Increasing your chord palate (Part 1)

In college, I was not a music major, but I took the music theory classes anyway. I remember one exercise we often had to do was writing a harmony for a melody line. To do this, we had to choose chords that matched each melody note.

The typical way we did it went something like this. Let’s say we were in the key of C and the melody note was C. We considered which triads (simple three note chords) in the key of C had a C in them (C, F, and A) and then chose the one that sounded best. Eventually a few new chords were added that we could choose from.

When you write music this way, the resulting sound works but just barely. The sound is awkward and forced. The reason why is simple. There are more factors to consider rather than just if the chord works with the melody note. One of the biggest things to consider is how the chords you choose interact with the chords around them.

When I look at the music written by young writers, it is obvious that they have had the same theory classes I did and are too focused on just finding a chord (any chord) that will work with the melody note. The biggest giveaway is the jumps between chords. Certain chords naturally lead to other chords. If you do not follow some rules regarding how chords function, you get awkward jumps and an unnatural sound.

When in doubt, remember this rule. Chords almost always like to move down by fifths. They do not have to of course, but that movement is usually safe and will sound good. There is a reason why this chord progression is so often used:

iii – vi – ii – V – I

On the other hand, this is not so good:

V – iii – vii – V – I

Now, I am not saying that every progression you use needs to move down by fifths all of the time. That would be impossible and even boring. But it would not be a bad thing to learn how to write that way well before you branch off into more interesting progressions. Study music from classical to jazz to pop and you will see that the progressions used in those songs overwhelmingly move down by fifths.

Before you change your writing to start focusing on great sounding chord progressions, you are going to have to increase the number of chords at your disposal. If you only have three chords available in your palate for a given melody note, you are going to end up with awkward progressions.

In a day or so, I am going to address this issue and help you start seeing how more chords are available to you.