.
Where does a composer turn when seeking to convey sorrow, bitterness, bliss, brashness, joy, or ambiguity? Traditionally, they rely on instinct and luck while experimenting with harmonies at the piano until something interesting emerges. One can always imitate other composers by adopting their favorite chords or avoid exploration altogether by reusing the tried and true—the diatonic scale is quite powerful, thank you very much.
But what about those who know there is so much more to discover, who are ready to claim some of those unnamed distant stars for themselves? Now they can.
The purpose of this book is to explore every chord and scale and to catalog them in such a way that makes their content, qualities, and relationships easy to reference, intuitive to understand, and practical to apply in creative work. If you have ever wished for a color wheel of harmony—a true reference guide to sonic possibilities—this is where your search ends and creativity begins.
How to Use This Book?
This book assumes that the reader is already familiar with basic music theory concepts such as scale, chord, interval, accidentals (sharps and flats), and transposition. The ability to read music notation in both treble and bass clefs is also beneficial. The knowledge of post-tonal theory is helpful although not essential. As more advanced ideas are introduced, they will be explained in an accessible manner.
The heart of the book lies in the enclosed tables, which invite the reader to bypass the introductory material and immediately explore new chords and scales through improvisation or composition. However, readers who value a deeper understanding of the theory’s methodology, will find detailed explanations, examples, and exercises in the preceding chapters.