- 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,
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.
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.
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.
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
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,
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.
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,
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
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.
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,
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,
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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
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.
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,
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.
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
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.
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,
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.
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.
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,
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?
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,
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?
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?
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,
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,
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
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,
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,
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
