Adding a Harmony to a Melody

[Mark3405]

Ok, say I have a nice melody, but I want to add a harmony to that melody, any advice as to how I should go about making one in relation to the notes in the melody? I am using a polyphonic VST, so chords are not a problem.

[MoreDread]

You could simply play chords in which the notes of your melody can be found.

Stupid example: If your melody is G D B D C G D G, I'd play a g major chord over the first four notes, and a c major chord over the last four notes.

[JumpingJackFlash]

Ok, say I have a nice melody, but I want to add a harmony to that melody, any advice as to how I should go about making one in relation to the notes in the melody? I am using a polyphonic VST, so chords are not a problem.

This is a huge area. There are hundreds of different chords you can use. Exactly what you pick depends on a lot of factors, including style and taste. Related decisions include number of different lines, tonality, voice-leading, and rate of harmonic change.

One basic idea is to pick out the important notes of your melody, work out what chords contain those notes and then choose a suitable chord from that list.

You might like to start with simple diatonic triads to begin with, then moving on and extending those to include 7ths and so on later.

In the end though, it's down to you. There is no right choice, and no wrong choice. Go with what you think sounds best.

Some posts that may help are:

An Introduction to Diatonic Classical Harmony
Introduction to Chromatic Harmony
An intro to ornamental, unessential, and non-harmony notes
Melody Construction and Voice Leading / Part Writing
Scales, Modes and Chords

[stanlea]

And you can try also auto harmonizers like Band In A Box, but I use them without any control, you will not learn nothing.

[Klemperer]

...just if you'd ever would want a good score-editor (otherwise it'd be no good advice) there is a program called "Pizzicato" from arpegemusic, that has exactly such a chord-analysis tool and gives you recommendations. But again, lovely as this program is, (there's a 30 days demo, but just the chords-analysis tool is disabled in the demo ) it would just be for you if you thought about such a scoring-program anyway.

[mr]

[quote="JumpingJackFlash
This is a huge area. There are hundreds of different chords you can use. Exactly what you pick depends on a lot of factors, including style and taste. Related decisions include number of different lines, tonality, voice-leading, and rate of harmonic change.

One basic idea is to pick out the important notes of your melody, work out what chords contain those notes and then choose a suitable chord from that list.

You might like to start with simple diatonic triads to begin with, then moving on and extending those to include 7ths and so on later.

quote]

I now do it the same way. The "important notes" in a measure are the ones that make the structure of the melody. They are usually between the first, the longer lasting and the last of the mesure.
Most of the times: I IV and V make the trick. vi and ii are some times required.

BIAB works fine suggesting chords according to the style. You can learn from it.
The Complete IDIOT's Guide to Music Composition explait it very well

[wrench45us]

is it true that melody notes tend to be the top note of most chord choices?

an interesting keyboard harmonic device from gospel is staying simply with I and ii chords and using various inversions to walk the melody line. i find this incredibly effective, but it does bring that gospel sound.
there are a number of variations -- introducing the iii chord as well, using ii and iii dim chords in place of minor

you miss the 7 note using this, as the 7 note doesn't show up in the original tradition.

Anyway, I find this is a nice practice method to fix the inversion shapes into my fingers and brain.
And by introducing maj7, min7 and dim 7 that original gospel sound goes a little uptown.

It won't work everywhere and everytime, but it's a nice 'trick' to have at hand.

[JumpingJackFlash]

is it true that melody notes tend to be the top note of most chord choices?

No, I would say not. Depends on the style and stuff of course, but there's no reason why the melody couldn't be the 1st, 3rd or 5th of the chord, or the 7th, 9th... and so on, depending on what chords you're using. Also, the melody note could even be a non-harmony note.

an interesting keyboard harmonic device from gospel is staying simply with I and ii chords and using various inversions to walk the melody line. i find this incredibly effective, but it does bring that gospel sound.

A good technique, but I would advise using I, IV and V to do this with instead. You can harmonise any note of the scale using those three chords, and some can even be harmonised in different ways. It would be good practise to try your idea with these chords. (And many tunes essentially do this in real life!).

[Sascha Franck]

To the OP: Can you just post that melody as an MP3 or MIDI file? Would be interesting to see/hear what people would come up with, especially in case they're providing explanations.

[stanlea]

I second : having the same difficulty with harmonization, I think if would be cool to have a comparison between different methods. Heres my proposition :
1 Mark provides a midi file (if we wants, otherwise I can supply one).
2 All participants pm him an harmonization (including tonality), as I'm not very skilled I may submit the file to DR B-A-B.
3 He makes us a summary

Don't you think it's a cool idea ?

[mr]

To the OP: Can you just post that melody as an MP3 or MIDI file? Would be interesting to see/hear what people would come up with, especially in case they're providing explanations.

Off topic.
I want to make you a suggestion to update your signature. Only if you want to do it.

"There are 10 kinds of people. Those who understand binary and those who don't."

[Sascha Franck]

I want to make you a suggestion to update your signature. Only if you want to do it.

"There are 10 kinds of people. Those who understand binary and those who don't."

I had that one in mind before. But it's too wellknown. And too easy...

[mr]

You are rigth, probbably every one in this forum understood it.

[afreshcupofjoe]

I would start by finding out what key your melody is in, then figure out which notes in the melody have the most emphasis-- these are the notes that you will base your chords around. I would stick to the advice that Jumping Jack offered and try to stick to I,IV, V chords and their inversions to get started, especially when writing pop music. Then you can just swap other chords once you get a feel for what you are looking for. There are literally thousands of choices that would all be technically correct, so you just have to experiment. It helps if you know how to play keys or guitar well so that you can easily try out different chords without having to agonize over a piano roll.

Don't go too crazy with chord changes. Most music relies on only a few simple chords for a song. Just find two or three chords that emphasize the important parts of your melody and only add more when you can hear where it's needed.

[Toxikator]

I would say that harmonizing a melody line without any chords in mind is the wrong way to go about it. Decide what chords or chord classes (for example, ii and IV form a chord class as they are exchangeable) you want, and then find a way to fit the melody in to those.