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.

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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.

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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.

Last edited by Derivative on Feb-14-2007 at 13:14

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

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Last edited by michaelconway on Feb-14-2007 at 22:52

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.

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My party schedule:
2009-02-21 - DJ Attention @ I'm So Popular
2009-06-18 - DJ Annoying @ People Need To Know Where I'll Be
2012-11-32 - DJ Insufferable ɸ Or At Least the Stalkers I Complain About
2048-06-66 - Spastic & Whocares ¶ Although I'm Actually Flattered
9999-45-81 - Tweaker Gimp ☼ I Probably Won't Even Go To This But I Have To Make Sure I Fill Up All The Available Space Here

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