Stevie Wonder Taught Me Harmony

A teenage obsession became a foundation for how I hear music

When I was a teenager, one of the things that drew me toward composing my own music was my love of harmony. I spent countless hours studying chord changes and complex voicings in jazz, as well as the harmonic motion in classical music from composers like Liszt and Wagner. But much of that theory still felt abstract until I studied Stevie Wonder.

To say …