A good counter melody is like a good side quest.
It's not necessarily the main focus and storyline, but when executed well
can add depth and substance that makes the whole experience richer and more memorable.
In this video I'm going to show you how to write a counter melody in only two steps.
And make sure you stick around because after that I'll show you
how to add another line and make a more complex four part texture.
For our model we'll use Princess Zelda's Theme, also known as Zelda's Lullaby.
There are two things you'll need before you can start.
The first is a melody with chords.
So obviously you can't have a counter melody unless you have
a main melody to counter it with, and the particular method I'll be showing
you today depends on knowing what the chords already are.
The second requirement is that you're familiar with chord tones.
So if you're still struggling to name all the pitches in a C major triad,
this method won't feel as fluid as it's going to look here.
Step one: find a missing chord tone.
So with our melody on top, and then the chord symbol is telling us what our bass line is going
to be on the bottom, we're only having two pitches which means for any triad there's a missing note.
For any seventh chord or extended chord there could be two three or even more missing notes
So the first thing we're going to want to do is identify what note is missing from the chord.
So I'm going to look at each chord and find the missing chord tone or a missing chord tones.
In this case we've got a Cmaj7 with a B on the top.
We've got C in the root, B on the top which is the seventh.
So we're missing the third, the E, and we're missing the fifth, the G.
So my choice is between the E and the G.
Generally the third is the more important pitch because
the third kind of identifies the characteristic.
That's how we know this is C major not C minor.
So I'm going to go for the E.
Next we're looking at the F over C and you can see we have C in the bass,
because that's how it's defined in the chord, and then A in the melody.
We're missing the F, which for an F chord feels like a pretty important note
so I think that will be our next choice.
And if you can see that actually looks pretty nice coming from that E,
that's going to be pretty smooth voice leading.
As far as missing chord tones I'm just going to copy paste
that because that's going to be the same thing.
We were missing the E, we're missing the F.
So now we've got a Bm7.
We've got the B in the bass, we've got the B in the top.
So again that more important note that we're missing is the D.
If I put an F# here we wouldn't know is this B minor is this B major?
But if I put the D natural we're going to know, okay this is a B minor chord.
And now it says Bm7, I don't really have a place
for that seventh so that's another note that's going to have to be missed.
Of all the choices I think D is definitely the better choice to identify the chord.
In case it wasn't clear, notice that I'm putting all of these notes below the melody.
The melody is staying on top.
Next we have a G diminished over B with an A in the melody.
But really this A is like an appoggiatura.
It settles back down on the G, so I'm going to consider this a
G diminished over Bb with a G in the top.
So what we're missing is that Db.
So we will put that guy in here.
Next we have an Am, and although it has a D in the top that D
settles down in the C so we for the most part have the third of the chord in the melody.
It's the fourth for a moment and then settles down into the third.
We have the root in the bass, so we're missing the fifth.
So what we're gonna want is the the fifth of the chord, the E natural.
And then the last thing is this D7 chord.
So we have the D in the bottom, we have the A in the melody what we're missing is the F#
third and we're missing the C, which is the seventh.
Given again that whole thing, the third is such an important note.
It's interesting how rare it is to find the third in this melody because
the third is such an important note in telling you what the harmony is.
So once again I'm going to go with the third of the chord.
I'm going to go with the F#.
So this line here, this is what we have so far.
This is surprisingly smooth, it's stepwise movement except for this leap I guess from this.
This should be an F natural.
Except for the leap here from the F down to the D, pretty smooth.
I mean I guess technically that's a minor third as well, but it's a very smooth line.
And so here's what it sounds like
before we actually kind of create a line out of this, just using the chord tone as harmony.
Step two is to find and fill the gaps.
It's only so useful to have a counter melody if it can't be heard,
so we're going to look at the main melody and look for moments of rest or of held notes
and find these pockets where the counter melody can speak and kind of be heard on its own.
As a general rule, when your melody moves your counter melody stays still and vice versa.
This isn't always true because most of the time they're probably both going to be playing,
but generally you just want to balance the action
between the two of them so when one moves the other waits and takes its turn after.
So now that we know which notes we're going to use let's look
for those moments where we're going to put them and how we're going to connect them.
This is a pretty active melody, there aren't really any rests,
there aren't really gaps per se except for held notes.
So anytime we see a half note or a dotted half note
that's going to be a chance for us to actually speak.
So the first thing I'm going to think to do
is put a rest here, move this guy over so that that will speak in that moment.
Maybe we'll try the same thing here actually.
So that's okay, it's a little dull so I'm gonna look for a way can we spice this up a little bit.
So instead of just hitting that half note can we maybe run into it or accent around it.
One thing that might work kind of nicely is to just step up an eighth note into it.
So while I got a lot better it adds again a little more interest, a little more flare
and I think that feels pretty good.
So I think we're just going to repeat that because the melody repeats, and then the
exception is that maybe here we'll want to fill that in and make that a little more interesting.
But let's, yeah let's do that now.
Let's land into this.
I like the idea of hitting these down beats for the second phrase,
making it a little more forceful, a little more kind of intentional feeling.
It might actually make a pretty cool line if we go...
So what I did there, let me back up a little bit to show what I did.
I'm taking that D and I'm just using the upper neighbor.
So instead of holding the D, I'm going D-E-D.
It's just decorating the note.
Before we had this, now we have this.
And now I'm going to do the same thing and keep going, hitting to that E which is technically
making this a full diminished seventh but I don't think it's doing any harm.
And then just the the way this line is falling, the D
down to the Db, I think it's a really nice smooth line to fall down into the C.
And then we'll step back up into the E.
So we're still going to get that E that we
that we wanted but we'll just delay it, decorate that last little guy.
I wish these stopped just ever so slightly.
All right I'm going to kind of backtrack a little on what I said and try doing the
offbeat thing on all these other measures as well, just to see what that feels like.
Does that add some nice interest?
Maybe it won't but I want to try that so I'm going to change these parts.
I think that's better.
I like that maintaining that kind of pattern
we've established of the offbeat thing I think actually makes it a little nicer.
It is that whole thing of speaking to the gaps, finding
the moments where the line's going to be actually heard.
This D wasn't really being as heard and it wasn't letting the melody be as heard.
I was kind of losing some strength in the melody by hitting everybody on that downbeat.
So giving the melody its own chance
and then the counter melody its own chance both were able to be heard.
So here we go, here's the whole thing of the main melody,
bass line, and counter melody together in in three parts.
So although it might seem like a more complex texture, adding a fourth line,
a second counter melody, is really as simple as just following these two steps again.
In this case we're lucky because there are chord tones,
there are going to be places where we still don't have every note from the chord.
Sometimes if you only have a triad you're going to need to double,
and how you do that will depend a bit on the context.
The only thing that makes this a little harder is that we filled a lot of those gaps with our
counter melody, so this second counter melody will probably be a simpler line.
Or we could find places where we maybe want to borrow the action from the counter melody,
give it to the second counter melody and balance those out that way.
In this case I'll probably just go for a simpler line in that fourth part.
So now for the fourth part I'm going to add a viola part.
I apologize for the alto clef, I also...
I shouldn't say "also" because maybe you are great at alto clef but
I personally am not a fan of alto clef.
But it's good for us to, you know, to practice, to work on our skills.
So I'm going to continue in using the viola in the alto clef.
So what we're missing here is the G.
We have the C, E and B from the Cmaj7 chord but we're missing the G.
So I'm gonna do the same thing I did in step one.
I'm gonna go in and just add where that missing note is.
That's the G above that C in the bottom,
so we're kind of filling the gap between this cello and violin part.
So that's the G, now here this one's a little more interesting.
We're missing nothing because we have an F major triad.
We have the A, the F, and the C.
All notes are accounted for, so now we have to double.
A little bit of my instinct says go for the nearest note,
either the A (and I don't want to copy the melody) or the F immediately below it.
But I think to make the line a little more interesting I'm actually going to go for
the C up here, which is still underneath what we have here,
and that's just going to allow us some room to actually have a line, to have something.
You know we ended up, kind of fortunately we ended up with a gap here that
this might be able to fill kind of nicely.
So let's start just trying with a scale climb, what does that do for us?
Yeah I think that's going to work.
Could we fall down into that G at all, like an A into the G?
I'm going the opposite direction of the melody.
Yeah feels pretty good to me actually.
I'm gonna keep that as a quarter note and then we'll copy this guy back over.
I have to decide, because I did something a little different here, I have to decide
how I might want to do it differently.
Sometimes you work forward, sometimes you want to work backwards.
So let's see where we're going to end up and then
we'll think about how we're going to fill this gap here.
All right so again the Bm7, this time we have a missing note.
We have a 7th chord, we had the B, we had the third, the d, we have the root, the b.
Can we fit... oh we have two missing notes!
We're missing the A and the F#.
The A is a more interesting note so I'm going to lean towards the A.
Now what we're missing, we emphasized the..
We have everybody spoken for here so
maybe this is a case where we want to kind of lean towards who's close.
Let's go for the G because even though the melody ends up on a G it's not actually really present.
So I'm leaning towards that and then what's missing here?
Nobody's missing. We could turn this into a Am7.
That is up to our own taste if we like that, but that's keeping that G over pretty smooth.
And then the C is missing from this chord.
We have the D, the F#, and the A. We're missing the C.
So let's climb up to that guy and maybe even we'll do a similar move
that we did like that into the C, it's kind of like a recurring motif.
There's an eighth note gap here, there's an eighth note gap here,
that's where I'm thinking there's some space.
That could work as like a little rhythmic pattern.
Let's listen to two different things.
Violin one, viola, and cello, so we can hear that kind of alternate counter melody.
We'll start with that and then we'll listen to
everybody, but let's start with that alternate counter melody idea here.
So that works on its own,
that works as a trio even though this was written as like a fourth part.
We followed the same principles, we still went for "what's a missing chord tone?",
"where are some gaps that we want to fill?", so it still works in a lot of the same way.
So now let's listen to the whole thing played back.
MIDI files for both of these versions are available through my Patreon so
I'll put a link for that in the description below.
That might be especially useful if you're somebody
who prefers to look at a piano roll and wants to drop that into your DAW.
Before you can write a counter melody you're going to need a good melody to write it to,
so check out this video where I talk about the formula I use for almost all of my melodies.
Check out this video to see how John Williams uses repetition to make his themes so memorable.
Thanks for watching and I will see you in the next one!