15

Harmony and Counterpoint

In This Chapter

◆Understanding the differences—and similarities—between harmony and

counterpoint

◆Creating pleasing background harmonies

◆Using different chord voicings

◆Composing interesting two-part counterpoint

◆Learning effective voice leading technique

A song doesn’t have to be anything more than a melody and chords. Think of a
folk singer and her guitar, or a solo violinist accompanied by piano. Melody and
chords are all you need. However, when you turn on the radio you don’t hear a
lot of solo folk singers. What you typically hear is a full arrangement, complete
with keyboards and bass and drums, background vocals, and other types of
instrumental backing.

Of course, these background vocals and instruments are doing nothing more
than playing the notes in the song’s chord progression. But they also help to fill
out the sound and make the piece of music more interesting.

To fill out your songs, you need to add harmony parts. These harmony parts
can be either vocal or instrumental, and there can be any number of them.
What they do is simple: They follow separate lines within the underlying chord
progression, thus buttressing the harmonic structure of the song.

If you want to get really fancy, your backing parts can represent new and con-
trasting melodies when played against your original melody. When you create
this type of complex harmony, it’s called counterpoint;it’s widely used in many
forms of classical music.

Chapter