COMPOSITION
By Matt2jones

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Part IV - Harmony

Authors Note: I suggest you glance back over the first two articles before we move on, to refresh your memory.

Preamble

Harmony, in this situation anyway, means playing notes at the same time, and having them sound good together.  In the previous tutorials I showed you how to work out which notes are in a chord, and therefore will definatly sound good together, and in this section I will show you how to use the knowlage of chords that you have to beef up the sound of a peice of music.

Lets start with the melody:

Now I'm not going to explain just yet where I came up with this.  Suffice it is to say it was somewhere in my proverbial annal regions...  And really thats more then you need to know.

This is the melody line, you will notice that it is in the key of C Major (the first note of the first bar is on the third space, which is C), and the key signature shows no sharps or flats (the Key signature of C Major has no sharps or flats).  It is written for the treble clef, which basically means it sounds high pitched (if you were playing it on the piano you'd use your right hand), and it is in 4/4 time.

Now, when I call this the melody what I mean is that this is the peice of music you would hum to yourself if you were thinking of the song it's from, or if there were lyrics to the song this would be the tune that the lyrics would be sung to.  In a concise...wrong definition melody is the song.

What this tutorial will show you how to do is write chords which harmoniously accompany the melody, to make it sound fuller.

One More Thing...

The Basic method for doing this is extreemly simple, and there is only one new peice of information you need to know in order to apply it, and that is

"In 4/4 time the stresses are on the First and Third beats"

If you think of this in terms of marching drums it equates to a sound like ONE two THREE four, or DUN dun DUN dun or LOUD quiet LOUD quiet or STRESSED unstressed STRESSED unstressed, but for writing chords it is best to understand the phrase to mean IMPORTANT unimportant IMPORTANT unimportant.

In a nutshell when writing chords for music the only notes you need to pay attention to you are the IMPORTANT ones, the ones of the first and third beats.

Musikscreiben

So lets take a look at the Melody again:

and apply the new rule IMPORTANT unimportant IMPORTANT unimportant.

We're going to start with the second bar, because it is allot more straight forward.

In the second bar the note on the first beat is the crotchet on E, so the first important note is "E" (write that down).  The note G is on the second beat, but seeing as that is unstressed, and so unimportant, we don't need to take it into account (ie.  Don't write G down).  G is followed by E again, but seeing as both these notes are Quavers, and only 1/2 a beat long, it still falls under the jurisdiction of the second, unimportant and unstressed, beat, and can so be safely ignored.
	As you can see the Quaver note 'D' is on the third beat of Bar 2, and seeing as the third note of a 4/4 bar of music is stressed, and therefore important, the note "D" is important, and should be written down.  Following the quaver on "D" a half beat later is another quaver on D, this makes our job allot easier because as the two notes are the same, because we really only have to deal with the single note "D".

Now we have our two important notes, E for the first beat and D for the third.  That was the hard part.

The Easy Part

Now all we have to do is look at every Chord in the key we're in (In this case C Major)*, and pick a chord, absolutely any chord, with the important note in it.

So lets go:

The Chords in the Key of C Major are:

G  A  B  C  D  E  F
E  F  G  A  B  C  D 
C  D  E  F  G  A  B
 I ii iii IV V vi VII

You needn't worry about Major or Minor chords for the time being, a chord is a chord.

Now, our first important note is "E", so lets list every chord in the key of C Major with "E" in it. 

The first is obvious, chord iii, or chord "E" minor as it is usualy known.
Others include:
Chord I, Chord CEG, or "C" major.
Chord vi, Chord ACE, or "A" minor.

Now, as long as a chord has the important note in it somewhere is will sound good if played alongside the melody for the beat the note is played in.  So when we play the first beat of the second bar, we can also safely play any of the three chords we've picked, and it will sound fucking class.

* look back over previous tutorials if you can't remember how, its all there in patronising detail!!!!!!11111

Now we move on to the second important note, the one on the third beat.  Its a "D".  Same as before, list every chord in the key of C major - 

G  A  B  C  D  E  F
E  F  G  A  B  C  D 
C  D  E  F  G  A  B
 I ii iii IV V vi VII

Pick out all the chords with D in them:

Chord ii, Chord DFA or Chord D minor
Chord V, Chord GBD or Chord G major
Chord VII, Chord BDF or Chord B diminished

And play any of these alongside the melody for the third beat of the bar to fill out the musical sound.

Now try doing the same to the first bar, and see what chords you came up with.

...

If you got Chord I, Chord IV or Chord vi for the first beat then you've understood what I explained to you, and picked out every chord in the Key of C major with the note C in it (as C was the note on the first beat of the bar).

Now, once you get to the second important beat, the third beat, you're going to run into some problems:

A Closer Look...

The note on the third beat is an "E", but it lasts for only a half a beat (because its a quaver), and unlike in Bar two the following note is neither a quaver, or the same note, it is in this case a "D".  This is not exactly a problem, because the music would still sound fine if you applied the formula explained above, but I want to show you how it is possible to fuck with the convention to acheive a better sound, because in the end everything I can learn you (yes that was a joke) makes listenable but boring music, that's extreemly formulaic, and the only way to make good music is to break the rules I've presented.
	So look again at the picture, and realise that though the first note in the third beat is an E, the note played most often throughout the rest of the bar is D.  Now wouldn't it make more sense (seeing as we're writing harmony) for our chords to sound harmonious with as much as the bar as possible?  (if your stuck for an answer, I suggest going with 'yes').

So it would be my personal preferance to take the note 'D' as the most important note for the third beat, even though, and I stress, IT IS PERFECTLY OKAY TO STICK WITH "E" INSTEAD.

Authors Note:  I had to reword that sentence for fear of sounding like a drug pusher.

And that actually brings us to a nice end to this article.  I had intended to show you how to score the chords once you've chosen them, but I'm starving and the deadline was yesterday, so I'm going to hoist this off to pete straight away.  These will continue every month from now on, now that I've finished with School forever.

This is M2j saying, go fuck yourself, QBXP
Yes, I did just see anchorman, how can you tell?