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Melody or becking first


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Posted

Alright what's a better approach to writing an insturmental melodic song (satriani, vai, etc.)...

 

Making a chord progression (more of a riff actually) then doing the melody over that, and for different parts do another progression/riff in maybe another key, etc.

 

or

 

writing the melody and then coming up with chords to go under it that theoretically (sp?) make sense?

 

How does Satriani do it? Anyone know? I'm also trying to stay away from boring chord progressions such as the same chords as 8th notes over and over for x times forone part then those again for x times for another part, etc. I hope that made sense.

 

Let me know. thanks!

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Posted

It varies. As you get more fluent, you can work both ways.

Mozart was big into making sure melody was served well by the harmony, byt he still had to resolve his harmony

Harmonizing a melody line is something that you'll do a lot of. A great deal of Theory I and II in college is "harmonize this cantus firmus"

thats Latin fancy speak for given melody
cantus = "chant" - a melody
firmus = "firm or fixed"

There are a bunch of "guidelines" (I hesitate to say rules, because people get thee wrong idea about them as rules...yeah you get marked off on tests for breaking them, but that's to make sure you know them...sort of like "just play it straight, you can {censored} with it after you play it straight for me once")
that guide you through harmonizing.

In traditional 4 part choral harmonizing, you learn to maximize harmonic motion (to make things interesting) while making all the lines melodic (avoiding too many odd jumps, so that someone can sing them...so the are cohesive). If your really good, they are all nice melodies...often the other voices are melodic, but maybe not terribly interesting melodies.

I think it's a trap guitar players, esp modern rock guitar players fall into (they aren't the only ones by any means) where they thing in terms of
"A single melody line over monolithic chord structures".

Much of an intermediate guitar player's attention goes almost exclusively into learning scales and modes to solo over various chord forms.

monophonic instrumentalists fall into this uring their primary education, but then can get snapped out of it when they become part of an 'ensemble section' (a string quartet, a horn section) -- where they realize that their melody is part of a harmonic construct.

piano players have to sort of deal with this nearer to the beginning.

guitar players sometimes overly break roles into "rhythm section" and "soloist" and lose out..not always, but often. Often guitar player have a little more trouble with comping internal harmony (including when to know to leave space)

(I never said I was an exception ;) )

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Posted

There are advantages to writing both ways, and it pays to do both. IMO, the biggest advantage of working out the harmonic structure of the piece first is the ability to dictate the overall texture. Having a sense of texture can help you to develop a stronger melody--in other words, you can predetermine much of the contour of the line.

You also have more flexibility in shifting the harmony to suit a new melodic idea (vs. changing a melodic line to suit a new harmonic idea). Say for instance that you're writing a melody over a chord progression you've already worked up. If you're in the middle of the sixth measure and you decide the melody needs to go somewhere different than where the harmony goes, it's relatively easy to change one or two chords. It isn't nearly as easy to change a melodic line to suit a new chord, simply because the rhythmic and intervallic relationships of the melody have already been determined. (I hope that made sense.)

However, writing a chord progression first is more likely to lead you into a clich

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