 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, I'm going to teach you two really quick and super easy methods to harmonize any melody which is thrown in front of you or any melody which you are working on or collaborating on wherever it might be in a studio or maybe you're just jamming with a band or you're actually at a gig and there's someone who just comes up to you and says I have a song, I'm going to sing it and you probably don't want to tell that person sorry I haven't prepared it. You just want to kind of fake your way through and get them the confidence to sing the melody, keep a good solid grounding of the time and make sure you don't play the wrong chord. I would say this is more two survival strategies for figuring out chords for a melody. So to help supplement this learning, we have the melody notated for you on our Patreon page. You also have my hand written notes with all the theoretical concepts you might need to learn in order to execute this skill. So before we get started, it'll be awesome if you could hit that subscribe button, turn on that bell icon for regular notifications and do feel free to give the video a like which is a thumbs up somewhere there and leave us a comment after you watch the lesson of course and share the video with all your friends. Let's get cracking. So I'm first going to teach you the melody it's on F major scale one flat right. So you go the tune I'll play it and then teach a little bit of stretching in there so just look at my fingers and just for variety the second cycle could be and then you bring back your pinky to loop it slowly that cross you need to get that's a second cycle okay enough of that that's the melody so we're going to use that as a kind of exercise throughout this lesson and how do we harmonize this melody so there are two approaches which generally come to my mind and I always like to think of solving musical problems in a very binary way it should always be this or that this solution with that or that solution without that and that that in this particular question is the melody line itself so either you harmonize based on the melody or following the melody or guided by the melody or you harmonize not at all thinking about the melody but thinking about how harmony survives in the first place by creating harmony which will always work no matter what but making a few tiny simple adjustments to the framework of your chord progression so what I would first do is look at the melody and look at which note should be harmonized so that would be what I call as chord trees you first play the tune so maybe you would want to harmonize the first note which is C and the A because A is also long but not not the B flat and then not the F because they seem to be shorter in duration and they also don't appear to be at the ones of the bar they are in right they're all in the in between the bar so those you could call them as weak beats or they provide or serve as passing function while the longer notes tend to be called as strong beats and they serve serve as landing tones okay so passing tones landing tones very important in fact I've done a detailed playlist not some time ago called how to create a melody so if you're looking at how to you know get inspired to make some tunes you could definitely follow that series we have a playlist which we leave in the description so you go so that C and maybe this maybe even that if you wish now I'm on the F major scale so if I wax C what are all the chords which have or triads we'll start with triads what are all the triads which have C in them the answer would be C major that kind of sounds good A minor nice and with that B flat it makes it very Phrygian in nature because of the flat 2 with respect to the A minor right so if that is your vibe you could go ahead with an A minor and what is the other chord which seems to have A in it F major and F major may be quite stable so will A minor because the first note is C and the last note of that tiny motif is A so C A C A so that A minor seems to go well for both and so does F major however if you think beyond triads you can say you can say it's landing on an A I'll play a D minor seventh because it encompasses also that C there right or C major but it ends on a major six so you have to be aware whether you really want that so are you harmonizing C or are you harmonizing C and the A so if you do C and A you can develop a chord progression maybe C major F it's a very nice cadence that's called the authentic or the perfect cadence the five going to one okay so I could go that route or I could do a B flat if I want to harmonize B flat but it's not there so long so right now we are just harmonizing the important notes and then maybe let's harmonize the E after that B flat is for passing function B is also a passing nature so maybe I'll I can do a C maybe an A minor what all goes with E well I'm on the I'm on the F major scale A minor works C major works but I used it earlier so maybe if I use A minor there and use C major now it would work or vice versa okay I like C major actually I don't know what I like you know maybe today I like C major and tomorrow morning I might like A minor but the fact of this or the point of this harmonization method is you have so many options per unit melody so to speak so you go I like that also wow I didn't think of that that's A minor oh D minor so in the notes which I have for you you'll see the notes which I circled that is the melody that's what I call the tree or the chord tree and the branches of that particular note which is C A and maybe E and the other notes which you'll see in the notation or my handwritten notes would be C A now C is harmonized or can be harmonized with the tonic chord you can also do it with the relative minor by doing a D minor seventh and also do the three minor and you can also do the five major so there's so many options right in this moment I'm liking I like A minor going to D minor it also inspires me to maybe change the melody maybe add a little bit of spice to the melody as opposed to you know you can do all these flavors because the chords can re-inspire you to make more out of the melody add more stuff to the melody you know or more spice as I call it so I like that C makes it very brave you could also look at it as a C sus4 going to C major I like that resolution oh I can do a quick very gospel movement there F major C major very quick maybe resolve it to because if you look at this all of these are F major so why would I want to go out of F major whatever it might be I think ending on F major there would be good so let's see what we have now we have maybe an A minor to start that's A minor going to D minor or a quicker change would be A minor D minor C sus4 C major or C major F if you want those are my variations at the end whole story again you can literally harmonize every note in there B if you're interested B flat over D bass that's an e diminished chord which is also part of the F major scale but I'm just gonna stick with the tonic at the end so A minor D minor C major and then repeat I like that climb that's D in the bass okay so that's one way you can consider harmonizing a melody someone just sings a tune for you or the tune is not defined maybe you haven't really heard it that much so you just get the tune and you kind of have an idea of the chords in the original song but you want to cross check it but you don't want to listen to the original song you're in an environment where you're saying no I'm not even going to hear the song this is a good way to just use music theory not even your year your year can judge what the theory demanded of you right the theory gave you all these multiple options but then your year takes the final decision so the year and music theory always work hand in hand so the simple thing for a lot of musicians or music lovers or observers of music to say is he or she figured that out by year where he or she did not at least I didn't right now as I showed you in the lesson I used some strong concepts of music theory there's a note there it's long in duration give it a chord what chords work with it you're in the diatonic world of f major you have f major the one g minor the two a minor the three b flat major the four c major the five d minor the six and e diminished the seventh so you're in that world so you need to know your scale you need to know the available chords and now the second method I have for you to harmonize pretty much any melody would be to disregard the melody just forget about it and look at what available strong widely used commonly practiced chord progressions there might be and see if you can roll with those for this melody and for all you know the commonly used cadences which are tiny chords just two or three chords and I'll also show you a very popular set of chord progressions let's see if you like those as well with this melody and it just comes out of random in the melody versus the chords just pair at random and they just kind of match it just works together so the first kind of cadence you can try could be the authentic cadence which is the five going to one right but what I like to do is you could also try inverting the authentic cadence start with the tonic and then go to the five and see if you if flipping the authentic cadence sounds better or if you want to do one to five or else five to one in this case I think one to five works better you be the judge of that so we go that E doesn't match so well with an F major I think it matches better with the C major in my head at least so I would then go so I could do authentic as one five one and pack up do the gig and just play this and no one's gonna complain I think I think it sounds really good so you have to be a bit clever but in in your mind you're thinking five one one five something with five and one let's see how we can use those two the tonic chord and the dominant chord okay so it goes something like and the tonic chords exist in two flavors you have the major tonic which is the F major or one major you also have the D minor which is the relative minor so that creates what we call as a deceptive a deceptive cadence so you could even do something like so that's a five going to six back to F major the other tonic right so you can go five to one which is a good authentic movement or perfect cadence as we call it you can also do five to six minor which is also a very nice movement so try out the authentic cadence and also you can A B comparison it with the plagal cadence which is a four going to one so that would be that's a four going to one and do the reverse again one going to four so I like that yearning sound that very lydian yearning sound so but I think the plagal works beautifully in the end that's four going to one really like that the chords are almost giving the melody life to breathe the melody on its own just sounds weird if you ask me it's just random notes layered together but the power of the melody is actually in the rhythm which is the distinction of different beats or different note values of each note of the melody so the melody needs rhythm to survive to breathe and the next thing you do apart from that after knowing the rhythm values of notes is then harmonize it so harmony and rhythm actually give life to the melody otherwise a melody is just set of notes it's just a random set of notes so we've looked at the authentic cadence the plagal cadence and also the occasional deceptive cadence and you can also put these cadences together and see if they kind of work well with the overall melody so I can do the plagal one to five can also call that a half cadence because we are ending on the five so it's gonna be all you're thinking in your mind is half cadence plagal cadence or inverted authentic cadence going into plagal cadence if you're having a bit of an issue with cadences and if you'd like me to break down those things for you in great detail there's a video already waiting for you called all things or all types of cadences so it'll be in our description do check it out it it'll definitely help you along with this lecture of course so you go what do I want to do now I'd like to do the one to five like that one to five half cadence motion like that yearning four chord I'll just keep F major or I can drop to the other tonic so you can always interchange your tonics you want the happy one or the sad one the more melancholic one and if you take it to what jazz musicians do they like three chords in their cadence and we have two kinds of cadences which a lot of the jazz musicians would practice they would do two five one major and two five one minor so the two five one major assumes that F is the root in this context so what is the two G minor seventh five will be C seventh or C altered you can alter it as you choose and you end with the tonic which is F major or F major sixth or F major seventh let's see how that works with the picture that was the other melodic variation two five one seems to be working it just puts the melody in a very finished way right and that's G minor seventh seventh chords would be nice if you're playing it in a jazzy way because those are your extensions and you can also do two five one minor which could really transform the tune so for two five one minor what I recommend is treat it not as F minor treat it as minor being the relative minor which is D minor D is the sixth of F right that's your relative so so now your home bass is D minor and what is the two five one of the D minor scale that would be E half diminished or E minor seventh flat five that's an A seventh completely fine very sophisticated sound right you can even do that note as a variation I guess I like that A seven flat nine in there and then you can toggle between major and minor two five ones you can do the minor first and then the major one more time that was the minor you can also then do it with the major and just end with an F major so the cadences are great the jazz cadences two five ones are great the last thing which I think will harmonize your song very well which kind of works all the time and even Mr. Ed Sheeran would agree that's what he says most of his songs are four chord songs so what are those four chords it's the one five six four of the scale but not necessarily played in the order one five six four you could do one five six four which is F C D minor B flat you can also do if you look at it in a wheel or in a circle it can be five six four one so that'll be five six four one or it could be the next the third chord in the wheel one five six or six four one five so we have one five six four five six four one and we have six four one five and the last one was four one five six which is actually a very common Ed Sheeran progression so let's see how our melody sounds with all these pop or cheesy progressions if you will I'm going to start with one five six four let me just play the chords and sing and this already sounds good but don't be lazy as I tell myself a lot try from the other starting point which is six four going to one I think this works really good the five starting on the five let's try starting with the six I kind of works all work actually now if you do the starting on the four method I like this it's almost it's the chord progression almost makes the melody irrelevant you play you know now now where would this um sort of tried and tested chord progressions which I showed you now not to work that's also important in in songs where the scales are going to change you know just like that example bohemian rhapsody which has so many scales or a jazz standard like misty or wonderful world those sort of songs you might have a problem however you can still harmonize them with two five ones plagal cadences and authentic cadences you just have to be aware that the scale might change right guys so in this lesson we've looked at two very tried and tested approaches which I use in all my musical environments be it jamming with a band working with a choir performing on stage where songs just come at you randomly ad lib you have to just figure it out on the fly as they say I think these two methods have served me well however with chord trees and this method where you need to know your important chord progressions you don't just wing it or you don't just use your ears your ears will decide what you should play but your mind needs to know all of the options available for that scale in this lesson we've looked at F major scale so whenever you're figuring out chords you don't just do it by year a lot of people think there are only two kinds of musicians musicians who read sheet music and play or musicians who play by year I don't think that's the right way to classify musicians the ideal musician who we all look up to would be one who knows their theory really well in and out and then decides on what option they want from the multitude of options given to us with the theory because theory is the mother nature of music it's it's what it is it's what's there to offer so when you learn theory you're learning the universal set of all the data and all the permutations of this remarkable field and you need to work on that because once you learn the theory you'll discover more and more options more and more cadences more and more harmonic movements and then your ear will say in my opinion your ears job is just to say wow I like that you know that's pretty much the job of your ear because your ear will hear everything so you don't have to necessarily train your ear to like something it likes it that's about it right so right guys hope you found the lesson useful again the notes the notation for this melody the entire lesson are waiting for you on patreon and on the patreon page you'll not only find this lesson you'll find a lot of our other videos pretty much everything we've done in the past at least five years will be on our patreon page for a very simple easy monthly subscription thanks a ton for watching I will catch you in the next one cheers