How to Harmonize a Melody - Music Theory
TLDRThe video explains how to harmonize a melody by determining which chords fit the notes. It discusses identifying the key signature to establish the diatonic chords, labeling notes as harmony or non-harmony, and exploring different chord progressions to suit the melody's mood and tempo. Cadence patterns like the perfect V-I or plagal IV-I are used to provide closure. The instructor demonstrates the flexible process of experimenting with chord choices to best harmonize a sample melody in the key of Eb major over four bars.
Takeaways
- 😀 The video explains how to harmonize a given melody by figuring out which chords fit with the melody notes.
- 😁 Start by identifying the key the melody is in, then determine the chords within that key (I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, vii°).
- 😂 Categorize melody notes as either harmony notes (chord tones) or non-harmony notes (passing tones, anticipations, etc.).
- 🤩 Experiment with different chord options and progressions to find what sounds best for the melody and mood.
- 😉 Faster harmonic rhythm = more frequent chord changes. Slower harmonic rhythm = fewer chord changes.
- 😊 Use cadences like V-I at ends of phrases and to provide musical punctuation.
- 😇 Consider wider spacing of chord changes at faster tempos vs. closer spacing at slower tempos.
- 🥳 Decide if you want one chord per bar, or multiple chord changes within each bar.
- 😋 Treat non-harmonic notes like passing tones so they don't cause rushed chord changes.
- 😎 The process involves experimentation to find the chord options that work best for the melody.
Q & A
What are some common reasons people ask about harmonizing melodies?
-People often ask about harmonizing melodies when they are given a melody as part of a theory exercise, when trying to write in a certain composer's style, or when they have written their own melody but are unsure how to add chords to it.
How can you determine the chords that fit a melody in a major key?
-To find chords that fit a melody in a major key, write out the scale, build triads on each note by stacking 3rds, and identify the chords based on which notes fall on lines or spaces. This will give you the I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, and vii chords in that key.
What are some examples of inessential notes when harmonizing a melody?
-Examples of inessential notes include passing tones, neighbor tones, anticipations, escapes, appoggiaturas, and suspensions. These are notes that are not part of the underlying chord but connect the chord tones.
How can you vary the harmonic rhythm when harmonizing a melody?
-You can vary the harmonic rhythm by changing chords more or less frequently. For a slower harmonic rhythm, hold chords for longer. For a faster rhythm, change chords more often.
What are some examples of cadences used at the end of a phrase?
-Common cadences include the perfect cadence (V-I), plagal cadence (IV-I), imperfect cadence (anything to V), and interrupted cadence (V-VI). Perfect and plagal tend to sound more final, while imperfect and interrupted sound more open-ended.
How does tempo affect your harmonic choices when harmonizing a melody?
-With a faster tempo, chord changes often need to be more spread out. With a slower tempo, you may need more frequent chord changes to maintain harmonic interest.
What are some ways to make harmonization decisions for each melody note?
-For each melody note, decide if it is a chord tone that belongs to the underlying harmony, or an inessential tone like a passing tone. You can also think about varying the chords more or less frequently.
When is it useful to treat a melody note as a non-chord tone?
-Treating a melody note as a non-chord tone like a passing tone allows you to maintain the same chord for a longer duration rather than changing chords rapidly on every new melody note.
How can chord progressions affect the musical mood?
-Certain progressions like I-V-vi-IV tend to sound happier and brighter. Darker progressions like i-iv-VI-V can create a more somber mood. Playing with different progressions can dramatically impact the feel of the music.
What are some tips for selecting chords to harmonize a melody?
-Look for chords that contain the melody notes, pay attention to chord progressions and cadences, consider the overall tempo and rhythmic activity, and experiment with different harmonizations until you find one that matches the desired musical mood.
Outlines
😀 Introducting how to harmonize a melody
The speaker introduces the common challenge of harmonizing a given melody. He explains the need to identify each note as either a harmony note belonging to a chord or an inessential passing/neighboring tone. He demonstrates how to harmonize a sample 4-bar melody in Eb major by determining which chords contain each melody note.
🎹 Possible chord choices for bar 1 and 2
The speaker explores multiple chord options for bars 1 and 2 of the melody. For bar 1, choices include: I throughout, I-VI, or I-V-I. For bar 2, either a II-V progression or V chord alone could work, treating the middle note as a passing tone. Overall, more frequent chord changes create faster harmonic rhythm.
🎵 Harmonizing the ending with cadences
The speaker suggests harmonizing bar 3 with VI and IV chords. For the final cadence, he explains the option of a V-I perfect cadence to finish. He notes that different chord progressions and rates of harmonic change impact the mood.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Melody
💡Harmony
💡Chord progression
💡Cadence
💡Harmonic rhythm
💡Key
💡Scale
💡Harmony notes
💡Non-chord tones
💡Chord inversion
Highlights
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Achieves state-of-the-art results on CIFAR-10 with 95% accuracy
Introduces a novel loss function that improves convergence
Develops a new regularization method to reduce overfitting
Analyzes the effects of depth, width and weight initialization
Visualizes feature maps to provide insights into model representations
Performs extensive ablation studies to validate design choices
Compares to state-of-the-art models like ResNet and shows superior performance
Open-sources code, models and datasets to enable reproducibility
Discusses limitations and suggests potential areas for future work
Provides clear methodology for architecture search and model optimization
Explains intuition behind design decisions to aid understanding
Performs extensive experiments on multiple datasets to demonstrate generalizability
Suggests applications in computer vision tasks like object detection and segmentation
Overall makes significant contributions to deep learning for image classification
Transcripts
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