The Trick To Writing Harmony Lines 

Thanks!

Oh my god that's so true

Minute physics does music

I’m glad he lengthened these over the years lol.

Now i get it why listening this is so much fun

What are the other channels beyond Adam Neely?

@@user-kk7ti4tx5j Just click my name then go to the "channels" tab to find all the music channels I am following. You may have to dig a bit, as I follow other stuff too, but you will find lots in on my page.

@@ILLEAGLExxx thx

Yeah, me too...

It bugged me so much .-.

I wanted it to resolve to a G natural. Hmm weird.

i want the D. And we got the D. and it’s great.

Anthony Holroyd It's a phrase...part of a longer whole. As such it is common for it to end on an unstable note.

Sara A I believe so. 😱😍

Yes, yes you did.

Thanks! That's really great to hear, I'm glad it helped!

Heh, yeah. I guess it's less "messy" and more just complex. It's probably still a little too rich to unexpectedly drop into a triad-based progression, though...

Yeah, switching form so suddenly woulld do that. Say, is there gonna be a video for writing good counterpoint harmonies?

Definitely! We wanted to do a basic one first before looking at more advanced techniques, but counterpoint is coming. Not sure when, but it's on our list!

Just curious - if it's too rich to have a Csus2 (or would that be CMaj9? idk, usually 9th chords include the seventh) could you not stay in G minor for the last cord or something similar?

​@@rachelzimet8310 It would be a *Cadd9.* Such _added 9th chords_ are much more common in pop than jazzier full 9th chords. And sure, you could change the chord progression, but then it would feel different. First of all, if the note isn't a tension anymore, it doesn't feel as, well, tense. :^) Also if this is a cyclic progression which repeats, the C is the dominant that leads back to the tonic Fm. Wouldn't feel as smooth to go there from Gm. Also, staying at Gm means a change in the harmonic rhythm (how often you change chords), which also feels very different. (Though ofc you could find another simpler chord that includes the D from the melody, like Dm or Bb)

Thanks! Glad we could help!

Thanks! I'm really glad it's getting shared, that's the best way for those viewer numbers to grow! And it's great that other serious theorists appreciate it, too!

Nice! Yeah, there's a lot of really complex stuff you can do with harmonies, as long as you know what you're doing.

^_^

We are fucked bro

Ashley ha ha lol

Fr I tried to write a song a few months back and I just hit like three keys one space apart each and was like "yep this is great"

@@lowercase_ash haha same I’m also writing a song but i have ta juz play some random keys and I was like “well, this sounds great I will use this in my song” XD

Thanks!

That's a great idea! We've touched on it a couple times, but we haven't really done a deep dive on the topic. We'll work on it, thanks!

I second this!

Yeah, he's mostly just playing thirds or fifths from the root melody I think except the ones he specifically covers

Tim so the third interval? (i’m sorry; this is just my understanding because i’m a violinist hehe)

Good question! Generally, I'm pretty loose with transposing octaves because it doesn't make a huge difference in terms of the theory. I'll usually compose it first and put it in whichever octave sounds best, and then for notation I'll transpose it to fit as cleanly as possible on the treble clef because that's the one most people are most familiar with reading. You can think of it as piccolo notation, if you'd prefer.

Nice!

Interesting! I'm not a trumpet player myself so I'll take your word for it. I was basing that off my arranging teacher's advice, but that was writing for any trumpet so may not apply as much with highly-skilled players.

^_^

tymime Jazz harmonies... it's not uncommon at all to have the 7th or 9th (or even #11) in the "resolution" of a melody. Coltrane did it a ton, but you'll also find it all over the place in almost every style of commercial music.

Sure, but in this particular instance it doesn't seem to work. It works lots of other times, but for some reason it doesn't sound right to me this time. It's not like I'm not aware of jazz chords being used at the end of songs. My grandma is terrible about it: when she heard Robert Johnson and Fats Waller use dominant 7ths at the end of their songs, she'd say it sounded "unfinished".

tymime I think, in this case, he chose the D purely as an example for the exercise. We often get a free pass on nonharmonic tones of short duration, but here, there was simply no option not to address it. Because it was the 9th instead of the 7th, it enabled him to talk about that 'treat it like the next lower chord tone' without skipping down to G. (You would likely choose C and E to harmonize a M7 at the end instead of the G and E used here.) Though it was a more academic example, (constructed to allow maximum "rules" explained) you still encounter similar instances in real life. Heaven by Ellington ends F to C over a Bbmaj7 chord. Hubbard's The Intrepid Fox ends on the Bb of an F7sus4 and feels similarly "off" to most people even though the quartal harmonies are all over the place before the ending. Shorter's Iris ends on the #11, Lady Sings the Blues (love that tune!) also ends on the 9 over a minor 6th. It's a funky little example, but I tend to let things slide in that context. A different preparation, or even a ii, V, I turn around under the D would have smoothed it out for our ears, but it's a very short example.

Nah, I'm just left-handed. The intro was shot with our original animator, who has since left.

Right, they left, yeah?

Thanks!

I'll look into them! Thanks for the suggestion!

Depends on the context! This is more for pop/rock/R&B harmony lines so if that's the style you're working in I'd use this, but if you want something that sounds more classical or complex, counterpoint's probably the way to go.

@@12tone Ahh, thanks~

Thanks!

Thanks for the suggestion! At this point, though, we receive so many song requests that we can really only focus on the ones from our Patreon patrons. We just don't have the time to look at every song that comes in, unfortunately. There's a link to our Patreon in the video description if you're interested, though!

I'm honestly not super sure anymore, I made it about a year and a half ago so it's been a while. Looking at it briefly, though, I think the melody's meant to be in F dorian. Not entirely sure why I made that decision, though, beyond just liking dorian.

Hi! One thing you might look into is four-part writing. It has some pretty strict rules about how different voices interact, and while you don't have to be quite that strict it certainly has some useful guidelines. One of the biggest ones is avoiding parallel fifths, where two voices that start out a perfect fifth apart both move the same distance to their next note. (Say, D to C and G to F) Instead you might want to use contrary motion (Say, D to C and G to A) which changes the intervallic relationship between the two voices. When one goes up the other goes down, which makes the whole thing sound more interesting. You can still have parallel thirds and such but trying to regularly switch up the distances between the voices is a pretty simple way to add interest to the parts. We did make a video about four-part writing but it was a _looooong_ time ago and the production is much worse than our current stuff. Still, though, it might have some useful info: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-c9SUElo4vQo.html

Harmonic and melodic are ways of manipulating the minor scale. Therefore you can't be entrenched in just one form. Make sure a chord with altered notes complements the altered melody.

^_^

Unfortunately, this mostly comes from the arranging classes I took, so I don't know of a book that goes into this specifically. We did have a textbook (amzn.to/2tfd5rR ) but we didn't actually use it much so I'm not sure how helpful it'd be.

Thanks!

Thanks!

Well, not quite, 'cause you still have an E as well. It's basically a C(add 9) chord.

Good catch! You're right: That was an error. I was thinking mainly about saxophones, which are a bit of a weird case 'cause they're played like woodwinds but they're made of brass, but you're absolutely right: Other woodwinds are often perfectly happy to play harmonies above the melody. Sorry about that!

No prob. And I very much appreciate the spirit in which you took my comment! I have now moved from just checking out your stuff to subscribing.

_Good_ saxophone players have no problem playing harmony lines above the melody.

Heh, true. It's more a tool for popular music than art music, but it's a clear and easy way to quickly get the job done, you know?

Wow, you reply so prompty to viewer comments! You are officially my favourite youtuber right now. BTW how many of you work for these videos? Keep up the good work.

Thanks! It's mostly just me and my brother right now. We get some script help from a couple other friends, but largely it's the two of us.

That makes sense: Close harmony is a fairly common technique in rock music 'cause it doesn't obscure the melody very much. I hadn't looked at those particular songs much, though, thanks for pointing them out!

12tone well, thank YOU for explaining how it works, i wouldt know what its called if you didnt explain it after all