Adding Chords To A Melody

[Passante]

So I have the bass notes already established + the upper notes of my melody. How would you go from here to form a chord? It's missing 2 fundamental notes that would work with my bass. And, another existential problem, do you add just 1 note to form a triad and thus incorporate the melody into the chord or do you add 2 notes to have a triad underneath of your melody? How would you solve such puzzle? Is it a matter of choice, personal taste, or is there a right and wrong way of doing it? There seem to be too many options.

Also, based on the notes of my melody and bass, I already found the key I'm in, and that should make it easy, but is it?

I'm at a crossroad.

[fmr]

So I have the bass notes already established + the upper notes of my melody. How would you go from here to form a chord? It's missing 2 fundamental notes that would work with my bass. And, another existential problem, do you add just 1 note to form a triad and thus incorporate the melody into the chord or do you add 2 notes to have a triad underneath of your melody? How would you solve such puzzle? Is it a matter of choice, personal taste, or is there a right and wrong way of doing it? There seem to be too many options.

Also, based on the notes of my melody and bass, I already found the key I'm in, and that should make it easy, but is it?

I'm at a crossroad.

If you have the bass and the melody, you pretty much have the harmony already defined. What's left is filling a few holes in the puzzle.

[strummy]

I agree with fmr, you're most of the way there with melody and bass.

Here are a few things to consider in general -
-You don't have to harmonize each melody note with a different chord. Listen to your melody and try and hear where you feel the chord changes should be.
-Once you have a set of notes that you'd like to harmonize, see if your melody implies or outlines a certain chord. For example if your song is in the key of C and your melody goes G E C you are spelling out a C chord, and probably want to play a C chord. But if your bass note is an A, then you're probably looking at an Am7 chord.
-Decide which notes in your melody are "target notes" and which notes are "passing notes", most likely you'll want your "target notes" to be one of the chord tones in whatever chord you're in. Again in the key of C, if your target melody note is G, you're probably looking at a C or a G chord.
-All of these ideas really depend on how stable or animated you want your melody note to be. If you want one of your target notes to have more potential energy, meaning it isn't at rest and wants to go somewhere else, you can either have it not be one of the chord tones and/or be an extension of the chord like a 7th or 9th. Using the example above, a G note over a G or C chord will be very stable, while a G note over an Am7 chord will have more motion and potential for movement. This same G note in an Am7 will have a desire to come to rest somewhere else either moving to different melody note or having the chord move underneath.

[jancivil]

"It's missing 2 fundamental notes that would work with my bass." - why, exactly, is this? Do you believe there must be a three-note chord? When, all the time, upon every bass note there are two other parts of a triad needed to be filled in, do you think?

People who are ready to write don't have an "existential" problem or struggle with it, having the experience with a lot of music and a grasp of the lay of the land as it were. What are your observations as to what has been done by others, in the music you are influenced by.

So, there isn't any real information about what is there so what is needed is a mystery.
I might recommend looking at making something work with just a melody and a bass line, where the bass line is also treated as a melody;without some requisite knowledge chords theory cannot be relayed to you with easy facility in a comments box on the internet. The bass line, OTOH may not be strong like that and indicates roots of chords in a common move. Donno.

The notions regarding 'stability' (simple consonances) or do you want to push for more interest (too advanced for right now?) are mixed here with basic facts about what makes a chord, for one who is struggling for the latter bit...
But ALL of these issues regard musical ideas, & coming up with musical ideas is not so much a puzzle or paint-by-numbers, and we have no sense of what the 'top part of the melody' does (or what 'top part of' means), or the bass line.

[vurt]

dont think, play!

play around, something will work, or it wont

[mladi]

" do you add just 1 note to form a triad and thus incorporate the melody into the chord"

Do you started with music a hour ago?

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

As to the fact that you already have made the bass, I have no comments not already suggested. But if you had not, it is always fun and exciting to try frame the same melody with different chords within the key at first. In this little piece, an offerdale flute theme is introduced at 0.40. At O.57, the chords change for a bridge, the melody, however, stays the same until the last measures of the bridge where it is changed a bit to fit a Vsus-V-i cadence. The original tonic is Gm, and the variation goes from Cm (iv), Eb (VI) to Gm (i) and then again from Cm (iv), Eb (VI) to Dsus4-D (Vsus-V) with minimal change of melody from the tonic part. In Jazz, working with tetrads, the options to frame the same line differently get massive, tho, a little intimidating too, imo, like having too many plug in to choose from. Experiment away is my advice

https://soundcloud.com/user-228690154/thunder-goats

[donkey tugger]

where the bass line is also treated as a melody

Now we're talking!

I agree that far too much emphasis is put on splitting things into bass/chords/melody, and that's where people get hung up. It can be fluid. As Jan says, the bass can play the melody, or indeed can play chords. Switch things around and experiment - play the bassline higher up and the 'melody' instrument lower down in a role reversal etc. There are all kinds of tricks to create variations and keep interest, without adhering to any set separation between the roles of instruments. Experiment!

[jancivil]

dont think, play!

https://www.npr.org/2014/05/03/30904761 ... t=20140503

[starflakeprj]

" do you add just 1 note to form a triad and thus incorporate the melody into the chord"

Do you started with music a hour ago?

How would you feel if someone said, "Did you start learning English an hour ago?". What if he did?

[vurt]

dont think, play!

https://www.npr.org/2014/05/03/30904761 ... t=20140503

great minds think alike...

[thecontrolcentre]

I wonder if the OP worked out the chords for the bassline

[jancivil]

they're never coming back, no one will ever know

I could be wrong, occasionally they do. No way to know if they saw 'what are your observations' with music that already happened and did 'Oh shit' and corrected course or ignored it or what. To me this is question #1. I have a good sense of why someone today would think they should just write music knowing no music at all (and "KVR" might tell you there's no reason to know anything because a program does it all for you now), but it's hard to fully feature for me.

Before I began guitar with real interest, I had learned a whole bunch of songs from this book my mother got for me for Xmas, "Songs of the '60s" (hardcover!) strummy strum, replete with strap-on harmonica for teh Dylan numbers. Gahd what a nightmare that must've been, my father may have thought to disown me at this point.

Everybody gotta start somewhere, but writing music is not your first step (unless you're, like, a genius).

[Hink]

you can start another topic and then let me know what you want moved there

[N__K]

you can start another topic and then let me know what you want moved there

Here's the topic: viewtopic.php?f=99&t=576241

I hope its name is appropriate enough

I think this post of mine: viewtopic.php?p=8263774#p8263774
...and the ones after it are to be moved.