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The Harmony thread

Hello,

I'd first like to thank azndragon0613 for his tutorial on uplifting melodie and Derivative for sharing his Knowledge on scales and chords.this dudes have made the best thread I've ever red on any website and I've learned a lot from it.
Scales and chords
Uplifting Melodie

It would be great if anyone could share their knowlege about harmony, and the principle behind it. A discord is I beleive a harmony containing dissisonances , I have much interest in this too so if anyone can help please do so.

All your answers and all your questions are very welcome, this is a great subject I hope this thread will attract some interest.

Cheers

Excellent topic. A "harmonies/counter-melodies" tutorial would probably be beneficial to this forum.

I might actually be able to write this one, but am too busy at the moment... pity you didnt ask three weeks ago or so when I was on holidays
what I can tell you now is (in trance/synth terms):
A harmony is when you have a melody (usually of the monophonic variety like a lead, sometimes is applied to pads etc tho, not often to bass) and then you add notes at a certain fixed interval above or below that melody.
So for example a third harmony is one in which there is a note three notes above the base note, obviously you have to remain in the same key, so its not just a matter of transposing the melody three notes up in your daw.
Common harmonies are fiths and thirds in trance, in other styles you get also fourths and sixths (less common) and sevenths.
what you really need is someone to do a bunch of sound samples so you can here the various effects, unfortunately I don't have time, but I hope this helps a little...
I may be wrong about this stuff, someone slap me if this is so...

As a side note, I don't think discord is very often used in trance, open to being proven wrong though.

Thank you for your reply kitphillips, I just wished someone could be more specific, but hey I'm probably gonna have to study it, not an easy task though cause I went to some music theory website and they don t really get to the point when talking about harmony, so I usually gave up after half hour of reading that stuff.

As for discord, well the fact that it is not usually used in trance it s what attracts me. But I beleive infected mushroom did use it in their early albums. If I' m wrong correct me.

cheers

Golden rule:

The more complex and faster your song is in rhythym terms, the harder it is to have lots of harmonization. It will sound fucked up.

Trance is really rhythym oriented and its fast - lots of 1/16ths and 1/8ths and arpeggios so if it does have harmony, it is only one or two orders at most. Mostly though its melodic. Hell, alot of it isn't even that - its monotone almost.

I still don't think Trance type music, or any kind of music which is beat driven works well with lots of harmonisation. Hybrid do some nice string sections in their songs (like If I Survive and Finished Symphony) but if you listen carefully to If I Survive, they aren't even chords - they are 2 note intervals.

You can get away with complex harmonies when you slow it right down and remove all the little 1/8th and 1/16th notes. Modern Composition (i.e. modern orchestral music) can be harmonically complex, but its nearly always beatless and really slow.

Harmony is essentially chords. To harmonize a melody, you are basically just filling out the chords that the melody is using. This is pretty easy to do in trance actually, because a melody will usually stay within a single chord for at least a full bar. For example, if you have a simple one bar melody that consists of an arpeggiated a minor chord with a few passing or neighbor tones and your bassline is offbeat a's, you can harmonize by simply adding two whole notes (one of them a C and one of them an E). This fills out the chord and effectively harmonizes your melody. Now of course this is a very simplistic way of doing it, you could use C and E in quarter notes with a few passing tones to harmonize, but i find that in trance its best to keep the harmony parts very simple so as not to distract from the melody. Harmony has to do with more than just creating constant intervals (such as a third above or below), but with moving under the melody to create a more complex texture. I'll try and come up with a simple tutorial in the next day or so to demonstrate. But until then i hope this helps a little bit.

quote:

Originally posted by Derivative Golden rule: The more complex and faster your song is in rhythym terms, the harder it is to have lots of harmonization. It will sound fucked up. Trance is really rhythym oriented and its fast - lots of 1/16ths and 1/8ths and arpeggios so if it does have harmony, it is only one or two orders at most. Mostly though its melodic. Hell, alot of it isn't even that - its monotone almost. I still don't think Trance type music, or any kind of music which is beat driven works well with lots of harmonisation. Hybrid do some nice string sections in their songs (like If I Survive and Finished Symphony) but if you listen carefully to If I Survive, they aren't even chords - they are 2 note intervals. You can get away with complex harmonies when you slow it right down and remove all the little 1/8th and 1/16th notes. Modern Composition (i.e. modern orchestral music) can be harmonically complex, but its nearly always beatless and really slow.

I think you're making it sound more complicated than it is. Sure, it's not as easy as monotone or two-tone interval, but in just about every vocal track I've done/remixed I use 4- or 5-note chord harmonies in addition to the bassline. Nonvocal tracks, it depends... it's a little harder but there's always at least a triad in the harmony and usually a 4-note chord.

Of course this is spread across multiple instruments, but that's the point of harmony.

Maybe it's not for everyone, I don't know. Doesn't seem like a big deal to me though, regardless of the rhythm section. The rapid-fire basslines you sometimes hear in trance can give you a tough time with harmony, but those basslines are completely unnecessary.

hey enigmatic !

thanks for the reply. now that I've red you're answer.I'm under the impression that I've been woking with harmonies without actually knowing it.
Your tutorial is very welcome !!!!!!!!!!! and I'm looking forward to it.Please try to include something about discords I'd love to understand that.
thanks again

Digi - I think you misinterpret. If you have a 16 step arpeggio, make no mistake - its going to be monophonic. Can you imagine having a 16 step sequence at 140bpm where each note has 5 order harmonies? basically 16 step 9th and 11th chords.

If you have complex harmonies in dance music - it will be pads and the more harmonically complex they are, the longer you have to draw them out or they will sound fucked up. And theres also a physical problem with filling up a mix with harmonically complex pads - they eat up headroom and theres no space for solo/lead instruments. Its one reason why vocal tracks tend to be minimal everywhere else - you need to physically make space in the mix for them. More so when you have to add more orders of harmony. An example would be Pigface - Chickasaw. A song which I love but isn't trance at all. This song as an alto vocalist who dubs her own harmonies - by the end of the track, these vocals take up so much space in the mix the only things you hear are a lowpassed drumkit and a slow bass which is bordering on sub. The guitars in this track have to be notched and filtered to a point where are so recessed they appear to sound behind the vocals.

And this leads me to the killer point. Trance is about groove and kinetic energy and it achieves this with little notes and arps. Cafe Del Mar is a classic example because its all stacatto 1/16ths The lead instruments, the bassline. The only thing that isn't is that classic pad which has no harmonisation - it just wouldn't fit in the mix.

When you start replacing those quick arps, and those little bass notes with long, drawn out pads with loads of orders of harmony you are no longer making trance music. You are making modern composition with a bassdrum.

Killer Point indeed! +++ derivative!

I would just like to add, I think what hes talking about is how the melodies move. taken from Dancemusicmanual by r. Snoman

"The relationship known as contrary motion provides the most dynamic movement and occurs when the bass line moves in the opposite direction to the melody: if the melody rises in pitch, the bass falls. using this technique its usual that if the melody rises by a third degree, the bass falls by a thrid. Contrary motion can be a vital componenty of dance music that works because it draws attention to the harmonic structure of the bass and the melody and makes the record gel together.

Now although im not sure about the last sentence, try out what he suggests

quote:

Originally posted by Derivative If you have complex harmonies in dance music - it will be pads and the more harmonically complex they are

If you say so. You're right that an entire chord progression doesn't happen on the order of 16th notes, but so what?

I was doing this even on older tracks, like the Closer Now remix. In the densest spot there's a regular (slow) bass, a slap bass, piano, vocals, a sort of arp (it's actually just a bunch of 2-note chords with an occasional 3rd note thrown in), and a couple of synth stabs. None of these are in unison and the actual chord (though not necessarily the root note) changes a few times per bar, usually. As far as I can hear/remember, there's not a single pad in there.

I'm not even trying to make this sound like a big deal because I think there are much richer harmonies to find, even in EDM. The track isn't my greatest work to date but the harmony worked just fine. My point is that this isn't really a big deal.

Just because the basic rhythm is 16th notes does not mean that the harmony has to change that quickly, nor does it mean that the harmony can't be complex.

If you want the music to be truly "club-friendly" then you may have a point; since club systems are usually mono, distorted, terrible quality, and generally turn all harmonies into much, you want dance tracks to be sort of minimal if you want to get them played on the "massive" club sound systems.

hey digi,

you seem to know a lot about harmonies, could you write a tutorial too or maybe something more simple like just putting some audio file with a detail explanation of what is going on.

cheers

I can try, but I learned harmony formally through several months of theory classes, and probably picked up a little from many years of instrumental music. The trouble with harmony and counterpoint is that it's almost like a science, there's a lot of terminology and definitions and notation to learn and not much of a step-by-step process to follow. Unless one already knows the basic theory (called rudiments in the stuffy academic circles), a tutorial might be totally incoherent.

Maybe it would be more useful if I searched for existing tutorials rather than reinventing the wheel. There are a lot of basic theory tutorials in the master list but probably not a lot on the more advanced topics, so I'll see if I can remedy that for those that are interested. I'm sure they're out there, they just have to be found and filtered. If people still aren't happy with what I find, maybe I can try to understand what's confusing and write some supplementary material or just answer common questions.

Even so, keep in mind that harmony's taught as a full semester course in most universities that have music programs - in two or three levels, to boot. I only ever took the first class, so I'm actually not an expert on the theory, but I have the advantage of knowing what -doesn't- sound good from many years of orchestras and the like, so I can always resort to trial-and-error if I'm truly stuck. Not exactly a practice I'm proud of or would ever recommend to others, but that is sometimes how I end up cobbling together harmonies.

I'm curious about some of the more advanced theory, like what people mean when they talk about the supertonic etc... Does anyone know a good book to use a a reference for these things, also chord structure and modes etc.

Supertonic is just another name for a major 2nd. Mediant would be a major 3rd. Dominant would be the 5th. I mentioned this in a tutorial I wrote for the Tutorial Master List - check the sticky.

Ever notice how rock music has steadily been going with 5ths? Most rock music subsists on the same basic chords but the more distortion you pile on your guitar and the faster you are chugging chords the less you can get away with adding more orders of harmony in small intervals. Its possibly one reason why you never see huge 11th and 13th chords in hardcore punk. I've tried working big chords into rhythym based music and I found that there was an unavoidable conflict of interest here.

Also when I mean slower I don't mean in terms of tempo. Thats completely different. I mean in terms of intervals. I think Trance is necessarily fast - not in bpm terms but in terms of the little notes and arps. You can get away with alot of monophonic instruments playing 1/8ths and 1/16ths. I think Hardcore is actually kind of slow - its fast in bpm terms but you can't get away with 1/16th arps very often at 170+ bpm. There are of course exceptions to the rule (Spinback & Storm - Your Love [Underground Recordings] for instance) but thats why I find them interesting.

The more orders of harmony you add to a root, the longer the interval needs to be or it sounds completely messed up. I think people have a different idea of what Trance is and that includes having long, harmonically rich pads dominate a mix. But I think doing that detracts from the kinetic energy that is so important for Trance music. I would love for someone to prove this wrong and it just gets back to the most interesting thing about understanding the theory - watching people go against the grain, break the rules and still come off with an awesome song.

Sounds Good Digi, Looking forward to it

Derivative: to verify what you're saying, I'm gonna have to understand and try. And maybe who knows it might just work out fine, but that's a real long shot.

Thank you all for showing so much interest!!!!!

I agree with digi that you aren't going to be able to learn harmonic theory very well from a tutorial. Especially if you don't know the basics of chord structure and inversions. I learned theory through 4 semesters of college theory courses and years of playing in concert bands and working on composition. My suggestion would be to take an intro to theory course somewhere. If you are already in school, sign up for one. If not, single courses aren't too expensive at community colleges and it will help you a lot. Learning at least the basics of music theory will help speed up your composition process by quite a bit.

quote:

Originally posted by Derivative Supertonic is just another name for a major 2nd. Mediant would be a major 3rd. Dominant would be the 5th. I mentioned this in a tutorial I wrote for the Tutorial Master List - check the sticky. Ever notice how rock music has steadily been going with 5ths? Most rock music subsists on the same basic chords but the more distortion you pile on your guitar and the faster you are chugging chords the less you can get away with adding more orders of harmony in small intervals. Its possibly one reason why you never see huge 11th and 13th chords in hardcore punk. I've tried working big chords into rhythym based music and I found that there was an unavoidable conflict of interest here. Also when I mean slower I don't mean in terms of tempo. Thats completely different. I mean in terms of intervals. I think Trance is necessarily fast - not in bpm terms but in terms of the little notes and arps. You can get away with alot of monophonic instruments playing 1/8ths and 1/16ths. I think Hardcore is actually kind of slow - its fast in bpm terms but you can't get away with 1/16th arps very often at 170+ bpm. There are of course exceptions to the rule (Spinback & Storm - Your Love [Underground Recordings] for instance) but thats why I find them interesting. The more orders of harmony you add to a root, the longer the interval needs to be or it sounds completely messed up. I think people have a different idea of what Trance is and that includes having long, harmonically rich pads dominate a mix. But I think doing that detracts from the kinetic energy that is so important for Trance music. I would love for someone to prove this wrong and it just gets back to the most interesting thing about understanding the theory - watching people go against the grain, break the rules and still come off with an awesome song.

I agree that trying to move through chords too quickly doesn't work. But i believe that this is one reason that trance would work well with harmony, because the chords in trance generally don't change very fast. Sure you aren't going to play a full chord on every 16th in an arp, but by underlying the arp with whole notes of other chord tones you can harmonize without muddying the track with too many fast notes.

quote:

Originally posted by Derivative Supertonic is just another name for a major 2nd. Mediant would be a major 3rd. Dominant would be the 5th. I mentioned this in a tutorial I wrote for the Tutorial Master List - check the sticky. Ever notice how rock music has steadily been going with 5ths? Most rock music subsists on the same basic chords but the more distortion you pile on your guitar and the faster you are chugging chords the less you can get away with adding more orders of harmony in small intervals. Its possibly one reason why you never see huge 11th and 13th chords in hardcore punk. I've tried working big chords into rhythym based music and I found that there was an unavoidable conflict of interest here. Also when I mean slower I don't mean in terms of tempo. Thats completely different. I mean in terms of intervals. I think Trance is necessarily fast - not in bpm terms but in terms of the little notes and arps. You can get away with alot of monophonic instruments playing 1/8ths and 1/16ths. I think Hardcore is actually kind of slow - its fast in bpm terms but you can't get away with 1/16th arps very often at 170+ bpm. There are of course exceptions to the rule (Spinback & Storm - Your Love [Underground Recordings] for instance) but thats why I find them interesting. The more orders of harmony you add to a root, the longer the interval needs to be or it sounds completely messed up. I think people have a different idea of what Trance is and that includes having long, harmonically rich pads dominate a mix. But I think doing that detracts from the kinetic energy that is so important for Trance music. I would love for someone to prove this wrong and it just gets back to the most interesting thing about understanding the theory - watching people go against the grain, break the rules and still come off with an awesome song.

I agree that trying to move through chords too quickly doesn't work. But i believe that this is one reason that trance would work well with harmony, because the chords in trance generally don't change very fast. Sure you aren't going to play a full chord on every 16th in an arp, but by underlying the arp with whole notes of other chord tones you can harmonize without muddying the track with too many fast notes.

IIIII DONT KNOW WHAT WE ARE YELLING ABOUT!!!!!!!!!! LOOOOOOOUD NOISES!!!

quote:

Originally posted by Derivative Supertonic is just another name for a major 2nd. Mediant would be a major 3rd. Dominant would be the 5th. I mentioned this in a tutorial I wrote for the Tutorial Master List - check the sticky. Ever notice how rock music has steadily been going with 5ths? Most rock music subsists on the same basic chords but the more distortion you pile on your guitar and the faster you are chugging chords the less you can get away with adding more orders of harmony in small intervals. Its possibly one reason why you never see huge 11th and 13th chords in hardcore punk. I've tried working big chords into rhythym based music and I found that there was an unavoidable conflict of interest here. Also when I mean slower I don't mean in terms of tempo. Thats completely different. I mean in terms of intervals. I think Trance is necessarily fast - not in bpm terms but in terms of the little notes and arps. You can get away with alot of monophonic instruments playing 1/8ths and 1/16ths. I think Hardcore is actually kind of slow - its fast in bpm terms but you can't get away with 1/16th arps very often at 170+ bpm. There are of course exceptions to the rule (Spinback & Storm - Your Love [Underground Recordings] for instance) but thats why I find them interesting. The more orders of harmony you add to a root, the longer the interval needs to be or it sounds completely messed up. I think people have a different idea of what Trance is and that includes having long, harmonically rich pads dominate a mix. But I think doing that detracts from the kinetic energy that is so important for Trance music. I would love for someone to prove this wrong and it just gets back to the most interesting thing about understanding the theory - watching people go against the grain, break the rules and still come off with an awesome song.

Ah thanks, I seem to keep missng stuff in the stickies! We should start a sticky though on good books on theory and trance though, would be a useful resource for everyone...

quote:

Originally posted by Enigmatic XTC I agree that trying to move through chords too quickly doesn't work. But i believe that this is one reason that trance would work well with harmony, because the chords in trance generally don't change very fast. Sure you aren't going to play a full chord on every 16th in an arp, but by underlying the arp with whole notes of other chord tones you can harmonize without muddying the track with too many fast notes.

Oh you can do that. But it will destroy headroom. What often happens is that you have lead lines playing monophonic but in harmony with the bassline (which is often root). But the more harmonisation you have, the less room in the mix you have for everything else.

Usually the two most dominant elements in a trance tune are the bass drum and bassline and these both consume masses of headroom so its difficult to keep adding layers of harmony - especially if the basslines are based on unfiltered saw waves (harmonically rich) and the bassline is a composite of loads of different sounds and the result is unfiltered (i.e. some of those massive Alphazone style kicks).

Jaia - Breathing Ocean is a good example of the former but its not harmonically complex by any means.

In modern composition this is less of a problem because you often do not have bass drums and bass instruments with so much amplitude behind them that they drown out everything else.

Another interesting thing. Try looking at how Indian music is made - particular Sitar based music - it doesn't use scales at all, but Ragas which are like scales but are based on moods and times of day. So its all synaesthetic. Sitar based music is almost exclusively comprised of melody and rhythym. There is often a drone accompaniment but there is very little harmonisation. Goa trance most obviously derives its style from Indian ragas and early trance does in many ways too.

At some point Trance (particular European trance music) began to become more focused on harmonisation and this is the point where I lose interest and where Trance began to have these huge breakdowns in order to get these lush string sections and pads in. I think its a conflict of interest because when a Trance tune breaks down for any significant length of time, you lose that kinetic energy that the song is building up. For that reason I also think that Trance is necessarily progressive.

In terms of harmonisation you should look at some modern compositions such as Ralph Vaughan Williams - The Lark Ascending. This is not characteristic of much of the man's work and it is one of his short peices. His symphonies are very different. The Lark Ascending has several movements which alternate between a solo violin and these wonderful harmonized string sections. The solo violin is played very fast and if you listen to it you can imagine a fledgling Lark trying (and failing) to take flight. It sounds alot like traditional Chinese music based on the Erhu and the time signitures and speed of the performance fit with that idea too. It does sound oriental in a way.

You can try to snatch some of the strings and stick a bassline and bass drum over them but something has to give. An obvious western example of doing this would be Reflekt - Need to Feel Loved which you have probably heard. That song steals the string section from a film called Road to Perdition but if you run it through a spectrum analyser and compare the sound of it to the film soundtrack you realise a few things:

1) Need to Feel Loved is noticeably quieter than most other Positiva tunes.
2) The string section has been band passed filtered and sounds it in order for the bassline and bass drum to fit.
3) If you listen to some of the remixes of this tune (I think Thrillseekers did one) then you may notice that the string section has an even narrower band bass filter on it or more of the string section has been EQed out. This is because many of the remixes have additional lead instruments, bigger kick drums and louder basslines and theres just no way you can fit all of that in without something having to give way.

quote:

Originally posted by Derivative Oh you can do that. But it will destroy headroom. What often happens is that you have lead lines playing monophonic but in harmony with the bassline (which is often root). But the more harmonisation you have, the less room in the mix you have for everything else. Usually the two most dominant elements in a trance tune are the bass drum and bassline and these both consume masses of headroom so its difficult to keep adding layers of harmony - especially if the basslines are based on unfiltered saw waves (harmonically rich) and the bassline is a composite of loads of different sounds and the result is unfiltered (i.e. some of those massive Alphazone style kicks). Jaia - Breathing Ocean is a good example of the former but its not harmonically complex by any means. In modern composition this is less of a problem because you often do not have bass drums and bass instruments with so much amplitude behind them that they drown out everything else. Another interesting thing. Try looking at how Indian music is made - particular Sitar based music - it doesn't use scales at all, but Ragas which are like scales but are based on moods and times of day. So its all synaesthetic. Sitar based music is almost exclusively comprised of melody and rhythym. There is often a drone accompaniment but there is very little harmonisation. Goa trance most obviously derives its style from Indian ragas and early trance does in many ways too. At some point Trance (particular European trance music) began to become more focused on harmonisation and this is the point where I lose interest and where Trance began to have these huge breakdowns in order to get these lush string sections and pads in. I think its a conflict of interest because when a Trance tune breaks down for any significant length of time, you lose that kinetic energy that the song is building up. For that reason I also think that Trance is necessarily progressive. In terms of harmonisation you should look at some modern compositions such as Ralph Vaughan Williams - The Lark Ascending. This is not characteristic of much of the man's work and it is one of his short peices. His symphonies are very different. The Lark Ascending has several movements which alternate between a solo violin and these wonderful harmonized string sections. The solo violin is played very fast and if you listen to it you can imagine a fledgling Lark trying (and failing) to take flight. It sounds alot like traditional Chinese music based on the Erhu and the time signitures and speed of the performance fit with that idea too. It does sound oriental in a way. You can try to snatch some of the strings and stick a bassline and bass drum over them but something has to give. An obvious western example of doing this would be Reflekt - Need to Feel Loved which you have probably heard. That song steals the string section from a film called Road to Perdition but if you run it through a spectrum analyser and compare the sound of it to the film soundtrack you realise a few things: 1) Need to Feel Loved is noticeably quieter than most other Positiva tunes. 2) The string section has been band passed filtered and sounds it in order for the bassline and bass drum to fit. 3) If you listen to some of the remixes of this tune (I think Thrillseekers did one) then you may notice that the string section has an even narrower band bass filter on it or more of the string section has been EQed out. This is because many of the remixes have additional lead instruments, bigger kick drums and louder basslines and theres just no way you can fit all of that in without something having to give way.

I completely agree that creating really complex harmonization eats lots of headroom. I'm not saying that it has to be done, merely that it can be (by bandpassing and eq'ing). Sometimes i feel like a track i'm working on could benefit from having one more harmony line, in addition to the bassline and melody, to help fill the track out so that it doesnt feel too open. Much of this has to do with the fact that, in the western world, the focus of music has always been on melody and harmony. Because this is what we hear from a young age we begin to believe that all music must be this way. I also have always connected trance (especially early trance and rave music) with eastern music because, like you said, eastern music is rhythmically based more than melodically or harmonically. Trance, especially early and progressive trance, is also very much like the early minimalist music which focuses more on subtle changes to create an evolving sound to engage the listener, than on a constant barrage of changing harmonization. I believe that modern trance has evolved into something completely different now. The actuall "trance inducing" effect is gone from much of the modern epic sound because focus is now put on large sudden changes rather than the slow subtle changes that used to be there. I'm not saying that one style is better than the other, just that they are different now. I don't know how i ended up where i did, but i'll shut up now.

Please excuse my ignorance on music theory, ive been working on sysnthesis for the past couple of months. But I had wanted to ask, Now If I know what notes are in a certian key and I make melodies based on those keyes in that if im doing what "sounds" musicialy fit. Am I doing somthing wrong there? I mean I don't know theory to the point to where i can write full on orchestrial works, but I understand enough where I know what Cm harmonic is and so on. Theory is this year, and its not like i havn't been reading up on it. Im just wondering is there a diffrent way to write melodies for a tune?

I did write a lot of melodies for a long time without actually knowing anything about music theory. I got interested in it only recently, and it's allowing me to go further indeed in my production. If it sounds good it can only be right. But I'm not sure I understand what you wrote mate.

Anyway the Knowledge of music theory should only be used to help you understand, to make your life easier not to limit yourself. always trust you ears and your feelings.

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