SONGWRITING TECHNIQUES

Adding a Chord-tone Melody

Songwriting Techniques – Adding a Chord-tone Melody was until November 2012 Lesson Three of The Pyramids Variations, a series of free online piano lessons from Musicarta.com.

The Musicarta Pyramids Variations series of keyboard creativity lessons has been released as an e-book digital download/data-CD. Click through to the Pyramids Variations home page to learn more, or jump right in and . . . BUY THE DIGITAL DOWNLOAD only $14.95 TAKE THE DATA-CD OPTION only $12.95 COMING SOON! These pared-down web pages have been left on the site to show you how the Pyramids Variations will give your repertoire and keyboard know-how a massive boost – explore them using the series navigation in the right hand column. Enjoy!

This page now takes a more general look at Musicarta’s songwriting techniques for keyboard players.

Chord-tone melody songwriting techniques

Here’s a brief summary of the situation.

• Most pieces of modern (popular) music have a fairly simple sequence of chords played on guitars and/or keyboard, with a bass guitar bass line, for all to hear. But chords on their own aren’t enough to make a song or a piece of music. We expect to hear a tune as well, on top of the supporting chords.

• The main ‘anchor’ notes of this melody will usually be a note out of the supporting chord. The melody will wander about between chord tones, using next-door notes most of the time, and when the supporting chord changes, the melody will arrive at a chord tone of the new chord in an attractive, interesting way.

It really is that simple! But knowing it and doing it are two different things – especially for keyboard players, who are often expected to do everything themselves!

That’s where the Musicarta Pyramids Variations comes in.

(To understand the following, you should have looked through the old Lesson One and Lesson Two skeleton pages – use the Series Navigation table in the right hand column to catch up if necessary.)

The Pyramids Variations is a practical course of lessons which brings essential aspects of music theory to life and leaves you able (in this example) to play a chord sequence from a chord chart, add a chord-tone melody on top and join the melody notes up in interesting ways.
Here’s the Lesson Two version of the Pyramids Variations chord sequence:

Here’s the Lesson Three chord sequence with the chord-tone melody:

All the notes from the previous version are still there. There is only one new note in each bar. It’s the highest note and it’s on the first beat so it stands out, as a melody should.

All the key musical examples in the Pyramids Variations have audio and MIDI support, so you don’t need to read music to make speedy progress. Also, there are twenty-six demonstration videos of the written-out performance music playing on MidiPiano, the ‘virtual keyboard’ included in the your download. Go to the series home page for more examples and a full description. Or jump right in and . . . BUY THE DIGITAL DOWNLOAD only $14.95 TAKE THE DATA-CD OPTION only $12.95 COMING SOON!

The Pyramids Variations teaches lots more aspects of ‘practical music theory’ that will give your songwriting and composing a boost. Here one example.

Inversions

In the Pyramids Variations, you learn to play chords from chord symbols using the Basic Music-making Position. Graphic

This gives you the simplest possible chord, with the chord’s name-note – the root, the letter in the chord symbol – at the bottom. But we also want to be able to use either of the other chord tones at the top of the chord as a melody note – we need to be able to make inversions.

Here’s an illustration from the Pyramids making-inversions material:

Play the three-note chord indicated by the circles (root position), then take the bottom note ‘up an octave’ to make the first inversion chord (indicated by the triangles).

You have made first inversions of the six chords in the simple Pyramids version. Here’s a version of the Pyramids chord sequence from the Variations sections which uses both BMP and first inversion chords.

Notice that the chords are played top-to-bottom instead of bottom-to-top – the Pyramids Variations has many similar techniques for getting more out of what you know!

BUY THE DIGITAL DOWNLOAD only $14.95

TAKE THE DATA-CD OPTION only $12.95 (COMING SOON)

Continue your exploration of the Musicarta Pyramids Variations digital home study pack using the links in the series navigation table (right-hand column), or click up to the series home page for an overview.

Page notes:

• You can watch some general Musicarta inversions material on Mister Musicarta YouTube.

• The circles-and-triangles inversions illustration comes from the Musicarta Keyboard Chord Generator. Download it free!