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Harmonizing in Minor Keys · Acedra
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Harmonizing in Minor Keys
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0:01
- Hi, we've had a number of requests from people asking if we can demonstrate how to harmonise a melody in a minor key. And I can understand why people are asking about that, because it's harder to harmonise in a minor key than it is in a major key. Now why is that? It's all to do with, well when do I use the harmonic minor, when do I use the melodic minor, and it all gets a little bit of a tangle. Well, in a sense the clue is in the title. So if you're writing harmony, you're writing chords,
0:36
then really you want to be thinking about the harmonic minor. But when you're writing a melodic line, you really want to be focused on the melodic minor. Why is this? Well the harmonic minor just happens to throw up better outcomes for chords most of the time. Notice that word most. But when you're writing melodies, what you don't want is that funny, augmented second interval that comes between the sixth and the seventh degrees of the scale when you're in the harmonic minor.
1:07
So we're going to do a piece of work in G minor here, but let's start in G minor. So if I play G harmonic minor scale.
1:20
You can hear melodically there's this funny business going on here, isn't there? The sixth degree of the scale is E-flat, the seventh degree is F-sharp. So if you start writing a melody that does that, it's got a certain kind of unusual quality to it, which is fine if you're writing a piece about life in the Arabian desert or something. But when you're doing it melodically, that augmented second is a little bit awkward. Which is why we have the melodic minor scale, to iron out this problem.
1:49
You raise six, you raise seven, but coming down you don't raise seven, you don't raise six. But it gets rid of this problem of this interval by going up one way and coming down another. Now of course the problem is, when you end up with something in the chords that uses say E-flat, like chord IV. And in the melody you've got the sixth degree of the scale, E-natural, well you don't want E-flat in the chord and E-natural in the melody, so there are times when you might think
2:19
actually I can afford change that E-flat in chord IV to make it an E-natural. That irons out the problem. Or, of course, you could change the melody note, so you haven't got that particular clash. So in terms of the clashes, you've just got to watch out particularly for the sixth degree of the scale, I'd say more than anything else, but also of course for the seventh degree of the scale. So you either adjust the chord to fit in with the melodic minor that's going on in a melodic line,
2:47
or you just adjust the melody to something else so you're not having to deal with that particular conflict. So that's the crunch of the problem of harmonising in a minor key. But think harmonic minor when you're harmonising. Okay, so we're in G minor. I've just put up four bars of a melody there. If we're in G minor, we just want to be sure about what our chords are. And at the moment I'm focusing on the diatonic chords, the basic chords that belong to the key.
3:17
So we write out our scale of G minor, harmonic minor, which is why I've raised the seventh, of course. I don't need to come back to the tonic, because that's just going to bring me back to the first chord, ultimately. I'm going to stick in a third and a fifth, noticing that, of course, when I come to chord III I also need the F-sharp, the raised seventh. And when I come to chord V, I also need the F-sharp, the raised seventh. One of the most common things that goes wrong in harmony,
3:52
I find, is that people forget to raise this seventh degree of the scale. So obviously you're going to raise it in this chord, but you need to raise it in this one and this one. Chord III in a minor key, we tend not to use very much, because it's augmented. So that's a very dramatic chord, which if you want to write a horror film score, it's great, fantastic. Gives me sleepless nights, chord III. It's okay in a major key, in a minor key it's augmented. It's the only augmented chord that you get
4:24
in major and minor key, so be careful with chord III. Chord V, however, is going to be used a great deal. And one of the most common errors I see is people writing that chord V with an F-natural instead of in F-sharp. So remember to raise that leading note. And of course, we're going to number these in roman numerals like this.
4:49
So we know which the chords are. Now, we've got four bars up there. Fundamentally what we're going to do is match each of these melody notes to these chords. Now it's a slightly simplistic way of doing it, because you might want to be more sophisticated. You might, for example, want to use extended chords by extending these chords up to sevenths, ninths, elevenths, thirteenths, and so on. That's perfectly possible. You might want to use chromatic chords,
5:18
like the diminished seventh or the Neapolitan chord, or one of the augmented sixths chords, that's fine. At the moment, we're just going to focus on the basic kind of diatonic chords. And then if you want to be more elaborate, well that's fine. Now where do we begin? Not a bad idea to think about beginning with cadences. Two two-bar phrases. So, why don't we put the last cadence in first? If that's the end and it's got a double bar line, it's one of the shortest pieces of music in history,
5:49
but that's fine. It's got a double bar line, it finishes on the tonic of G, doesn't it? So I wonder if chord I would fit at the end because that would be the logical thing. Has chord I go a G in it? Obviously, it has. So maybe looking at chord I there is a sensible finish. Okay, if it finishes on chord I, then this must be a perfect cadence or a plagal cadence. Perfect cadence goes V to I, plagal cadence goes IV to I. So the next question we can ask ourselves is,
6:19
does F-sharp belong to chord V or to chord IV? Well it doesn't belong to chord IV at all, C, E-flat, G, but it does belong to chord V. D F-sharp A. So, we can already make one decision, can't we? That we have a perfect cadence at the end going V-I. Okay, that's brilliant. We may even, once we've written the cadence think, hmm, I wonder if we can decide what the approach chord is going to be? The chord before the cadence. Because there are certain formula that fit.
6:50
Let's have a quick look at this G. Well, if you're looking for the diatonic chords that fit any given note, there'll always be three chords, won't there? Because this G will be the root of one chord, it will be the third of another chord, and it's going to be the fifth of another chord. So which of the three chords? Well, G's in chord I, isn't it? G is also in chord IV, and G is also in chord VI. So we've got three chords that it could fit. VI-V-I, is a possibility.
7:26
The reason why I would veer against that is it's going to make the bass go E-flat, D, which is going to run in parallel with the soprano, which is in itself is not a problem. But when we write the other parts in, because they're going parallel motion by the same kind of interval, they're both going a second down, we might well throw up some consecutives in the middle. So we don't want to get into writing consecutive fifths and octaves if we don't need to. So let's try to avoid VI, possibly.
7:55
It could go IV, it could go I. Okay, well we've already got I there, so do we want to use I again here? No, we don't particularly. But we could use I in a different inversion. One thing that often happens is a cadence that goes Ic-V-I. Ic-V-I because you get dominant, dominant, tonic in the bass. The bottom note of Ic is going to be D, the bottom note of V is also going to be D. So that's quite a nice bit of stability, isn't it? So that's why Ic-V-I, is a very common cadence formula.
8:32
But it could be IV-V-I, just as well. So it's not that we've got a definitive right answer, we're looking at options and trying to explore why one option might work over another. Okay, well before we get too involved in that, we've got another cadence here, haven't we? And you might look at this and say, "Oh great, it's got G again. "So I'll tell you what, I'll just write the same thing "as I wrote here and have chord I." You could do, on the other hand,
9:00
if we've got two cadences very close to each other, do we want to finish on I in both of those cases? Or if we have an option to finish somewhere else, should we take it? Let's consider this for a moment. This G, we've already said, is the root of chord I. G also appears in chord IV, but there isn't a cadence that finishes on IV, is there? V to I is perfect, IV to I is plagal. Anything to V is imperfect, but it's normally I to V, II to V, or IV to V, and V to VI is interrupted.
9:38
So IV is not a great option. But G also appears in chord VI, and we just mentioned chord VI, didn't we? Let's make a note of VI for a moment. We can always rub this out if we don't like it later. So there's VI, now that throws up the possibility of an interrupted cadence. Now if that works, that would be rather good, wouldn't it? We could have an interrupted cadence here, and then we could have a perfect cadence at the end. And I tend to think of perfect and plagal cadences
10:04
as kind of musical full stops, and imperfect cadences as a kind of musical comma, and interrupted cadences as a kind of musical question mark. So that'd be rather good, wouldn't it? Have a first phrase that sort of asks a musical question, and then a second phrase that kind of gives us an answer, and finishes on the tonic. It's what we call a questioning and an answering phrase, or to use the posh words, antecedent and consequent. Okay, well let's test our theory.
10:32
If it finishes on VI, V needs to come before it. So here's the big question, does A belong to chord V? Chord V, A, oh fantastic. So we can put a chord V in there. Now can you see what we've done? We've already filled in quite a bit of the chord scheme, haven't we? So that's rather good that we can do that, isn't it? Okay, so we've got to then work on the rest of it. Well you can do this in order, or you can think well, where's the best place to start? The first chord, not a bad place to begin,
11:06
and we're in the key of G minor, so if we can start on chord I, that's normally a good idea. Pieces don't always start on the tonic chord, and sometimes if you have an anacrusis, like something before the first bar line, you might start on a chord V. But this is on the first beat of the bar, does chord I fit G? Well we know it does. So I think we could fairly safely think, yeah I know what, we'll go for a chord I there. So we can do that, we can now go on and look at the next pair of chords.
11:35
Well, we may not be entirely sure what to do with F-sharp, so let's consider the options. Well, F-sharp's in chord III, but what did we say about chord III? It's augmented in a minor key, possibly one to avoid. I'm not saying we should never use it, because it can be actually quite effective, but until we're really sure about it, maybe it's not our first port of call. V fits, doesn't it? So we could have V. VII also fits, and you'll read in many textbooks
12:08
that people advise you to avoid chord VII at all cost. It's a diminished chord, it's a bit awkward to deal with. I don't quite subscribe to that. VII is a useful chord, actually, sometimes. If you're going to use VII, either in a major key or a minor key, it's diminished. And the other diminished chord, of course, is chord II in a minor key. Whenever you use a diminished chord, if you put it in first inversion, it always sounds so much better than it does in root position.
12:37
So if I use chord VII here, that's in root position, it's all right. It's a little bit ugly. Put it in first inversion. Suddenly sounds a lot better. So just a tip there, if you're going to use chord VII in a major key or a minor key, or chord II in a minor key, those are the three diminished chords in the major, minor system, try to get them in first inversion. So we could go for VII, but if we're going to go for VII we're going to have to use VIIb really. So that's something to think about,
13:12
keep our options open. Okay, where can we go next? Well we know that G fits chord I because we've already been there. And we also know that G fits chord VI, because we've already been there. And we also discovered earlier that G belongs to chord IV. So we've got some options there, haven't we? Any we want to eliminate? Well, personally I'm thinking VI is not great because we're coming back to VI very shortly. And we don't particularly want to steal the thunder of the cadence.
13:41
So I might be inclined to say no to chord VI. I've got reservations about chord V, about chord IV going to chord V. Why is that? If I use four, and then five, the bass is going to go C, D. What's the problem with that? Well if the bass goes C here, it's a perfect fifth up to the G at the top. If it goes D here, there's another perfect fifth up to the top, which means that we will have consecutive fifths between the soprano and the bass. Now you really don't want to go there.
14:17
You could solve it by having a IVb chord, that's one possibility. But it's maybe going to be slightly awkward, though. Because IVb is going to put an E-flat in the bass, so we've got to sort of think, how are we going to get to E-flat from the previous chord? An F-sharp up there gets a little bit fiddly. So maybe on balance, the best thing is to come back to a I. Because I is going to get us away from all these possibilities of consecutives. Okay, now then you might just look at this and think,
14:51
well what am I going to do then? Am I going to use VIIb, am I going to use V, you know? You could use either, but let's be adventurous, shall we? We've got some V's around, let's go for VIIb, it'll just gives a bit of practise in using that, won't it? Okay, now then we're doing well. We've just got a couple of chords to fill in here. Let's look at this G again. Now we've already been around this G chord, haven't we? So we said our options for G are I, and then we said IV would fit, didn't we?
15:25
And we said VI would fit. It's kind of worth doing this exercise unless you're feeling quite fluent in harmony. Best way to do harmony is get your fingers on the keyboard, if you're a keyboard player, get the feel of harmony and harmonic movements. But it's good to sort of calculate things if you're less sure. Okay, well what am I going to do here? Am I going to repeat chord VI? It's not a great choice, is it? Because I've just had it here at the end of the cadence,
15:51
so I don't really want to go VI again, do I? There are quite a lot of I's lurking around, aren't there? We've got I coming up, so if we can avoid I, that's probably pretty good. We haven't yet gone for a IV, so why not use a IV there? You see how we've kind of come to that decision making process? But we can store the other possibilities away, just in case we want to come back to them. One more note to find a chord for. A, now what's A about? It's got, it's in chord II, isn't it?
16:23
A is at the bottom of the chord II. It's also at the top of chord V, and it's also in VII. Well, I wonder what we might want to use there? We've had a blast of VII back here. We've said if we're going to use VII, we want to use VIIb. But we've already done that once, so we could do it again, but maybe we'll just forget that idea. We could use a V, but we've had a V here, we've got a V coming up, it's going to feel a little bit stuck on V. So I wonder if we can use II?
16:56
Just remember what we said a moment ago, chord II, one of those diminished chords, works better in first inversion. So let's make it a IIb. It also means that we now get a nice balance of inversion chords. It's tempting when you're writing this stuff to put everything in root position, but if you can get inversion chords out of it, that's quite handy. Okay, now we've got that, we can probably plot a bass line, can't we? So here's the bottom of I. If we're going to go for a VIIb,
17:29
we're going to end up with that. We're going to come back to chord I. I'm already feeling quite positive about this, because this is coming down, going back up. This is going up, coming back down. Contrary between the bottom and the top parts, always a good move. D is going to be the root of my chord V, and it's going to go to E-flat. Again, contrary between the parts, always good. This will throw up a C in the bass, the IIb will mean I can repeat the C. That's quite a nice thing to do,
18:02
you've got the danger of lines getting stuck by too much repetition, but when you have a note in common between one chord and the next, quite handy to be able to repeat it. It kind of glues it together a bit. Then Ic is going to give me this in the bass, V is going to give me another D. So that's another bit of sort of glueing together, isn't it? And then we can finish off on a G, but it could go up to G, it could go down to G. Once you've got your chord choice, you've got your bass line
18:32
and you're feeling reasonably happy about it, you can then go in and fill in the middle parts. So, what do we need here? G B-flat D. Well let's stick a D in there for now. We can do that, maybe. If we're going to go for the VIIb, well life is getting a little congested now, isn't it? But we could perhaps put the C in there. Share the A, that would work reasonably well. And then we could come back to the chord that we began on. How's that? Then we could fill out this chord V,
19:10
there's an F-sharp, I'm going to put a D here. Now we need to go on to this chord VI, though we've got to be a little bit careful here, because if that F-sharp goes to E-flat, it's going to give us an augmented second. And that's a melodic movement between the seventh and the sixth degree. The thing we're trying to avoid, that little sort of slightly snake charming interval. We don't really want to change that to F-natural, and we certainly don't want to change this to E-natural,
19:40
it's not going to work for chord VI. So I'm going to solve it by being a bit careful about that melodic movement. Not going F-sharp to E-flat, but maybe going up to share the G. So we don't always want to reduce four parts to three, but it's a perfectly possible thing to do. And then I can put in the missing B-flat there. Okay, now then, chord IV we could do something like this to fill out chord IV. And then, actually, that's quite nice because these notes actually repeat in there quite happily.
20:17
If I want to conclude the notes of Ic, I could do that. For V I could do this. I hope you see where all these notes are coming from. I'm just completing the chords. And then we could finish like that. Now we need to check for consecutives. I've got a fourth there, fourth, fourth, that's okay. It's perfect fifths and perfect octaves we're avoiding. That's okay, that's all going thirds and fourth and so on, so that's all right. How about the soprano and the tenor part, yeah?
20:48
That's all going all right. There's a fifth there, so we need to check out there's not another fifth. That was a sixth, so that's good. There's a fifth there, but it goes to a sixth. Sixth, sixth, sixth, that looks okay. Top and bottom I think we've already checked, can you see this sort of vague contrary motion going along, that helps you to avoid the consecutives? Not just between the top and the bottom, but it helps you avoid consecutives with other parts. Check the alto with the tenor.
21:14
Well that's sort of going along in thirds and sixths and things, so that looks all right. Check the alto with the bass, yeah that seems to be going all right. You see what I'm doing? I'm just checking every pair of parts. And then we can check the tenor with the bass, I can't see anything that's problematic there. So yeah, so we're free of the consecutives. So what we've now got is something that sounds like this.
21:49
You can, of course, spruce it up a bit. Like here, we could put in a passing note in the tenor, which is a nice passing note, because it turns V into V7. So it just gives us a bit more colour. You could even have a passing note in the bass here look. And that just keeps a bit of movement going. You see how that just keeps that bar moving. It was a bit static before, wasn't it?
22:26
You could decide you want to use a tierce de picarde at the end. Where you're in a minor key, but the last tonic chord becomes major.
22:38
You could do that. So if you fancy doing that, well why not? Stick in a major chord at the end by making that a B-natural. Okay, now that's not the only way of harmonising that. You could do lots of other things with it. But I hope that taking you through that process is helpful in engaging with, how do we harmonise a melody in a minor key?
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