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2 $11.95 USD Copyright 2007 by Pantomime Music Publications P.O. Box 31177, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3K 5Y1 All rights reserved. Printed in Canada. This book is protected by Copyright. Permission must be obtained in writing from Pantomime Music Publications for the use of any original text or musical materials contained within this publication. Permission must be obtained from the publisher prior to any reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise. THIS IS NOT A FREE EBOOK. This book, "How to Harmonize a Melody", is sold only through Pantomime Music Publications. If you purchased or received it elsewhere, you should be aware that you are in possession of stolen property; it has been given away illegally and the author has not received payment.

3 TABLE of CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 4 What is Harmonizing? 5 Which First Melody or Chords? 6 Contouring a Melody 6 HARMONIZING a MELODY 11 THE I-CHORD 12 THE V-CHORD 13 THE IV-CHORD 13 THE vi-chord 13 APPLYING CHORDS 14 HARMONIC RHYTHM 15 CHOOSING THE CHORDS 16 Root movement 19 WHAT NOW? 20 Extending Your Vocabulary 21 Going Nameless 23 Let Your Ear Be Your Guide 24

4 INTRODUCTION In The Essential Secrets of Songwriting I devoted Chapter 4 to understanding harmony. Good songwriters need to grasp how harmony works, and how to apply chords to their songs. But applying chords takes more than understanding simply what chords are and how they work. In this booklet, I want to address more specifically the art of harmonizing a melody. For many songwriters, constructing a melody is one of the first steps to writing a song. Sometimes you can come up with a good melody, but figuring out what chords go with it can be a frustrating stumbling block. In general, it s a lack of basic chord theory that s to blame. Fortunately, to understand the basics of applying chords to melodies you don t really need a lot of theoretical knowledge. But you will definitely benefit from knowing some basic music theory. At this point, if you know how to read music, even at a rudimentary level, you already possess the basic skills to fully understand this unit. All through The Essential Secrets of Songwriting I keep making the point that we need to be learning from professional songwriters by looking at their music, and trying to do what they do. This advice will certainly apply to understanding and applying stylistic and formal constructs, and it will help us know how to get from the beginning to the end of a song. But things can get difficult when we try to harmonize our melodies. There s more to harmonizing a melody than simply recognizing which chords we re going to use. We need to know how and when to change chords, and how to be creative in our chord choices.

5 So I strongly recommend at this point that you read Chapter 4 of The Essential Secrets of Songwriting. Much of what will be discussed in this document refers to information from that chapter, particularly the notion of strong and fragile progressions. All of the musical samples in this e-book can be heard if you have a connection to the internet. Simply click on the speaker icon beside each sample and you ll be taken to a webpage that will automatically play the sample. What is Harmonizing? To harmonize a melody means to come up with a set of chords that complement both the melody and each other. These chords (known variously as a chord progression, chord changes, harmonies, etc.) must all work together to take the listener on a musical journey. Think of chords as stones you might see in a pond. Those stones are meant to be places where a person can put their foot safely. So the stones can t be randomly placed; they need to be positioned in such a way that you can see a path, of sorts, through to the other side of the pond. The chords in a song need to act in the same way. They take the listener from one side of your song to the other. To demonstrate, listen to the following two progressions. The first will feel somewhat random, without direction; the next will demonstrate better direction and purpose.

6 Sound sample 1: 1) A G#dim F#m Bm C#m A Sound sample 2: 2) A D Bm E F#m D E7 A You might think that once you ve come up with a melody, you then begin the process of constructing a chord progression that takes the listener forward. But in fact, the process of harmonizing could, and maybe even should, be happening as you construct the melody. Which First Melody or Chords? Sometimes I am asked what I come up with first the melody or the chords. In truth, I do them simultaneously. For me, every melodic gesture has incorporated within it a set of implied harmonies. It s very rare that I might conceive of a melody, with no chords coming to mind. Nonetheless, that doesn t mean we should rely on our first impressions regarding chord choice; perhaps we can do better! To come up with good harmonies, you need a good melody. Constructing a good melody is dealt with in The Essential Secrets of Songwriting, but I want to look at it here as well, because it will have a strong bearing on how we harmonize. Contouring a Melody

7 A good melody usually has some sort of contour shape that generates interest. Flat melodies those that have little in the way of high or low points are risky. There is something to be said for the pleasantly mesmerizing quality of a droning melody that centers on one pitch as being principal over all other pitches. But by and large you ll want to construct a melody with more of a shape. Listeners like a melody that has some highs and some lows. It s important to consider where these highs and lows happen. As a useful analogy, think of a Christmas tree. One could say that a Christmas tree has some long branches and some short ones. While that s true, we want to see the longer branches at the bottom and the shorter ones at the top. It s one of the ways we judge the suitability of a tree. Trees that have branches seemingly randomly placed are considered undesirable because they have a confusing shape. For melodies, it s the same; songs that are poorly contoured are considered undesirable. Here s an example of a melody that seems to be rather shapeless and meandering: Sound sample 3: As you can hear, the melody just doesn t seem to have much going for it. Rather than sounding like a melody that takes us on a voyage, it sputters about in several different directions before

8 (mercifully) ending. And we ll discover that this melody would be difficult to harmonize, because the randomness of the notes and rhythms interferes with the flow of a good chord progression. Now listen to this one: Sound sample 4: This melody uses the same notes and rhythms as the previous one, but seems much more satisfying to us, for a number of reasons: 1) It has shape; 2) it implies harmonies; 3) those harmonies change at regular intervals. This melody has some other interesting qualities. Notice how the melody begins using certain notes, takes a breather in the middle, and then repeats the notes of the beginning again. The fact that the melody repeats in this way helps infuse it with a sense of form and structure. If you were to draw a diagram of this melody using lines instead of notes, you d come up with something that looks a little like this:

9 The diagram allows us to see another feature of good melodies more easily: symmetry; it s a melody that starts low, moves up, starts low again, moves up again before finally finishing where it started. There s also a cohesiveness that comes from the choice of rhythms. This melody uses mainly quarter notes, using the longer half notes right at the moment that we want the listener to feel a rest (called a cadence) in the middle. So there are many elements that come together to make this melody work. Notice I say that the melody works. I haven t said yet that it s a winner, or a million-seller. For a song to be a million-seller, it needs to properly integrate with all other aspects of songs. And in particular, a good melody needs good chords and good lyrics.

10 Activities for Melody Construction 1) Take a look at the following melodies, and write a sentence or two describing each one. Assess them according to contour: does the melody display enough of an interesting shape? Also, look at the rhythms used, and determine if there is enough predictability to the rhythmic patterns to make them desirable. Melody 1 Melody 2 Melody 3 Melody 4 Melody 5 2) Compose several melodies; try to make the melodic high point somewhere just after the middle or toward the end.

11 HARMONIZING a MELODY By reading chapter 4 of The Essential Secrets of Songwriting (see p. 78 of ESS) you learned how a major scale can yield chords. But how do we know which chords to use? You must know the song, Heart and Soul. It seems that almost every person who has ever been near a piano tries to plunk out the notes to this perennial favourite: It so happens that the chords typically used for this song are the ones you ll find will work for many others. For Heart and Soul, the chords are C (also called I, because it s the chord formed on the first note of the scale), F (IV), G (V) and Am (vi). Using those chords in various combinations will make great progressions.

12 Sound sample 5 I IV V vi Sound sample 6: I V vi V Sound sample 7: I vi IV V (this is the combination used by Heart and Soul ) These chords form progressions that are primarily strong they solidly imply key by establishing a note as the tonic note, and then reinforce that key. Let s look more closely at these chords. THE I-CHORD The I-chord, called the tonic chord by music theorists, is the chord that establishes the key you re song is in. If your melody is in F major, and you play a I-chord, you re playing the F major chord. It s the chord that sounds and feels like home. It s a great chord to start on, and it s a great chord to end on. And because it establishes key so well, you ll find yourself coming back to that chord over and over again. In more musical neighbourhood, think of the I-chord as your house. But just like your house, which is a great place to live, life would be boring if all we ever did was stay home.

13 THE V-CHORD The V-chord, called the dominant chord, is a little like the front doorstep: it s usually what you see when you first leave your house, and it s what you see before you step back inside. In a way, the V-chord defines the key you re in, because once you play a V-chord, you ll find it makes most sense to play a tonic chord. In that sense, the dominant chord points to the tonic chord. You can actually harmonize a number of songs using just those two chords. But though the dominant chord gets you out of the house, it still doesn t get you far. THE IV-CHORD The IV-chord, called the subdominant chord, extends the housedoorstep analogy by taking you the sidewalk. It gets us a little further afield. If you ve ever heard people say that you can harmonize most melodies with three chords, these are the three they re talking about I, IV and V. THE vi-chord The vi-chord (lower case Roman numerals are used to indicate minor chords) takes your musical journey even further, and the fact that it is a minor chord offers a nice variation for the three other major chords. But even without the vi-chord, you can create lots of great harmonies that work. If you want to practice playing those chords to see how they interact, try playing these:

14 Sound sample 8 A D E A Sound sample 9 A E D E A Sound sample 10 A E D A You ll see that you can use them in almost any combination, and they work. In that sense, the analogy of the house doorstep sidewalk breaks down a little. You can t get to the sidewalk without encountering the front step, but in music you can! APPLYING CHORDS We can take those chords and harmonize most simple melodies. Here s that melody I presented on page 4, now with some suggested harmonies: Sound sample 11

15 So how did I actually apply the chords? My first consideration was harmonic rhythm. HARMONIC RHYTHM Harmonic rhythm is the term we use for the frequency of chord changes. There needs to be a consistency of chord changes in order for a song to feel cohesive and properly structured. That s not to say, however, that once you ve established the rate at which harmonies change you can t stray from that. In fact, harmonic rhythm is often more successful when there are occasional variations, particularly in longer melodies. Short ones, like Happy Birthday to You, establish a simple harmonic rhythm of one chord per bar, and stick to that pattern with only one exception: Sound sample 12 But longer melodies benefit from fluctuations in the frequency of chord changes. Why? Because in general, increasing the rate of chord changes increases the overall energy of the musical moment. If your text has a line that expresses a more emotion-laden thought or event, increasing the harmonic rhythm may help portray the resulting emotional effect to the listener.

16 You ll find that harmonic rhythm is strongly linked to tempo. In faster songs, the chords tend to change at a slower rate. You can often use the structure of the melody to determine when you would change the chords. For example, if your melody uses repeating ideas that start on different notes (also called a motif), you ll likely want to change chords at the start of each repeat of the motif. This is what happens in Heart and Soul. You ll also notice in Heart and Soul that the left hand features an arpeggiated (broken chord) accompaniment that is outlining the chord. In that case, the frequency of chord changes is already determined for us. It s possible with my melody to change chords on every single beat, and there are songs out there that do that. For example, the opening phrase of Your Smiling Face by James Taylor changes chords on every beat. However, I think you ll find that changing chords that often causes music to sound a bit frantic. In harmonizing my melody, I felt that by changing the chord every four beats, with occasional changes every two beats, it maintained the relaxed nature of the melody. CHOOSING THE CHORDS I mentioned before that there was symmetry to my melody: the first phrase and the second phrase sound very similar. Because of that, I wanted to make sure that my chord choices were either the same, or at least similar. But how did I choose the chords? The melodies that you write will exist in a time signature. A time signature of 4/4 is a very common choice. It probably accounts for at least 90% of the popular songs in existence. That time

17 signature, also called common time, means that each measure (bar) of music will consist of four beats. Moreover, those beats are arranged to give a certain feel or gesture: STRONG weak STRONG weak. The first beat in each bar will automatically feel the strongest, and will be followed by a weak beat. The third beat in the bar is also strong, but due to its placement in the middle of the bar it will not feel as strong as the first beat. The bar ends with another weak beat. Generally, if you ve chosen the whole note (four beats in length) as the basis for the harmonic rhythm, you will want to change chords at the beginning of every bar. To select chords, simply look at the notes that occur in each bar. For my melody, the first bar has four notes: f a c a. Now find the chord (or chords) that include these notes. This is a simple one: the F major chord includes each of these notes, and so I know that harmonizing the first bar with an F major chord will work nicely. The second bar uses two different pitches, a D and a C. This is where I chose to use two different chords. In the basic triads of the key of F major, there are no chords that use both a D and a C. So the melody at this point helped make my decision to change harmonies for the C. My choice was to use a Bb chord on the D, and go back to an F chord for the C. Why? Because at this point in my melody, it s a bit like beginning to go for a walk. The IV-chord (Bb) is relatively close to my house, while other possible chords that use a the note D (Dm, Gm, for example) might feel a bit far away. For the note C in the second half of the bar, I go back to an F major chord. At this early part of my piece, my goal is to establish key and reinforce.

18 The listener subconsciously wants to have the key of a song strongly established. By using an F chord as my first choice, I am establishing F major as the key of the song. Most melodies that start on beat 1 will probably be harmonized by a I-chord. If your melody starts on beat 4 (i.e., a pick-up ), try a V-chord as a chord choice. After that initial F major chord, with a move to the Bb chord and back to the F chord, I am reinforcing F major as the key of my song. Once I ve established and reinforced the key in this manner, I am freer, if I choose, to move further afield in my chord choices. Now let s look at the third bar. I ve gone back to harmonizing the entire bar with one chord. But how do I do that, since there are no chords from the key of F major that include all of the notes of the third bar? This is where I look at just the strong beats. The strong beat notes from this bar are Bb and G. Which chords use those two notes? The three chords that might be used are: vii o, ii and V7. I chose V7, more because of what comes afterward. In bar 4, I decided to use a I going to a V. This motion of V going to I, then to V again is a strong progression that reinforces the key of F major. So this, then, is the process of how to harmonize a melody. There are many possible choices, and that s what makes harmonizing such an enjoyable experience. Here are the first four bars of my melody, with different possible harmonizations:

19 Sound sample 13.1 Sound sample 13.2 Sound sample 13.3 Root movement You will find that choosing chords that use root movements of a fourth or a fifth represent the strongest progressions. That s why a progression like I IV V 7 I (in F major: F Bb C7 F) will sound stronger and more solidly rooted in F major than a progression like this: I ii iii V 7 (F Gm Am C7).

20 ACTIVITITIES FOR HARMONIZING 1) Take the following two-note motifs from A major and write the chords (using letter names or Roman numerals) that could serve as possible harmonies. (The chords should be able to harmonize both notes). Note: There could be more than one possible chord. 2) Take the following short melody in G major and harmonize it in three different ways: o Change chords on every beat; o Change chords every two or four beats; o Change chords every four beats. Sound sample 14 WHAT NOW? What we ve done is come up with some simple harmonies. But you want to be more creative! You need to increase your chord vocabulary.

21 There are all sorts of chords out there, and you certainly don t want to use many of them in the same song. Think of chords as the spice rack in your kitchen. You don t use all the spices in any one recipe. But you ll find three or four of them will work very nicely together. Essential Chord Progressions (ECP) contains many progressions, all categorized in different ways, and it would be good to try applying some of the ideas you find there into your own progressions. In particular, you ll want to explore possibilities for using triad inversions (p. 17 of ECP), pedal tones (p. 18 of ECP), and adding modal mixture chords (p. 20 of ECP). Extending Your Vocabulary Here are the first four bars of my melody, with each of the modifications listed above: 1) With pedal tones Sound sample 15: 2) With inverted triads Sound sample 16: 3) With a modal mixture chord Sound sample 17:

22 Activities for Extending Your Chord Vocabulary 1) Take any of your song melodies, and try a. Inverting some of the triads; b. applying pedal tones to the bass; c. adding modal mixtures.

23 Going Nameless The possibilities are endless! Some melodies can take harmonies that are, for lack of a better term, nameless. That doesn t mean that there s no way to name the chord. But it probably means that the name would be so complicated that its symbol would be almost meaningless to anyone else. Listen to this melody: Sound sample 18: There are ways to harmonize this that would make it sound somewhat traditional. But consider this possible harmonization: Sound sample 19: These chords are somewhat complicated. It s hard to even determine what key the melody is in when it s harmonized in this way. You could see these chords as based on the flat-seven of the key of F, or perhaps some manipulation of the key of C major. But when I came up with that harmonization, I was more interested in the airy, new age effect than I was in whether or not I knew what the chords were. I was letting my ear be my guide.

24 Let Your Ear Be Your Guide Letting your ear guide you is an important part of harmonizing melodies. Even in traditional harmonizations, your own musical tastes are what is most important. If you find yourself looking for the right answer when developing chord progressions, you re missing the point. Chords aren t right or wrong as much as they are good or bad. And that is a totally subjective issue. The best advice I have for songwriters is to let your imagination go. Be creative! If you have any questions at all about harmonizing your song melodies, I d love to answer them! Please don t hesitate to contact me at gary@pantomimemusic.com All the best! Gary Ewer