How to Analyze a Piece
Analysis is finding out how something works, not grading it and not showing what theory you know. The order matters: from large to small, and from ear to paper. Start the other way round and you glue theory onto music instead of explaining it.
- 6 steps
- ear first
- three answers beat a hundred labels
Where you run into this
- Analysis
- Songwriting
- Arranging
- Teaching
In short
Listen two or three times with nothing in your hand, then write your first impression in plain language. The chorus feels lighter than the verse. There is an odd hitch before the bridge. Those sentences are the most valuable part of the whole process, because they are the questions the analysis has to answer. Skip them and you will work through a checklist without knowing what you are looking for.
After that: map the form, find the key and the harmonic rhythm, write the chords as numerals, look at the melody against those chords, and only then go down to individual notes.
How it works
Three traps are worth naming. Going to theory too fast: you recognise four chords, write I V vi IV, and never answer why the chorus lifts. Labelling everything: naming every passing note fills a page and explains nothing. And treating the analysis as the point: it is a tool for hearing better, which means an analysis that explains three things is worth more than one that names a hundred.
Where you run into this
- A song that keeps its grip after you know exactly how it works
- A passage you could not play until you understood what it was doing
- A production choice that turns out to explain more than the harmony does
Our own examples
A short excerpt you can play here, taken apart step by step in the order above, with the numerals appearing only after the form and the questions are written down.
Keep going
Everything in melody and form
- Roman Numeral Analysis
- How to Analyze a Piece