Fourths against minor 7 chords.

[JensL]

To get it to end on Em, maybe this:

|D Am|Em D Em Am D / |
|G D |C Bm Am Bm Em / |

The thing I find very interesting about this is that to harmonize with triads you felt the need for all those extra chords.

Well in my head that would be stylisticly more correct since that is how I think those melodies are.
To me a melodic movement like that would always be harmonized (probably also because of the tempo)
I was playing it in 50-60 bpm.

Jens

[JensL]

To get it to end on Em, maybe this:

|D Am|Em D Em Am D / |
|G D |C Bm Am Bm Em / |

The thing I find very interesting about this is that to harmonize with triads you felt the need for all those extra chords.

|G D |Am G F#dim B7 Em / |

Could get you there too. If you want to go to Em I think the B or B7 is a lot better than Bm. Bm end cadences in Folk songs (the ones I know anyway..) almost only happens when they have a D in the melody.

Jens

[jster]

Now I'm playing around with sus chords a bit. Can we use them for V chords? Or how about Dsus4-D(sus4?)-Dsus4-D-G?

G---Em--- : Dsus4-D(sus4?)-Dsus4-D---G then up a fourth? I did give up on starting it on Em! I like this the best because it is the simplest that seems to work.

I'm sure you are right about the Bmin, but it is so fast, it probably doesn't matter much.

I thought I might be able to get rid of the G in the melody moving it down to F#, but that really makes the melody lose shape.

I understand the logic of having a lot of chords, and was kind of wondering about that subconciously when I got stuck originally. But I definitely imagined it/wanted it simpler, and simpler is almost always better for this project. And I wanted a parallel structure.

Thanks so much for the help guys. I'm much much more interested in the process than this jingle. I think I came up with something else for it anyway. What I'm most interested in is just your general thoughts on harmonizing with triads especailly as it relates to situations like this where you get a lot of quick notes that don't all come from the same chord like we have in bars 2 and 4. Will we often have to use a bunch of chords?

Maybe I could have avoided the whole problem this way: I could use more chord tones when I need a bunch of notes, but then there would be more major and minor thirds and fifths! and fewer seconds in the melody. Maybe that's the way to go.

[JensL]

Now I'm playing around with sus chords a bit. Can we use them for V chords? Or how about Dsus4-D(sus4?)-Dsus4-D-G?

G---Em--- : Dsus4-D(sus4?)-Dsus4-D---G then up a fourth? I did give up on starting it on Em! I like this the best because it is the simplest that seems to work.

I'm sure you are right about the Bmin, but it is so fast, it probably doesn't matter much.

I thought I might be able to get rid of the G in the melody moving it down to F#, but that really makes the melody lose shape.

I understand the logic of having a lot of chords, and was kind of wondering about that subconciously when I got stuck originally. But I definitely imagined it/wanted it simpler, and simpler is almost always better for this project. And I wanted a parallel structure.

Thanks so much for the help guys. I'm much much more interested in the process than this jingle. I think I came up with something else for it anyway. What I'm most interested in is just your general thoughts on harmonizing with triads especailly as it relates to situations like this where you get a lot of quick notes that don't all come from the same chord like we have in bars 2 and 4. Will we often have to use a bunch of chords?

Maybe I could have avoided the whole problem this way: I could use more chord tones when I need a bunch of notes, but then there would be more major and minor thirds and fifths! and fewer seconds in the melody. Maybe that's the way to go.

Well to me, major7th in the melody is almost only possible in Jazz (and pop from the last 30 years or so..)

At this tempo a few chords is not really that complicated, watch out that you don't think like a jazz player.

You can use more notes in the melody but the melody you have now are like small arpeggio fragments that move
to a not in another chord. If you use scale movement you'll have the option to put the chord notes on the strong
beats, otherwise it is probably simpler to just use chord notes.

Jens

[JonR]

Also one more thing that I think is odd about it is that you have the long F#s, then at bar 2 you get the quick Gs. It's not easy to hear or sing because it goes by so quickly. I don't think many melodies do quick jerks like that. But I dunno.

I agree, I find the melody awkward in bars 2 and 4 - both in its rhythm and its phrase shape.
It's hard to sing, and seems to make it hard to harmonise well too.

Your later posts suggest you're not too fixed on the melody though, so why not change it? Forget about chords, but make sure it feels comfortable to sing.

BTW, major 7ths are perfectly fine in classical harmony, but would be considered as non-chord tones, dissonances requiring correct resolution. There would be many ways they could do that, melodically, but (AFAIK) the line would need to hit a chord tone before the chord changed.


Here's how I might harmonise your tune in triads:

|F#dim B    Em     -     |G F#dim Em  Am  D     -     |
|1  .  2  .  3  .  4  .  |1  .    2   .   3  .  4  .  |

|Bm    E     Am    -     |C  Bm   Am  D   G     -     |
|1  .  2  .  3  .  4  .  |1  .    2   .   3  .  4  .  |

That reflects the way bars 3-4 are a 4th up from bars 1-2, and also provides some classical-style root movement. And a couple of sneaky secondary dominants of course . (Use Bm instead of B and Em instead of E, if you want to keep it fully diatonic to G major.)

To make it jazzier, of course, I'd be using 7ths and probably trying to harmonise melody notes as extensions some of the time. (Eg like your opening Em9, which I like.)

[jster]

I will never doubt the power of chord tones after that performance! I've got it looping on the computer.

You got the gig! OK, I'll have my people call your people and set up the paper work.

Jon, you want to give me the thumbnail sketch of the history of harmonizing melodies. What Jens and you seem to be saying is that you had classical guys banging on the 135, with other notes just being passing notes that had to be resolved in the bar. Then you get Broadway and Cole Porter and you get maj7ths and even 4ths against minor 7th chords and maybe 9ths.

So that's it? Before and after Broadway? Folk music and rock and roll following classical song as if Broadway never happened? With the blues maybe getting a footnote? How about jumps? I was looking at some 19th century lieder and there seemed to be lots of big jumps, 6ths, etc. Anything noteworthy (no pun intended) in that direction?

--------------------------------------------

Are there any good examples of folk songs where we are only sure of the melody but have been harmonized in very different ways?

--------------------------------------------

Bako, I haven't forgotten about you. Just yours was so different from what I was originally thinking that I want to ask you how you got some of the ideas for it. I'll look at it again tonight after all the folk triad dust clears.

------------------------------------------

Thanks to all three of you, very informative. One thing that occurred to me is that if you start by writing a melody, it might be a good idea to try and begin by strumming a tonic. But given we don't have to start with a tonic and given the possibility of the relative minor, maybe that might be too limiting.

[JensL]

So that's it? Before and after Broadway? Folk music and rock and roll following classical song as if Broadway never happened? With the blues maybe getting a footnote? How about jumps? I was looking at some 19th century lieder and there seemed to be lots of big jumps, 6ths, etc. Anything noteworthy (no pun intended) in that direction?

There's a whole science to that called the study of counterpoint, which teaches melody and how harmony develops from melody. You don't have to follow all the ocunterpoint rules but being aware of them is not bad. A lot of the melodic ideas seems to come close to the laws of physics to me, but maybe that's just me.

Are there any good examples of folk songs where we are only sure of the melody but have been harmonized in very different ways?

Most folk songs have not been written with chords, so if you hear a folk song with harmonies it has been treated like that.
There are quite a few albums of Scandinavian folk music harmonized for jazz in different ways, I could mention one you already have But there are resources on the net where you can hear more authentic versions of the songs, mostly they don't have chords, just one or 2 counter melodies.

Thanks to all three of you, very informative. One thing that occurred to me is that if you start by writing a melody, it might be a good idea to try and begin by strumming a tonic. But given we don't have to start with a tonic and given the possibility of the relative minor, maybe that might be too limiting.

You're welcome! Why do we have to start with a tonic?

Jens

[jster]

There's a whole science to that called the study of counterpoint, which teaches melody and how harmony develops from melody. You don't have to follow all the ocunterpoint rules but being aware of them is not bad. A lot of the melodic ideas seems to come close to the laws of physics to me, but maybe that's just me.

I thought about going down that road, but it looked like four semesters worth of work to learn to write fugues without any clear connection to the rest of music. And it wasn't clear to me when I was ever going to have to avoid parallel fifths! Is there any book that teaches these laws of physics, without the full on rigours of a classical music program yet with clear application to Irish protest music, that you can recommend?

Most folk songs have not been written with chords, so if you hear a folk song with harmonies it has been treated like that.
There are quite a few albums of Scandinavian folk music harmonized for jazz in different ways, I could mention one you already have But there are resources on the net where you can hear more authentic versions of the songs, mostly they don't have chords, just one or 2 counter melodies.

Right. I was just wondering whether there were any well known cases where two very different harmonizations have come down to us. You know, in the north they play it as a major tune but in the south as a minor tune, have been doing so for as long as the tune has been around. That kind of thing.

You're welcome! Why do we have to start with a tonic?

Jens

Oh, if I had strummed some Em or G, I would have realized I was starting either on a second or a major seventh and then could have scratched that or realized I was heading down da jazzy way. But you are right, we don't have to start on the tonic, so it ain't so simple. Good thing you guys got my back.

[JensL]

This quoting function in the editor is really handy Was that always there?

I thought about going down that road, but it looked like four semesters worth of work to learn to write fugues without any clear connection to the rest of music. And it wasn't clear to me when I was ever going to have to avoid parallel fifths! Is there any book that teaches these laws of physics, without the full on rigours of a classical music program yet with clear application to Irish protest music, that you can recommend?

No sorry I had to do it for one year while studying and that's how I know, we did not work from a book.
I guess some of the important ones are that stepwise motions is the strongest, if you have a large skip in one direction you need to "resolve it" with step wise motion in the other (quite a few bebop cliches actually are good examples of that btw...)
there's also a whole theory on writing melodies for text, but I don't remember any of that (and hardly any of the other stuff..).

Right. I was just wondering whether there were any well known cases where two very different harmonizations have come down to us. You know, in the north they play it as a major tune but in the south as a minor tune, have been doing so for as long as the tune has been around. That kind of thing.

Well... major or minor is usually clear from the melody so you are probably not going to find that. Lots of folk-songs are harmonized quite differently, usually because they are not really played in that style but used in other styles, like pop, jazz, rock or classical music. Then they get treated in the way those genres harmonized melodies.

Jens

[JonR]

Jon, you want to give me the thumbnail sketch of the history of harmonizing melodies.

That's a statement, which I'm not sure is true. (Sounds like you're trying to hypnotise me....)

But assuming a missing question mark - - even a thumbnail sketch is a bit much to squeeze into a post on a board like this.

But - oh all right then.

Once upon a time there was no "harmony". There was melody in unison or octaves (early modal era).
Then someone thought of adding a second line a 5th or 4th away.
Not sure of the chronology here, but somewhere around then they also had a drone note maintained under a whole piece.
"Harmonies" would naturally occur between drone and each melody note, but it was not developed.
Gradually these practices morphed into polyphony, as someone decided 3rds were quite cool.
There were still no "chords" as such, just various melodies moving together, and theories of counterpoint to control the various intervals that arose. (IOW, they obviously realised by this time that some intervals sounded better than others; "we need some rules here, guys...")

It was around the Renaissance that the idea of "tonality" (major and minor "keys") started to develop out of the modal system, and the new modes of Ionian and Aeolian started to replace the older Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian and Mixolydian (which had held sway for some 1000 years by then).
Music began to be less polyphonic and more "melody dominated homophonic": what we'd call chords moving in blocks, with a single melody on top.

The rules of the craft of "Harmony" began to be laid down, in what became called the "Common Practice Period", covering the Baroque, Classical and Romantic eras - around 200 years in all.
It was essentially triadic, but based on 4 voices (soprano, alto, tenor, bass). That was obviously enough to spell triads, and to allow for variable doubling - different voice moves (still following counterpoint rules) might require different chord tones to be doubled, or even sometimes tripled (with a 5th being dropped).
You had "diatonic harmony" at the basic level (every chord harmonised from the same key scale); and "chromatic" harmony on the next level, where things like secondary dominants could be introduced. (The minor key already had one inbuilt chromaticism, the raised 7th, to make a leading tone and a major V chord.)
Naturally Classical music went way beyond this - and Romantic music even further into chromaticism - but they all began from those ground rules.

Around 1900, many composers felt the major-minor key system was exhausted - been there, done that - and looked for other ways to organise notes. Some went into quartal chords (built in 4ths), wholetone scales and other non-functional harmony, some abandoned the idea of keys and tonality altogether (12-tone music and serialism); others dug into their national folk cultures looking for inspiration. But mainly, 20th century art music retreated more and more into avant garde experiment, becoming an elitist culture.

Popular music, meanwhile - helped by the new audio recording industry - stayed with listener-friendly tonality. (You couldn't really singalong with Schoenberg...)

America, of course, was the home of commercial popular song, and drew influences from all of its immigrant cultures - but the African-American heritage was the most powerful.
It was always driven by the public craving for dance music, so while you had the sophistication of Broadway musicals (and their classically educated composers producing popular ballads), you also had the grooves of dance-floor blues and jazz.
Early jazz, remember, was harmonically pretty unsophisticated. There were instrumental virtuosos for sure, but usually riffing away on 12-bars or simplified ragtime sequences. People like Duke Ellington began to bring more complex harmonies to dance-band jazz in the early 1930s.
Jazz moved on up, of course, abandoning the dance-floor for the dissonant experiments of beboppers like Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk.
R&B, meanwhile provided the good-time stuff for the dancers. And it was that music that fired the imagination of young white kids in the 1950s, giving birth to rock'n'roll - the 12-bar blues the common thread going way back to the beginning of the century. Harmony was of little or no interest to kids like Elvis Presley and his audience; it was rhythm, and melody to some extent, that mattered.
People like Buddy Holly and the Beatles (not to mention the tin-pan alley writers) brought some harmonic sophistication to pop, but it was always held under a tight rein, not to get in the way of the snappy hook and the dance beat.
All the way through, what always governed melody (and still does) was/is singability - "cantabile" as Mozart said. If you can't dance to it - and even if you can - then you have to be able to sing, hum or whistle it. Or it don't mean a damn. (Not if you want broad popular appeal anyway.)

One interesting popular strand where you find a lot more adventurous treatment of harmony and dissonance is film music. Films need music to convey all kinds of emotional effects beyond simple pop appeal. They need drama and shock as well as soothing romance. Film music is where the innovations of the 20thC avant garde composers can reach a mass audience; people who might not want to sit in a concert hall and listen to it will happily sit in a cinema and have their eardrums alternately caressed and assaulted by it.

So that's it? Before and after Broadway? Folk music and rock and roll following classical song as if Broadway never happened?

Not exactly. It's more like they follow the real basics (triads) that all those forms begin from. As I said, folk and rock are - historically - about immediate audience appeal, and usually for a young audience. Young audiences are full of hormones and short attention spans; they want something that shoots straight to the heart and soul; something with an edge, maybe, but not the kind of intellectual edge that bebop and serious music provide; more the kind of edge provided by high volume and harsh timbres. Who needs 9th and 13th chords when you can turn up the guitar distortion and produce more sonic interest from a power chord?

Are there any good examples of folk songs where we are only sure of the melody but have been harmonized in very different ways?

Any or all of them .

[JensL]

Not exactly. It's more like they follow the real basics (triads) that all those forms begin from. As I said, folk and rock are - historically - about immediate audience appeal, and usually for a young audience. Young audiences are full of hormones and short attention spans; they want something that shoots straight to the heart and soul; something with an edge, maybe, but not the kind of intellectual edge that bebop and serious music provide; more the kind of edge provided by high volume and harsh timbres. Who needs 9th and 13th chords when you can turn up the guitar distortion and produce more sonic interest from a power chord?

That's a great post John!

Actually my students started to bring in metal music with more sophisticated chords (and tons of gain obviously). It seems that they started to use that "edge" to make new music. Some of the bands go into atonal chromaticism but others started moving more into real harmony and even away from the minor keys and into lydian sounds! I think they started using the chords as cluster sounding effects and now it is becoming real progressions of extended chords. Periphery's Scarlet is a good example.

Sorry for being completely off-topic

Jens

[jster]

That's a statement, which I'm not sure is true. (Sounds like you're trying to hypnotise me....)

Trick to hypnosis is to have a willing subject.

Thanks for that. I was mostly wondering who was the first person to land on a maj7 in the melody with no further resolution. The first to land on an 11. And so on and so forth. Was Wagner the first to hit all those. They say that the film guys got everything from Wagner. TV too. Check out Bonanza sometime. Sounds like the Ring.

[JensL]

Trick to hypnosis is to have a willing subject.

Thanks for that. I was mostly wondering who was the first person to land on a maj7 in the melody with no further resolution. The first to land on an 11. And so on and so forth. Was Wagner the first to hit all those. They say that the film guys got everything from Wagner. TV too. Check out Bonanza sometime. Sounds like the Ring.

I heard that the film guys were stealing everything from Ravel, same difference I suppose. I think it was way before Wagner though, he is a lot more hip than that at times anyway.

But another point might also be that not that many standards do this either, much more 3rds and 5ths on the tonic there.

Jens

[jster]

So Jens, I'm trying to get your line straight. So "long before" Wagner (Mozart?) composers had landed on the 7 at the ends of phrases. But it wasn't common. Then with standards, it became common. But not on the tonic where they still aimed for the 3 and the 5 and to a less extent the 1. That seems to be what you have said in this thread. I just looked at a bunch of standards and that seems to be true. I couldn't find any 7ths at the end, but Cole Porter especially gets going with 7ths and 9ths for half notes at the ends of phrases.

[JensL]

yeah sorry I am being unclear.

Wagner is further than landing on the 7th, he would also modulate in the middle of a phrase and be in other ways surprising... Somebody described his harmony to me as "having a lot of fun with an m7b5 chord, that could modulate wherever he wanted"

I think it was never common to end the song on the major 7th, at most a phrase or start a phrase like that? It also is not that common in standards, mostly it is harmonized with a #IV dim going to I but that is another story (examples would be I remember you, got you under my skin, spring is here...)

My impression (by ear and memory.. I could be wrong...) is that classical music mostly has that not suspended with the dominant so you have G7/C going to C in those places.

East of the sun ends its first phrase on the maj7th on the I chord, though it is sometimes harmonized with a IV7(#11).
The first line of I Should Care has the melody ending on the major 7th, in the bridge of I Love You the II V I in F ends with the major 7th in the melody. There are examples out there, but it is not in every song.

Jens

[jster]

there's also a whole theory on writing melodies for text, but I don't remember any of that (and hardly any of the other stuff..).

Do you remember what the method is called? I came across bits and pieces of it a while back. Do you have any idea how to track down the theory?

examples would be I remember you, got you under my skin, spring is here...

I understand your three other examples, but not these three. I got the charts open. What bar am I supposed to be looking at? Any one will do.

[JensL]

Do you remember what the method is called? I came across bits and pieces of it a while back. Do you have any idea how to track down the theory?

No I have no idea sorry. We just got some explanations and assignments to do for next time, and this part I don't remember anything of.

I understand your three other examples, but not these three. I got the charts open. What bar am I supposed to be looking at? Any one will do.

Ok I remember you, the melody is an E (in F major..) on bar 2, that is harmonized with Bdim or in jazz as Bm7b5 E7

Spring is here: bar 1 is with the major 7th in the melody, harmonized as Ddim (in Ab) or Dm7b5 G7.

Jens

[jster]

How many ways can you hamonize the note G in C major? (Abmaj7, Dm7b5, Dbmaj7, Fmin7, Fm6 etc etc)

Gotta love jazz. Need to harmonize G in C major? No problem. Here are five chords, only one of which contains a G and none of which are in C major.

I actually can live with the Abmaj7!

Before I put on my climbing gear, let me just ask: is there a typo?

[JensL]

No, I am trying to quite making mistakes

They in fact all minor sub-dominant, so borrowed from different kinds of Cminor and are all variations on Fm functionally (The least obvious being the Dbmaj7, there is a whole thread about that one somewhere....)

Jens

[jster]

Due to time constraints I stretched out the melodic rhythm to conform with what I was hearing.
No doubt there are simpler solutions but I wanted to share what I came up with anyway.

I did this before your last post. Sounds like a fun project.

I'm trying to understand what is going on in the second line. Do you just abruptly switch keys to F? Sounds great. Is it some kind of harmonic cliche? That Bb sounds so familiar, but I would never get there. How did you know to go there? For some reason, I never think to modulate by a step. Almost always a 4th/5th or to relative major/minor or maybe a minor third if I'm feeling crazy.

Also, I love that slash chord softening the D7. What's the best way to get more slash chords going in ones thinking?

The very last chord sounds a little strange to me. What is the thinking behind that?

Great stuff Bako.

[jster]

No, I am trying to quite making mistakes

They in fact all minor sub-dominant, so borrowed from different kinds of Cminor and are all variations on Fm functionally (The least obvious being the Dbmaj7, there is a whole thread about that one somewhere....)

Jens

Yeah, no I pulled out my list of subdominant minors. I remember that thread well!

The G against Dmi7b5 has been following me around. I think it was in the original post for this thread. Not sure why it should sound as good as it does. Perhaps Wagner knows! (By the way, I think Wagner rather than Ravel for film because he wrote operas; so if the film guys needed some effect, e.g., sun coming out, they could just go see what Wagner did; Ravel only wrote a couple of short operas.)

[JensL]

Well G on Dm7b5 has a sort of major7th, minor9th effect I guess? Spicy but not dissonant?
I am not sure about what Wagner thought of it..

So you think that rather than read the book or transcribe the music, film composers went to see the opera?

I was told Ravel was a master orchestrator (and who wouldn't want that title? ) so if a composer is educated in that
he'll have checked a lot of that out. Not unlike most Bigband arrangers checking out Thad Jones or Gil Evans I guess?

Jens