Hi everyone — I’m Sylvie from Luxembourg. I’m very happy to have found this course. French harmony has fascinated me for quite a long time, and recently I’ve been digging much deeper into harmony and voice leading. I’m aiming to go much deeper into composition and improvisation, and I also sing, so I’m especially interested in developing harmony as something I can really hear, feel and use — not just understand intellectually. My goal is to make these things practical and instinctive through writing, playing, singing and later on fugue and orchestration. So Barney’s course seems to have come along at exactly the right moment for me. Looking forward to working through the exercises and learning with you all!

@Barney Johnson Hi Barney, Thanks a lot for your detailed reply — that actually helps me understand the logic of the French method much better. Just before discovering your course, I had bought Isabelle Duha’s L’harmonie en liberté – de la mémoire à l’improvisation. I’ve started looking at her fiches techniques, where she has the student memorize and transpose basic chord progressions, cadences and harmonic sequences at the piano. I find that approach very appealing because it seems to build the sound and the voice-leading into the hands and ears before doing too much theoretical analysis. Do you know Duha’s book, and if so, how would you place it in relation to the method you teach? Would you see it as a useful parallel piano practice to your exercises, or would you recommend keeping the approaches separate at the beginning? I’d be very interested in your view, especially since the goals seem closely related.