hey guys, welcome to 12tone.
today we’re gonna talk about harmonizing a melody.
oftentimes, in composition, you’ll devise a melody first and then need to find some
cool chords to put underneath it.
there are many ways to do this, and as long as the end result sounds good to you that’s
great, but the approach we’re gonna talk about today is a simple way to quickly produce
interesting and clever progressions.
because I find this sort of thing easiest to do with example, let’s harmonize this
melody: (ka-clang!)
one of the first things you have to decide is how often and where you want the chords
to change.
there are a lot of options for this: you can do something simple like the beginning of
each bar, or on the ones and threes, or every beat, or you can do more complex, syncopated
rhythms with chord changes on off beats, or if you want to take a classical, 4-part writing
approach, they can change with every melodic attack.
but for the sake of simplicity, and our sanity, we’re going to start with just one chord
per bar.
harmonizing a melody can be difficult, as there are a couple different things you have
to keep in mind at once.
first of all, there’s harmonic rhythm.
just because we’re starting from a different point doesn’t mean everything else we’ve
learned so far doesn’t apply.
people listening to the final piece won’t know what you started with, they’ll just
hear how the pieces interact.
as we mentioned in the harmonic rhythm video, there’s no explicit pattern you need to
follow, as long as you’re actively aware of the functions of the chords you’re using.
for this example, we’re gonna keep things simple and use a classic tonic, tonic, subdominant,
dominant progression, but really any set of choices has its merits, you just have to be
aware of what you’re doing.
the other thing to keep in mind is that the notes of the melody need to fit over the chords.
the simplest approach here is to make them chord tones, though more advanced methods
exist.
however, not all notes need to fit perfectly: long, held notes should, but shorter ones
can sit outside the harmonic structure if you want.
this exit from expectation can create cool effects, but if you sit on them too long you
create a dissonant, uncomfortable rub between the melody and its supporting harmony.
another thing to note is that chord tones higher in the chord structure, especially
the 7th degree, tend to sound richer than lower ones, like the root.
this isn’t good or bad necessarily, but it’s useful to keep in mind.
so with those in place, let’s take a look at our melody.
the first thing to note is the key.
in this case, Bb major.
that way, we can think about the notes in relation to the key they’re in.
we could harmonize this in a different key, changing the functions of the notes, but for
now we’ll stick with the obvious one.
the first bar has four notes in it.
however, those 8th notes are going to pass by so quickly that they don’t wind up having
much impact on the harmony.
we really only need to worry about the dotted quarters.
we know we want a tonic chord, and we know it needs to support an F and an A. our basic
tonic chords are Bb, Dmi, Gmi, and their related 7th chords.
the A means we probably don’t want to use the Gmi here for now, although later on we’ll
encounter some reasons why that might not be true.
likewise, A doesn’t exist in a Bb major triad.
this leaves our choices as Bbma7, Dmi, or Dmi7.
personally, I like to start harmonies on the I chord to emphasize the tonic, so I’ll
choose Bbma7, but that’s not the only right answer.
in the second bar, we only have two notes, and they’re both fairly long, so our chord
should include both.
D and C are a whole step apart, which means that there’s really only one chord in this
key that supports both of them as chord tones.
fortunately, that chord, Dmi7, is a tonic function chord, which is what we wanted anyway.
it’s almost like I did that on purpose.
in the next bar, again, we can ignore the 8th note, A. also, since we have two Bbs,
we can ignore one of them.
our chord has to support a G and a Bb.
here we want a subdominant function chord: in this key, those are Cmi, Eb, and their
7th chords.
Cmi doesn’t have a Bb, but the other three work just fine.
but let’s narrow this down a bit more: we’ve just used two 7th chords in the last two bars,
so let’s continue that theme.
that means the Ebma triad is out.
and if you remember from the subdominant video, we mentioned that when using 7th chords, the
IImi7 is usually better because it doesn’t contain the third degree of the scale, so
my choice would be Cmi7.
this also gives us a cool, stepwise movement in the bass, as an added bonus.
now we need a dominant function chord, and it has to support an Eb, an F, and an A. fortunately,
those are three of the four notes in F7, the primary dominant function chord in Bb, so
let’s use that.
this can resolve back to Bbma7 or, if you want the progression to continue, we could
go to Gmi7, or even something weird like Ebma7.
but let’s keep it simple for now.
this is what our final harmony sounds like: (ker-chang!)
but like I said, you don’t have to do just one chord per bar.
here’s a harmonization of the very same melody, with the chord changing every two
beats: (pa-chow!)
really, the only limit is your ear, and whether what you make sounds good to you: this is
just a tool to get there as quickly as possible.
so that’s one method for harmonizing a melody.
try it out, with this melody or one of your own, and keep on rockin’.