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Music Theory Query-Melody Harmonization
I recently watched a tutorial where the tutor glanced over the topic of melody harmonization and I want to make sure I heard him right. What I think I heard is that if you have a piano melody for instance and you duplicate that melody and raise the copy by seven semitones, the two melodies (the original one and the duplicate raised or lowered by 7 semitones) will harmonize and both sound good with the other instruments (eg flutes, guitar...) in the song which are in the original key. Is that how it works?
Comments
Seven semitones is a perfect fifth. It might sound good in some circumstances because it reinforces the fifth overtone, but you'll probably have to do some balancing. How anything will work is dependent on how it sounds, so you'll have to listen to the results to see if you like it.
Kind of. That’s about the simplest harmony you can use, but Western harmony is more commonly built on thirds. The reason 7 semitones works is because 2 thirds stacked on top of each other will make a major chord (minor third on top of major third) or a minor chord (major third on top of a minor third).
7 semitones from the root (a fifth), is the voice that is least useful in a chord, as the hearer often implies it when it is missing. You can continue to stack thirds beyond just two, which is why you see chord names with ninth, eleventh and thirteenth in the name.
Harmonies can be made more colorful by sharping or flattening notes in chords, and this is most often done to the fifth, creating augmented and diminished chords.
What you’re suggesting is a harmony, but it’s not a very common method of harmonization.
Good stuff here!
Parallel fifths are not often used for extended harmony sections. If one were confining oneself to one harmony interval, parallel thirds (which you have to adjust between major and minor thirds to keep the harmony in key) is a more fruitful interval to focus on.
Most music doesn't stick to using parallel intervals...it's just a place to start.
You will find much good material on the internet and YouTube to learn harmonizing.
Yes, parallel fifths are often frowned upon as they don’t provide much in the way of color.
Try this: using just the white notes on a keyboard, play a C and at the same time play each of the other notes from D to the octave C above it. Listen to how each pair harmonizes, and that will give you some idea of the sound of a major interval is pleasing or not. The seventh (B) will be the most dissonant, and the fifth (G) will be the most harmonious. The most interesting harmonies will be the ones that fall somewhere between those two extremes.
Thank you all. Excellent advice and insight as usual for my experimentations from scratch, which I intend to apply post haste. My original question, which I didn’t explain, was more focused on sample loops where I would have to apply the Semitone change to the whole loop, and without some extremely surgical chopping, wouldn’t have the ability (Easily) to raise or lower individual notes. I was thinking if I have an audio loop in c#minor, panning that left and then duplicating, raising by 7 semitones and panning that right. Hoping for a minor enhancement to just the single loop and making the loop a little thicker.
Two notes played together are basically a type of two note chord (dyad).
The notes on a keyboard are arranged on a scale of frequency ratios. White and black keys provide a method of organizing notes into same-kind pattern shapes that make player finger positions for various chord patterns and scales, repeat predictably up and down the keybed.
But ultimately keyboard notes are positioned relative to one another where a given number of semitones represents the same frequency ratio between any two notes from any given key to another.
A good way to experiment with key relationships is to play a chord, then count the same number of keys from each depressed note in the same direction, moving one finger at a time by the same number of notes, and play the result. This demonstrates how a chord is really just a combination of frequency ratios, and each type of chord (Major, minor, Sus2, Mag 7th, etc.) will have the "same note-count separation" no matter where you play chords on a keyboard.
Counting 7 semitones from any note on the keyboard, up or down, then playing those two note together results in a perfect 5th, having a frequency ratio of 3:2.
Example..
This would rarely sound good, imo, to simply have two loops playing a fifth apart (or any fixed interval). But that is just my way of hearing things. Try it and let your ears be your guide.
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There is a kind of situation where us dumb ol' guitarists do something like this and it works in certain situations, certainly not as a basic premise though.
If you bar the top 2 (highest pitch) strings at the same fret, you get a 4th interval rather than the 5th that you're referring to. But if your melody note is the highest note, you can think of the other note as a 5th, but an octave lower. So if you're playing an A melody note, an E above that would be your 5th, but in this instance you're still playing an E, but its lower than your melody note instead. And you hear guitar things do this quite often, selectively though.
Here's an example where you can hear it quite clearly at the beginning of Band on the Run. The harmony maintains the same relative relationship all the way through (except at the end of the intro to accommodate a 4 chord that is minor instead of the 'usual' major). In this case it's better to think if it as 4th rather than 5th, though if your played that lower note an octave higher, it would be a 5th and have a very similar effect. Harder to play though...
I just bang monotonously on the 9th the whole way through the song… (I kid)
For music theory i strongly recommend:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRwIF4NhKQf6tQpnYDcSC5A
Parallel 5ths are power chords, and so they can sound good if you're using distorted sounds (such as an electronic guitar) where you have lots of overtones. Like a lot of things in music it really depends upon the context. They generally sound bad in choral music, and for various reasons a lot of academic music theory is based upon what sounds good in choral music. It can sound ok though if you want your harmonic line to sound more like an extension of your melody, than an independent thing. Like a lot in music it just depends.
A couple of books that might be useful:
The first is kind of a text book from Berklee on songwriting. It's a little focused on 'songs' (e.g. with lyrics), but it does a good job including in covering the various kinds of harmony you tend to get in pop music/rock music.
Everyday Tonality is a little 'more' academic, but's the only book I really know of that engages with pop/rock music harmony as it is in practice, and why it works that way.
Although to be entirely accurate, what you’re describing is just intonation.
Modern pianos use equal temperament, where the difference in frequency between each note in a chromatic scale is equal - this puts the frequency of each note slightly out from the perfect ratios, but we have become accustomed to hearing it, so don’t notice the slight tuning differences.