Harmony Tip 4

A great way to practice ear training is to use our voices and bodies to feel the sound vibrations.

Here is an exercise I learned from my friend and bass player Andy Zadrozny, who also teaches ear training. Play a note on a keyboard using a sound that can be held with the sustain pedal, but has no reverb, delay, etc... Make it a pure tone. Then sing each interval within the octave over that pure tone. You can sing 'oooos', or 'aaahhhs', or 'eeeees'.

For example. Let's say you choose to play the note 'A' just below the middle 'C'. Sing in unison with that sound. Perceive how it feels in your body. Then proceed to singing the minor 2nd, which is 'Bb'. Now listen how the vibrations that were completely harmonious before, now sound like they are fighting with each other. Go back and forth between singing in unison with that pure tone, and singing a minor 2nd above.

Repeat the same process singing all the intervals within the octave against the pure tone of 'A' (or any tone that is comfortable for your voice). In time you will recognize the vibrations of each interval, both in your listening and in the feeling in your body. You will find that some intervals like the perfect 5th and the octave are very harmonious, whereas the minor 2nd and flat 5th are not. You might have heard the term 'interval of the devil', affectionally given by the church to this most infamous interval: flat 5th, the tritone! :)

Try it, it's fun!

Harmony Tip 3

Harmony is so amazing. This word means a lot of things, as Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder’s Grammy winning song ‘Ebony and Ivory’ sings about.

When I went to study with the great Luizinho Eça, I was already playing classical piano for about 10 years and was attending the Brazilian Federal University of Music, and The Brazilian Music Conservatory for music theory. On my first lesson I brought one of my compositions to play for him – at the time I hadn’t start singing yet, so it was an instrumental – and one of the chords in particular caught his attention. I think it was a 6 chord in one of its inversions. He asked me ‘ Why did you choose this chord here?’ To which I answered ‘I searched for the sound I heard in my head.’ Now, that caught his attention!

Eça’s method of teaching harmony was very unique, and at the core it was about finding the sounds we hear in our heads and/or trying different options until we find the particular chord with the particular bass that sounds like the emotion we are looking for for that particular melody.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t learn which chords belong to a particular key, and the relationship between them. That is a must. In fact, to use Eça’s method it helps to know by heart the most used types of chords in all keys. 

For example: I have a ‘G’ on the melody. That G belongs to many different chords. In the example below I identified 39 different basic chords that include ‘G’. I used the basic major and minor chords with 7th and 6th that ‘G’ appears. First as the Tonic, then the minor 3rd, then the major 3rd, the b5, the perfect 5th, the 6th, the 7th, the Maj7th.

 

Harmony Tip 2

I’ve heard songwriters say that sometimes they feel stuck in one or a few chord progressions and would like to try different harmonic paths. Or as I like to say, to dress their melodies with different kinds of clothes. The blog post from March 2nd presents Tip I, and I recommend that you read that one, if you haven’t already.

By the way, the example posted on Tip I as well as this method of choosing chords are based on the harmony method of the great pianist, arranger, composer Luizinho Eça, who was my teacher in Brazil.

I remember my first lesson with Luizinho. I was already studying classical piano for about eight years. I brought a tune I wrote, and one of the chords seemed especially unusual to him. The voicing of it. He asked why I chose that chord in that inversion. I said that’s the sound I hear in my head. And that’s what this method helps you do. Choose chords more by emotion than theory, the emotion that chord should impart on the melody – although knowing theory helps. Maybe you have studied harmony a lot and can’t get away from the thinking of what should be the harmonically correct chord.

I love this method because is so intuitive. However one does need to know how chords are structured. A basic way to figure out which chord you are playing, the name of a chord, is to stack the notes in thirds. I’m using the piano to do this – there is a reason why they say we have the whole orquestra on the piano!

Example: In the first two chords the E is the tonic. They are both E7 chords, even though in the first chord the D is in the bass position.

 

Harmony Tip 1

I’ve heard songwriters say that they would like to feel more free to choose chords for their songs, or as I like to say, to dress their melodies. Sometimes we may feel stuck in the common – I – VI – II – V pattern, or I – IV – V – IV pattern, or any pattern that obviously fit the key we believe the melody is written in.

Well, there is another way. Instead of picking the chord you believe should be the right one, try dressing your melody using your emotions instead. Try this:

Exercise 1 – Use only dominant type chords, such as a C7:

1- Write a simple 4/4 eight measure bass line, without thinking of a specific key. Each note with a Whole Note value.

2- Ask yourself about each bass note: is this the 3rd, 5th or 7th of which chords?

3- Write above each note the options.

4- Use the Fundamental Position (stacked 3rds) only on the last bass note. Don’t use the 7th here. Instead, double one of the notes (Tonic, 3rd or 5th).

5- Try to use the concepts of convergent and divergent movements – when the bass note goes up, the melody goes down, and vice versa.

6- Choose the chords according to the emotion, the color you want that chord to emanate.

7- Do this exercise everyday for at least one week to get the idea. Ex: