Harmonization 101

this week i had a request from a student to explain the process of harmonizing single note lines. as you may know, lots of harder rock and metal lately involve 2 guitar players playing single notes that somehow interact with each other in a cool way. we're going to talk about some basic harmonization that occurs in lines like these.

it all begins (as always), with the foundation of music - the Major scale...

you'll notice this particular diagram has numbers written in place of note names. these are the scale degrees of this particular Major scale. at the moment the actual key is not important. let's keep it universal for now.

all of these notes bring a certain color to the table sonically. we're going to structure these sounds into 'intervals' to get an idea of what they sound like. the way we're going to analyze these notes is to compare all of them to the root of the scale, which in this case, is D. play all of these combinations of notes together to get a quick little primer as to what these harmonizations will sound like...

D against D
D against E
D against F#
D against G
D against A
D against B
D against C#

you might find some of these are fairly pleasant. you might find others are more angular or boxy, but still quite cool. you also might find a couple that just sound all sorts of wrong. that's ok - these are the flavors that we're given.

remember that diagram earlier of the major scale with the numerical degrees on it? let's check it out again...

the scale degree you play will also dictate the harmonization's name. in other words, if you play D against G, you'll be harmonizing a 4th. if you play D against E, you'll be harmonizing a 2nd.

this system is pretty easy to deal with. if you have a melody that you want to harmonize, decide what sound you like, count up that many scale degrees, and play your original part in that new location in the scale.

let's practice one. let's stay in the key of D for the moment. play this melody to get it in your ears...

|-------------------------|
|-------------------------|
|---------------6-7-------|
|-------------7-----7-----|
|-5-7-9-5-5-9---------5---|
|-------------------------|

i know, i'm a regular mozart. deal with me.

what i'd like to do now is take this and harmonize it up a 3rd. 3rds are very common starting points. let's look at the melody in english, now..

D E F# D D F# A C# D A D

if i'm harmonizing up a third, i'll take each note and count 3 degrees up. take note you must count the original note as the 1st degree! so up a third this harmony will be..

Original - D  E F# D  D  F# A C# D  A D

Up a 3rd - F# G A  F# F# A  C E  F# C F#

makes sense? good. keep in mind that in our example we harmonized a third higher than the melody. you could just as easily harmonize below the melody, just counting backwards in scale degrees. that's pretty much it! it might take you some time to figure out more harmonizations at first, but in time you'll learn to hear and feel them in the same way you feel the scales on their own. also feel free to experiment with different harmonizations in the same passage - they dont have to all be 4ths or all 5ths or whatever. play with it!