Take your tunes to the next level with - Counter Melodies!

hello everybody today we're talking about counter Melodies answering phrases those little sort of melodic kind of fragments which weave around the main Melody and take your music from a piece of music down here to somewhere up there or above the kind of thing which makes your friends go hmm oh that's all right to oh that's amazing okay it just gives it interest depth it gives you something to listen to anyway I'm going to show you how to do it I'm going to give you a lot of top tips along the way I have got the sunglasses of Doubt just in case things go wrong which they sometimes frequently do now what we've got going on here is a very simple little um uh chord progression as you'll hear [Music] nothing very exciting just a straight little uh called one chord for chord five chord one again all over a c pedal so what's basically going on let me just quickly explain so you can see for yourself so we start chord of C okay then we go to a chord of f keeping this pedal going in the bottom then we go to a chord five with the c pedal at the bottom and then chord four again still with the c pedal so you see what I'm doing so that's very simple very straightforward but even something simple and straightforward is that it's quite easy to get lost um and when you start when you're writing straight into the door as we are um it's really easy the more layers of music you build up to lose focus on exactly what the harmonic structure of your piece is so and I hear this a lot in student work and applications for our master's program where there's it sounds great but there's just something rubbing in the middle there and somebody wasn't quite sure if that was supposed to be an F major chord or a D minor chord and they're kind of slightly overlap and it loses focus and Clarity and particularly when you're going to be starting to do answering phrases as we are in a moment it's important to know harmonically exactly where you are now one of the things which here's this is genuinely a top tip genuinely a top tip okay um one of the things which I frequently invite advise people to do particularly uh relatively new students is this put in on your marker track just drop markers in reminding you what the chord is I mean this is obviously very simple but suppose it's more complicated than that and it's changing a lot it just helps you keep um keep an eye on exactly what's going on where and when you're improvising in it gives you choices Okay so we have our marker track which will remind me um what's going on right let us now come up with a melodic line ah this is the bit I'm not so Keen okay no it'll be fine it'll be fine what am I going to do now okay so this um these strings are largely in the middle of the middle of the range about here so I think I'm going to add a cello line to this um right here's we're using BBC Symphony Orchestra I should my melodic line is going to take account of the fact that it starts in C so I'm aware of the notes of the chord I'm aware of where it's going and what I can get away with and what I can't um so as many of you know when you're writing um Melodies most of you do it quite intuitively and that's a really good thing um but there are notes you need to avoid and it's largely those which are semitone away from the notes in the chord so you don't you're not going to have a a C sharp or a G sharp in a in a chord it against a c however there's lots of other notes which you can do let's let's have a little play and then we'll see what we come up with okay [Music] okay that's but it's a bit kind of country file so yes that means nothing to those of you outside the UK does it oh it's this very nice Charming Sunday afternoon program about the countryside and it uses quite a lot of sort of just nice happy music which goes on background it's a bit like that it's not exactly Schoenberg is it no okay let's try another one let's try one more see how many I can no okay I instantly don't like that and prefer what I had before I like that Rising fit at the beginning it works quite well so ah let's do it again thank you [Music] okay say that say we like that say we like that just for a do we like that yeah okay now what you can do let's let's now start just instantly putting putting some extra little phrases in let's firstly if you're going to write an answering phrase or a counter melody or anything else it's largely going to be it's it's got to have a different tonal texture it's got to be a different instrument you can't have I think if you want it to balance I'm probably looking at putting a French horn or a woodwind in there um let's see what would happen if I went with a flute for example foreign s here so what I'm looking for I haven't left any spaces in this um which makes this heart sometimes what you do is you write a theme which has deliberately has space in it to allow an answering phrase a counter Melody to come through let's try this because we haven't done that on this occasion and it'll be interesting to see how it works out [Music] thank you okay what's going on here um is we have a slow theme and we have a faster um sort of counter Melody going over the top of it so we have the um the the theme is largely down here the counter Melody is up here and the harmonic accompaniment is sort of bang slap in the middle um so that works to a degree [Music] okay notice sunglasses are doubt very much in evidence there um so when I was playing that in um we were up here you can't see that uh yeah so I know I'm in the quarter quarter sea so I can start on e f g [Music] so I'm using the chord shape to detect her to inform what I've got available to me um to write my little counter Melody right let's do something completely different um let's get rid of all that and do a different one what am I going to do this time um let's start with uh let's start with piano okay [Music] foreign okay different key foreign shocking sometimes I really think I should work out what I'm going to do in advance but no it needs to be spontaneous otherwise you know there's no point in just kind of working something out and doing it you want to see it happen in real time okay [Music] ah Maybe I'm not that far away from where I was though am I look I'm not going to sit here doing that I'm going to just do this [Music] hi guys Susan [Music] what is going to go with that I have no idea [Music] thank you [Music] okay don't call without any Shadow if I had two layers of this oh it's the trouble is I can't see what I'm doing because they're so scrap okay this this this this okay hang in there guys it's going to be fine really you would seem so confident guy yeah not really um what else am I what I need I need something else in here um I preferably need something actually a different instrument am I going to start loading up new stuff oh am I really okay maybe maybe not what have I got going um I could do with a uh acoustic guitar uh let's have a well we got um where's my favorite one I normally go for the uh orange tree one which is really really good um it's uh orange trees steel string is the one is my absolute go-to for guitars for acoustic guitar I mean they do some wonderful wonderful stuff uh so do other people but this is what I like best okay here we go um let's see you'll see why Okay so [Music] it gives you so much control there's all kinds of interesting things going on in there it does it's going to need a little bit of Reverb though isn't it so let's just get that up and running [Music] where are we where is it gone oh there it is right let's put this in let's do that let's go and get my sends up send I said come on right let's send it to oh I haven't got a guitar I think I don't mind I'll put it on the piano one that sort of a bit too much right that'll do okay here we go so I forgotten what I was playing now guy you are playing so loud nobody can possible do you know actually just turning the volume down is not enough what I actually need to do is to take all the velocities down so it doesn't sound like I've just sat an elephant sat on the piano that's better that's better oh subtlety guy it's so important yeah okay right here we go foreign back to my guitar where's my where's my guitar gone I didn't label it properly did I that was a that was a mistake oh right let me just find it by going I remember it's called Contact there it is fine that's it done it [Music] right so this is this chord progression goes G B flat C D okay [Music] see it just wanders around [Music] with a when I'm looking at a tune I'm trying to find a basic Motif shape which I like which I can then vary so I might be able to so [Music] it's got to have a it helps a lot if it's got a rhythmic identity because then when you move it into other Keys when you transpose it it sort of works and you can recognize that it's still the same theme come on then let's just go for it [Music] no [Music] that's not a tune that's a meander that's a kind of car crash in slow motion come on guy write something good [Music] there's the okay now we [Music] or something that is starting to sound like a tune what that's not [Music] okay one more [Music] okay that is indeed a tune is it a good one yeah have a cup of tea now often if we're going to put a little answering phrase in here um the answering phrase sometimes reflects what's gone on in the main part of the tune it so it's either [Music] so what what you would be doing there is essentially it's almost like a cannon foreign where you've left space because I was thinking when I got to the end of that phrase and it lands on the D maybe it should continue go dude or whatever but actually it leaves space at the end of the phrase for the Little Harp thing to do its business foreign or whatever that was particularly bad actually but never mind one more now because I've canoned this um if I go down to that f [Music] do it here so you can [Music] the chord progression will already move back on to um B flat then it was going to the C so I'm going to be playing that F at the same time as a c chord which it's not super wrong but it just sounded a bit rubby so what I'll probably do is adapt the top line again [Music] thank you see um so it's echoing it's canoning um the the main part of the Little tune um you can see it there on the screen what's what's going on but equally I've adapted it so that it does line up with the harmonic progression and then when we get to the end of the on the little phrase here the answering phrase gets a little bit of room so it can do its thing these kind of little phrases are really useful because if you listen to the thing listen to turn off the clip it's fine but I'd argue that adding that little answering phrase makes it a lot more interesting foreign thank you now that's just three lines of of music and the other way you could have done this actually there's lots of other ways you can do it so you don't just have to do you can do it like a cannon like that what else could you do let's have another go and do something else [Music] okay it can go the opposite direction so instead of going in the doing the same thing [Music] it can keep the same um or some other nonsense that makes more sense than that does here we go one more I think I preferred the first one but you can see how you put you put that in and then you you've made room for that little phrase at the end um and there could be you're adding more melodic material which you can then spin out when you arrange this differently the next time around in the next verse whatever etc etc so when you come to do your little answering phrase so if you write about it when you're writing a melody make sure you really have a very clear idea in your head of what the harmonic progression is if you're writing straight into a door this is super duper important um when you're writing on Melody you then know what notes are available to you if you're improvising in you may start with the melody and then come up with a harmonic progression which works with it fine that's absolutely great but once you've got this really nice sort of structure it gives you a really good guide to where your answering phrases and counter Melodies and things like that can come from and if you get it right the world will beat a path to your door and if you get it wrong they won't but look um you don't always need counter Melodies and things like this by any means there are times when you're just you've got a big tune and you're saying take John Williams Jurassic Park it is a tune capital T here's my tune you don't like it you can't have a client Melody just that's what you got what why did suddenly John Williams sound like an East End villain look I'm telling you you're going to like this tune or else maybe that's how John Williams gets on in that no absolutely not and he is lawyers beating a path to my door already um no sometimes you just want to on an unequivocal big tune no adornment and everybody plays tune and you go whoa and that really works other times you want a bit more texture and support I've witted on I hope you found this useful uh and if you do leave a comment underneath and things and there's all kinds of goodies which you might like to enjoy underneath this as well um so things you can download if you find this useful and interesting we do great courses in things like this they've got one called how to write music which is sort of what we're talking about another called learn music theory which is also sort of what we're talking about what's not to like see you soon bye-bye

Channel: Guy Michelmore

Views: 119,882

Keywords: thinkspace, education, music, film, scoring, games, television, composition, composer, guy michelmore, guy, michelmore, thinkspace education, counter melodies, music theory, answering phrases

Id: R3u4-hvwcDY

Length: 24min 27sec (1467 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 02 2022