Harmonizing a melody

[fep]

Here's jster's image (under embed image you copy the forum link and past into your message):

[jster]

Thanks fep. I tried that I thought. But yeah, that's it. I was actually going to put this exact question to you guys someday but I saw this thread today, so here it is. Like I say, it is pre-jazz. Probably easiest to think of it as a ballad. I'll tell you more about it after you take a stab at it.

[jster]

Perhaps I should add feel free to treat it as a modal tune.

OK, it's getting late in my neck of the woods, but I'll tell you where the melody comes from tomorrow.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Can we toss a few more melodies in? I'd love to see being given a jazz treatment. Yes, it's Bach. Think of it as a ballad by Wayne Shorter.

[fep]

Originally Posted by fep

Here's jster's image (under embed image you copy the forum link and past into your message):

Sure seems there is something pulling me away from simple towards unique.

| Bm11 | Bb7#11| Amaj7 | G/A A9 | D DmMaj7 | G7sus G7 | F#m7 E13 | Aadd9 A ||

[jster]

The melody is the oldest complete tune we have: The Song of Seikilos. Seikilos, a Greek musician who lived 1900 years ago in present day Turkey, had the melody and lyrics engraved on his tombstone.

Ὅσον ζῇς, φαίνου,
Hoson zês, phainou,
While you live, shine,

μηδὲν ὅλως σὺ λυποῦ·
mêden holôs su lupou;
don't suffer anything at all;

πρὸς ὀλίγον ἐστὶ τὸ ζῆν,
pros oligon esti to zên,
life exists only a short while,

τὸ τέλος ὁ xρόνος ἀπαιτεῖ.
to telos ho chronos apaitei.
and time demands its toll.

If you go to Copenhagen, you can see the cylindrical tombstone. You can see the melodic notation on the bottom half over the words. (Not sure why the museum mirror imaged the cylinder.)

http://www.nationalmuseet.dk/graphic...k/seikilos.jpg

I thought it would be interesting because Seikilos didn't provide a harmony for it. The melody can be tweaked a bit because it is determined by the time it takes to sing the words, i.e. poetic rather than musical meter.

[jster]

I almost wanted to play "On Broadway" behind it.

|A |A Asus|A |A G|A |A G|A |A (Em)|

[jster]

This thread is the first time I have ever harmonized a melody. I was hoping that one was more constrained in one's choices, but evidently there is a lot of freedom. Is that generally the way it is?

[Kyyry]

By looking at the music, the key of D-major would first come to mind, but the tonal center seems to be A, pointing towards A-mixolydian. It was kind of easy for the first 4 bars to find the basic progression with triads, in this case I-IV-I-V, last four bars are I-VI-IV-V-I
| A | D | A | Em | A | F#m | D E | A |
It would have sounded weird with the corresponding seventh chords. Also is it a big mistake to have the V chord be a minor chord? Even if it's the mixolydian mode?
Also: Is it allowed to make the basic progressions in modes like I did? I just treated the A in D-major key as the I and used the chords that I'd use with D-major and only starting from the A like: A Bmin C#m-5 D Em F#m G

[JonR]

Originally Posted by jster

The melody is the oldest complete tune we have: The Song of Seikilos. Seikilos, a Greek musician who lived 1900 years ago in present day Turkey, had the melody and lyrics engraved on his tombstone.
...
If you go to Copenhagen, you can see the cylindrical tombstone. You can see the melodic notation on the bottom half over the words. (Not sure why the museum mirror imaged the cylinder.)

http://www.nationalmuseet.dk/graphic...k/seikilos.jpg

That's interesting. Do you know how it's known how to translate that into modern notation? How do we know what pitches (or intervals) the letters referred to? Or indeed the metre? (All I can find on the net is assumptions that those notes are correct.)

Originally Posted by jster

I thought it would be interesting because Seikilos didn't provide a harmony for it.

Right - they didn't use harmony in those days. (I think we know that much at least )

Originally Posted by jster

The melody can be tweaked a bit because it is determined by the time it takes to sing the words, i.e. poetic rather than musical meter.

Sounds like a reasonable assumption.

[brwnhornet59]

I am getting something like this.
F#-/F#- B-/F#-/G

F#-/G/F#G/A

[JonR]

Originally Posted by jster

This thread is the first time I have ever harmonized a melody. I was hoping that one was more constrained in one's choices, but evidently there is a lot of freedom. Is that generally the way it is?

Depends. How jazzy do you want to get?

Basic harmonization follows fairly simple rules, but reharmonization is a popular game in jazz. Few jazz chord players can resist leaving an old chord sequence alone.

So Kyyry's is straightforward (melody notes mostly forming lower chord tones such as root-3-5, maybe 7), while fep's is a more complicated take, making most melody notes into upper extensions (maj7, 9, #11, etc). This is not "better" -that depends on one's preference - just a richer, more detailed arrangement. I think it sounds great, but Kyyry's could be perfectly adequate for many contexts.

Here's three goes at it. First, as simple as I can make it - diatonc major triads only - then a couple of fancier ones: #2 still reasonably classical/straight jazz (mostly); #3 more off the wall, ignoring diatonic implications and just going for surprise cadences and fancy entensions (sky's the limit here) - still with plenty of functional moves though.

(I tried attaching images but the attachment function doesn't seem to be working - anyone else having problems with that?.)

I'm showing 2 beats per bar. Most bars have 2 chords, "-" indicates a chord held for the whole bar.

1.
|A - |A D |A - |A G |
|A D |A G |A G |A D

2.
|D Dmaj9 |C#m7b5 F#7#5 |Bm9 E7 |Em7 A9 |
|Dmaj9 G |Dmaj7 Em7 |F#m7 Bm7 |Em11 A13 |

3.
|Fmaj7 Bb7#11 |A#dim7 Dm/A |G7#11 F#m11 |Fmaj9#11 - |
|B9sus E7 |A6 G7 |E13sus - |F7 F#m7 |

[jster]

Originally Posted by JonR

That's interesting. Do you know how it's known how to translate that into modern notation? How do we know what pitches (or intervals) the letters referred to? Or indeed the metre?

I have no real knowledge in this area. I think that what we know is via many different little bits and pieces. They might find some flutes that tell them what scale was used at a given place and time. Then join to that 99 other similar disparate facts. My understanding is that the melody is reliable. The meter more flexible. If you want to get serious about it, I think that the single best text is this one:
Amazon.com: Ancient Greek Music (Clarendon Paperbacks) (9780198149750): M. L. West: Books
If you look at the amazon preview, there is some good stuff right there that addresses the sources of our understanding. West says we have 1) some old instruments and depictions of instruments in art, 2) many general references to music throughout ancient literature, and 3) some specialist, i.e. musical theory, texts that have survived including three books of On Harmony by Aristoxenus who disagreed with Pythagoras. Seems Aristoxenus was more about the ear while Pythagoras was more about the math. Evidently they differed on which actual scales to use.

I might read it in the next few years. If I do, I'll re-inflate the thread and give you a better answer.

[fep]

| Bm11 | Bb7#11| Amaj7 | G/A A9 | D DmMaj7 | G7sus G7 | F#m7 E13 | Aadd9 A ||

I couldn't find anything in 6/8 that I liked in BIAB, so I did it the old fashion way. Here's a guitar duet with my harmony for jster's melody.

Harmonizing jster's melody.mp3 - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

[brwnhornet59]

That was cool Fep!!!

[JonR]

Originally Posted by jster

I have no real knowledge in this area. I think that what we know is via many different little bits and pieces. They might find some flutes that tell them what scale was used at a given place and time. Then join to that 99 other similar disparate facts. My understanding is that the melody is reliable. The meter more flexible. If you want to get serious about it, I think that the single best text is this one:
Amazon.com: Ancient Greek Music (Clarendon Paperbacks) (9780198149750): M. L. West: Books
If you look at the amazon preview, there is some good stuff right there that addresses the sources of our understanding. West says we have 1) some old instruments and depictions of instruments in art, 2) many general references to music throughout ancient literature, and 3) some specialist, i.e. musical theory, texts that have survived including three books of On Harmony by Aristoxenus who disagreed with Pythagoras. Seems Aristoxenus was more about the ear while Pythagoras was more about the math. Evidently they differed on which actual scales to use.

I might read it in the next few years. If I do, I'll re-inflate the thread and give you a better answer.

Thanks. I did do some reading on Ancient Greek music some years ago, so I have a vague idea of the background.
There's also this (apparently) excellent site on scale principles and construction:
Ancient Greek Origins of the Western Musical Scale

It just struck me that the transcription of the Seikolos melody seemed confidently precise. I'm a natural cynic! I guess the scholars have a reasonable confidence in their methods. I was just a little surprised not to find something deeper online - maybe I need to look a bit harder!

Of course, it doesn't matter too much how accurate it is - we can never know! (The tuning/intonation would be different to start with, to name just one thing.) And we inevitably make sense of historical music through our own ears and prejudices. Even if the original Greek tune did sound like this, we have little idea what that sound meant to the Greeks. (I know we have the broad philophical texts, but even with music much closer to our present time, contemporary written descriptions often don't match how we hear the music today.)

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Originally Posted by jster

The melody is the oldest complete tune we have: The Song of Seikilos. Seikilos, a Greek musician who lived 1900 years ago in present day Turkey, had the melody and lyrics engraved on his tombstone.

Ὅσον ζῇς, φαίνου,
Hoson zês, phainou,
While you live, shine,

μηδὲν ὅλως σὺ λυποῦ·
mêden holôs su lupou;
don't suffer anything at all;

πρὸς ὀλίγον ἐστὶ τὸ ζῆν,
pros oligon esti to zên,
life exists only a short while,

τὸ τέλος ὁ xρόνος ἀπαιτεῖ.
to telos ho chronos apaitei.
and time demands its toll.

If you go to Copenhagen, you can see the cylindrical tombstone. You can see the melodic notation on the bottom half over the words. (Not sure why the museum mirror imaged the cylinder.)

http://www.nationalmuseet.dk/graphic...k/seikilos.jpg

I thought it would be interesting because Seikilos didn't provide a harmony for it. The melody can be tweaked a bit because it is determined by the time it takes to sing the words, i.e. poetic rather than musical meter.

Cool lyrics -- they could have been written today. I was just reading about an ancient Egyptian text, "The world-weary man in search of his ba (soul)". I'm thinking phrygian for that one.

[jster]

Very sweet fep. I really liked your harmonization and I like your recording. Alas, like life, it ends too soon.

[jster]

Originally Posted by JonR

Basic harmonization follows fairly simple rules,

Thanks Jon for the great summary. Where the heck were you guys in 79? If you were around then, I might be playing the Vanguard now!

[jster]

Originally Posted by JonR

I'm a natural cynic! I guess the scholars have a reasonable confidence in their methods.

Well, it does seem there is some consensus. If you want to see lack of consensus, look at debates about how to pronounce Ancient Greek. Evidently we know better what the music sounded like than the lyric!