- Hi, well so far we've really had a focus on harmony,
which is no big surprise because
the clue's in the title, isn't it?
This is a keyboard harmony course,
so we want to be really sure about our harmony.
But we don't want to think about harmony
to the exclusiuon of everything else.
So I'm going to start the third part of this course
by thinking about melodic design
and other things that are associated with that.
So it may be that a particular keyboard harmony challenge
you need to go about is this one,
where instead of starting with a melody
that we're trying to find chords to fit,
actually we're starting with a set of chords,
what we call a chord scheme,
and we're trying to find a melody that fits with the chords.
So let's have a think about this one.
I've purposely kept these chords fairly straight forward.
We're in the key of C major.
Let's just see if we can find all the chords we need.
So we've got I.
And then we're going to V.
Then we're coming back to I.
And then we're going to IV.
And then to V.
And then back to I again.
So the first thing is just to get familiar
with that sequence of chords.
You may already be highly familiar
with that kind of sequence of chords, that's fine.
If you're not and you want to pause
and just get your fingers around it,
that would be a great thing to do.
The next thing is to be able to play those
basic triads, as I've just done it,
but really thinking about where it all fits rhythmically.
Because you can see that in bars one and three,
we've got two chords to the bar.
In bars two and four, we've just got one chord to the bar.
So we want to make sure that we can keep these four beats
going in every bar.
One thing that often happens with keyboard harmony ventures
is that it says that it's got four beats in a bar,
or someone's decided it's going to have four beats in a bar,
but in fact we get four beats in some bars,
three in another, five in another,
four and a half in another.
And it's becoming dislocated rhythmically
just because we haven't actually got
the right number of beats in every bar.
It's easy to think from one chord to the next,
or one melody note to the next
without really keeping tabs on where we are in the bar.
So one thing that it will be useful to do now
is to think, can we play this chord scheme
but keeping it exactly in time?
So this is on the first beat,
this is on the third beat.
This is taking all four beats,
that's on the first beat,
that's on the third beat,
that's taking all four beats.
So can we do that?
So we go one, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
That in itself is harder to do than most people realise.
If you're just going to doodle about
until you can work out where the next chord is,
you'll be adding beats right left and centre.
So getting used to timing that
in relation to whatever the time signature may be.
So that's something else that you might just want
to stop and practise so you can move
through the chord scheme, but to keep it in time.
Okay now then, how are we going to set about
improvising some kind of melody
that fits with that chord scheme.
And the thing that most people experience
when they start trying to do this,
is they end up with notes in the melody
clashing with the chords
and not sounding terribly satisfactory.
The problem being that they've got notes in the melody
that don't actually belong to the chords.
So the thing we're going to do first
is to try and improvise a melody
that just uses notes that belong to the triad.
So when we're playing chord I,
the melody at the moment is only going to use
the notes C, E, and G.
When we're using chord V,
the melody's only going to use the notes G, B, D.
When we're playing chord IV,
the melody's only going to use the notes F, A, C.
So you might sort of think,
okay yeah well I suppose I could do something like this.
That's fine as a starting point
because you're using the notes of the triad
and getting used to slipping those into a melody.
You're also already discovering something,
that if you want to use all the notes of the triad,
and you've got to fit it into the time available,
sometimes you've got to have rhythm in the melody
that's going faster than the chord changes,
the harmonic rhythm.
So it's a good exercise in trying to do that
and not just to do a note in the melody
that moves every time there's a chord.
Because we could do what I just asked you to do
using the same rhythm by doing this.
So that's okay, isn't it?
It all sounds all right.
The melody belongs to the chord,
but it's pretty boring, isn't it?
Because the melody's just following the rhythm of the chord.
So we're trying to do something that's got
a little bit of rhythmic independence
as well as finding melody notes that would work
to float above the chords.
So this takes a little bit of doing.
Now to make it a bit more interesting,
you don't just have to start at the bottom of the triad
then climb up the next two notes of the triad.
You could take the triad in any order you wanted to.
So we could do something like this,
still keeping the triad's kind of
as they are on the left hand.
Okay, not the world's most exciting melody,
but rather more interesting than just going up the triad
or just coming down the triad.
I'm trying to duck and dive inside the triads,
and I'm also thinking about when we go
from one melody note to the next,
does the melody have a particular pull?
Like for example at the beginning,
if you go C and E
over that initial chord I.
You'd maybe come down to D next.
Because the D is in between
the C and the E, so it's going to sound
a bit more melodic than just lepaing all over the place.
And what we want to try and do
is get a little bit of balance
between what we call conjunct and disjunct movement.
So conjunct is just notes that are next door to each other,
and disjunct is when we're leaping.
When you're just using notes that belong to the chords,
the tendency is to sort of leap all over the landscape.
I mean you could do it like this, couldn't you, for example?
But do you see, that doesn't make much sense
as a melody, does it, because we're jumping
all over the landscape.
So that's a kind of extreme example
of dealing with this in a disjunct kind of way.
So it's making sure the leaps aren't too big,
but just thinking where does the melody lead me?
As I'm listening to that melody,
do I sort of hear the next note?
And that's to do with this thing we call voice leading,
where does the melody really want to go,
where is it pulling us?
So if you can kind of follow your instincts with that,
often a melody does want to go in a particular direction,
but often a melody doesn't pull in any particular direction.
So you're thinking well it could be this,
or it could be that, but it's probably not
going to be something else.
So use your ears to sort of think,
where is this actually taking me?
So you can pause at any point,
and this is another point where you might want to pause
just to think okay, let's see if I can
deliver the chord scheme, keeping the pulse steady,
keeping four beats in every bar,
moving the chords in the right place,
and then improvise a melody in the right hand
that's using notes that just belong
to the triad in question,
but is making some kind of melodic sense
so there's a kind of melodic flow or melodic shape to it
that actually is musically intelligble.
Okay, so if you want to pause and do that, feel free.
Or stick with this and see it through
to the end if you want to.
What we're now going to do is to move on and say,
okay well we can't just live on a melody line
that's just using notes that belong to the chord.
But that doesn't mean to say,
well you can just use any old notes you like,
because then that's where we get into trouble, isn't it?
What we can do, though, is to make use of something
we've already talked about, the inessential notes.
So if we slip a few passing notes in,
if we slip a few auxiliary notes in,
if we maybe use the odd anticipatory notes,
we can get more of a flow into the melody.
And these inessential notes will open up extra opportunities
for us to use conjunct movement.
So for example, if I in the first bar
wanted to do this in the melody,
C, E, G,
well I could connect that with passing notes, couldn't I?
I could go,
and suddenly melodically that's much stronger, isn't it?
Now it invovles us using some quicker notes, again.
But just see how that really flows on.
It's not the only thing you can do there,
but it's got a definite kind of melodic character
just by running up the scale.
And then when you get to the G and the chord changes,
it all flows on very nicely, doesn't it?
So, how can we do this?
Lots of different possibilities,
even within this simple chord scheme,
just to think passing notes, auxiliary notes,
where does it take me to?
Just one possibility.
Okay it all sounds a bit kind of
sort of twee at the moment, doesn't it?
That doesn't matter, but every note in that melody
makes sense because it either belongs to the chord,
so it's a harmony note or an essential note,
or it's one of these inessential notes.
Lots of passing notes there,
some auxiliary notes going, as well.
So you can combine this kind of using notes from the chords
with the inessential notes,
you get much more flow into it,
you're discovering all the time about
how to get the rhythm to be independent
of the chord movement, and we've got much more
kind of opportunity to use conjunct movement
to balance any disjunct movement that we want to have.
And by the way, in any melody you don't want
to be exclusively disjunct or exclusively conjunct.
You want some kind of balance between the two.
So, we're also now talking about
how we can make the rhythm a little bit more interesting.
So that kind of goes along with thinking about the melody.
At the moment, we've just got the chords
plonking down as triads, so the other thing
that you want to think about having got this far with it,
is what can we do the vary the texture?
What do I mean by that really?
Well texture is all about how is the sound organised,
so am I just going to sit here going,
triad, triad, triad?
Or am I going to say, well actually I already know
how to use those triads to make chords,
but could we do something to make it a bit more interesting?
Like for example, could we turn the left hand
into an Alberti bass?
Something like this.
Do you see, so there's the Alberti bass idea,
just breaking up the triad going bottom, top,
middle, top, bottom, top, middle, top.
You might even think, actually if I'm going
to do the Alberti bass there,
I could use a few inversion chords.
So maybe going from I to Vb to I.
Because if you go I,
and then jump to V,
then jump back to I,
that doesn't go quite as smoothly as going,
I, Vb, back to I.
Because then the bass goes by step from C to B to C,
and arguably it's slightly easier to play, actually.
So you might think,
yeah actually I could use a Vb there.
You could use IVb, Vb, I.
So that the bass then goes,
A,
B,
C.
So now we're also just thinking, you know what?
Apart from a melody in the right hand,
there can be some little sense of a sort of counter melody
going in the bass part.
Well that may be a step too far at the moment,
I don't know, or you may be ready to embrace that.
But certainly worth thinking about,
are there some first inversion chords here
that would just help to vary things
so we're not stuck in root position all the time?
We're getting kind of empowered in the use
of first inversion chords,
and at the same time we're getting a melody
that's kind of making sense
with harmony notes and inessential notes,
we're getting a bit of independent rhythm.
What's the sense of the line and the phrase that's going on?
Or do we want to break up the chords in some other way?
So we could do something that's a bit wider
than just Alberti, like something like this.
That's just a kind of extension and breaking up the chords.
You see suddenly, it sounds much more
like a piece of music, doesn't it,
than clunking chords down?
So at the end of the day,
I mean it takes time to get fluent in keyboard harmony,
but you want to be playing music
that doesn't sound like keyboard harmony,
but actually sounds like a real piece of music
in whatever style you want to work in.
And we'll come back and maybe talk a bit more
about styles later on.
But for now, hopefully you can see
that we've got quite a few things to work on.
We've got the kind of harmony side of things moving,
which is brilliant, now maybe is a good opportunity
to do a bit of work on melodic improvisation
that fits with the chord scheme,
getting happy about harmony and inessential notes,
thinking about how you might vary the texture, as well,
to make the whole thing more interesting.
You could even do things like
put the chords in the right hand,
have the melody going in the left hand, you know?
Even if you're just repeating chords
in the right hand for now, you know?
But just to get the idea of turning the thing upside down.
When you're improvising a longer piece,
those kind of variations are really welcome.
Otherwise you find yourself on a loop
going around the same old thing over and over again,
thinking I'm not quite sure what else to do.
So freeing yourself up to do things with the texture
is really a very liberating exercise.
It's going to take time to get used to doing that
if you've not done it before,
so be ready to make an investment of time in it.
And if you can do all this in C major,
well why not venture out and think,
okay what about these other keys?
What about G major, F major?
What about thinking about some of the minor keys we've done?
A minor, E minor, D minor.
Take a step further if you're feeling brave
and get around the circle of fifths.
It's amazing how many people can do
some quite good improvisation keyboard harmony stuff
in C major, but as soon as they leave C major,
they're in trouble.
So we want to be able to explore the keys a bit.
So quite a bit of stuff there
that I've tried to set you up with
that you could take away and really work on,
and then come back for the next exciting development.