musical harmony

One of the most important elements in musical composition and songs is harmony. Chords and their relationships, the different possibilities, combinations, densities of notes, the relationship with scales or melody and many other issues are mixed in the theory and practice of this discipline. Let's see an introductory review of this very varied topic.

Harmony, chords and more

What is harmony?

The usual definitions of harmony usually describe it as the “discipline that teaches how to form chords and that suggests the way to combine them in the most balanced way, thus achieving sensations of relaxation or rest (consonant harmony), or of tension (dissonant harmony).” . If we consider melody as something that occurs over time, that is, we could represent it as a horizontal line, then harmony will be the phenomenon that we perceive when listening to several notes or pitches at the same time. We can think or represent it as an accumulation, as something vertical. Despite this, to understand chords we must first talk about musical scales and, to do so, we have to look back more than two thousand years.

a little history

Rameau's Traité de l'harmonie (1722) was the first text on musical practice to include the term “harmony” in the title. However, it does not mean that this was the first theoretical discussion on this topic.

Traité de l'harmonie In Western music, Classical Greece is usually pointed out, more than 2000 years ago, and Pythagoras, in particular, as the pioneers of the study of notes and those responsible for the concept of the octave that articulates a good part of harmony. which has been used ever since. An octave indicates the sound space between two especially consonant notes due to the physics of vibrations and the mathematical proportion that relates them. For example, the different C's, the lowest and the highest, that we play and name in theory, singing and any musical instrument, vibrate progressively twice as fast, when they ascend or are higher, and half as fast, when they descend. or they are becoming more serious. With this delimited sound space, the rest of the notes could be established in what we know as musical scales.

The scales

This octave has reached our days divided into 12 specific points, with equal segments between them, the semitones, and we know them as musical notes. But, in the vast majority of cases, when making music or writing songs or simply singing, we do not use all of them in each piece of music, but only a few.

C Major Scale To put it quickly and generally, those particular selections of notes are called scales and are the basis of both the melodies and the chords that will be used in any musical composition. These selected notes will keep an order and distance between them and, their repeated use, will give each scale a particular sound. The order is called melodic degree and each distance between those notes is called a musical interval. These intervals are given names, for example: 1 semitone will be a minor second, 1 tone (or 2 semitones which is the same distance) will be an interval of a major second or plain second, 1 and a half tone will be a minor third, etc… By combining these notes and their intervals we build both scales and musical chords.

The chords

A chord is generally considered to occur when three or more notes sound at the same time. The order and distances that these notes have from each other will determine the sound character of each one and its name.

Chord on guitar For example, a three-note major chord, or triad, will normally be formed by the root note, the first note, its major third and its perfect fifth. A four-note dominant minor chord, or quadriad, will be made up of the root note, the first note, its minor third, its perfect fifth, and its minor seventh. The combination of chords that is applied to each composition is what we usually understand by harmony, probably the main musical element of the songs.

The tone

Another key concept in the history and practice of harmony is tonality. Everyone has heard or ever wondered what key this song is in? What we know as tonality, or tonal harmony or functional harmony, consists of a series of notes, a scale, which, starting from a first fundamental, have an order, certain intervals between them and a hierarchy that assigns them, let's say, different roles or roles in a melody. Each of these notes generates a chord, a harmonic degree, which inherits that hierarchy of its base notes and a specific function within the whole, derived from its internal structures.

C Major Chords The two main tonal functions in a tonal structure are the first degree, or Tonic, and the fifth degree, or Dominant. Furthermore, and in order not to go on any further today and here, I will say that the scales and tonalities that respect the intervals of the well-known do re mi fa sol la si do, will be major scales and those that, with those same sounds, begin in the si do re E F G A, will be minor and will have their own internal pattern of intervals and, therefore, their own characteristic sonority.

The modes

Ionian, Doric, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Locrian. If you think we are in a history class, well, you are partly right. These names designate scales and their derived harmonies and are called musical or harmonic modes. Their origin is very ancient, also from Classical Greece, at least, and although they have little in common with those, what we know as modes, today, they have inherited those names from their ancestors. They differ from tonalities in that they have their own internal structure, their specific interval patterns and, in addition, they give importance or prominence to other notes of the, let's say, original scale. The D Dorian scale and mode, for example, consists of the same notes as C major, but when performing it, we begin and end the scale on D. Both melodically and harmonically, the D note and the D minor chord are the protagonists. and the center of this certain pattern that we call Doric.

D Dorian Scale The same thing happens with the rest of the modes. The Ionian, specifically, is what we know today as the major key.

Podcast episode dedicated to musical harmony

Conclusions

Harmony has been, over time, the object of desire of music theory, of those who aspired to give a complete or almost complete explanation of the very varied situations and forms that music and songs have taken during the history. It has almost always lagged behind the music that was already being practiced, the expressive innovations and new combinations that musicians and singers were proposing and experimenting with in their works. As a general conclusion, I will say that harmony can be a little scary at first, especially if we consider it as something primordial or something that must be known down to the smallest detail, but we should not approach it in this way. Harmony is an explanation, it is something that generally comes later and does not invalidate, question or affect in any way the music that any of us want or can compose. If you write a melody or harmonize a song in a way that doesn't agree with any of the rules or guidelines set forth in the hundreds of harmony treatises, absolutely nothing happens. Expression comes first, personal taste comes first, our experiments and our desire and way of communicating or creating comes first and most important. It will be liked more or less, it will please many of us or few of us, it will have a more or less wide distribution,… it does not matter and does not necessarily depend on the supposed harmonic correction it contains. It is good to know it, it is useful in many cases, but, in fact, the vast majority of the evolution and innovations in the history of music have been based on exceeding what the theoretical harmony of the moment considered correct, on breaking the rules and express with new combinations the anxieties and desires of each era, of each of us in this time and space in which we have lived. Learn a few chords, combine them and hear how they sound. Let your imagination sing. Write a song. #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_form { } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_column_with_background { padding: 10px; } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_form_column:not(:first-child) { margin-left: 20px; } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_paragraph { line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_segment_label, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_text_label, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_textarea_label, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_select_label, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_radio_label, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_checkbox_label, 3 .mailpoet_list_label, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_date_label { display: block; font-weight: normal; } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_text, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_textarea, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_select, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_date_month, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_date_day, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_date_year, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_date { display :block; } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_text, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_textarea { width: 200px; } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_checkbox { } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_submit { } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_divider { } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_message { } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_form_loading { width: 30px; text-align: center; line-height: normal; } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_form_loading > span { width: 5px; height: 5px; background-color: #5b5b5b; }#mailpoet_form_3{border: 1px solid #fcb900;border-radius: 40px;text-align: center;}#mailpoet_form_3 form.mailpoet_form {padding: 20px;}#mailpoet_form_3{width: 70%;}#mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_message {margin : 0; padding: 0 20px;}#mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_paragraph.last {margin-bottom: 0} @media (max-width: 500px) {#mailpoet_form_3 {background-image: none;}} @media (min-width: 500px) { #mailpoet_form_3 .last .mailpoet_paragraph:last-child {margin-bottom: 0}} @media (max-width: 500px) {#mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_form_column:last-child .mailpoet_paragraph:last-child {margin-bottom: 0}} Please leave this field emptyDo you write songs or would you like to?

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