Melodically/Harmonically on the right track?

[Exen]

I was fiddling with harmony and melody and this is a very short, four bar sketching using various non-chord tones and whatnot.

Tell me what you think guys? Am I heading down the right track with this? I figured it went here as it said sketches in the forum title, its a sketching alright, I'm half dazed as it were from lack of sleep!

[stevel]

Originally Posted by Exen

I was fiddling with harmony and melody and this is a very short, four bar sketching using various non-chord tones and whatnot.

Tell me what you think guys? Am I heading down the right track with this? I figured it went here as it said sketches in the forum title, its a sketching alright, I'm half dazed as it were from lack of sleep!

It depends on what you mean by "right track" - is right track "traditional music" or is it modern music?

For example, your first chord is in 2nd inversion. That's a no-no traditionally. 2nd inversion triads are used very carefully and in a limited set of circumstances in traditional music. In "Starship Trooper" by Yes, in the third section, all of the chords are in 2nd inversion (and they were probably intentionally doing it to spite tradition, which begs the question of whether it was a musical solution or not).

So it depends.

However, here is the key thing - most listeners are used to a certain type of music, mainly classical/romantic style. As soon as they hear a couple of chords or melodies, or sounds that they're used to, they start to draw comparisons (we're humans, that's how we understand our world - we relate things to things we already know and understand). The big problem with this is that beginning composers either try to emulate classical/romantic music, and don't know it well, so all they come up with is a poorly executed mocking - and the listeners know it. The other side is, beginning composers will often say "well it's not supposed to sound classical, it's modern" as a defense, or "it's my music" or "it's art". That's fine, but people will think it's derivative.

So basically, you either need to be totally obvious, or totally obscure.

Your first inversion chord at the beginning sounds like "hey, traditional chord, but something's amiss". Since your second chord is very "normal", it especially sounds like you're going for traditional, but just didn't know what to do with the first chord. The third chord is also "wrong" traditionally - it's a diminished chord in root position - sounds like the leading tone is doubled, and the bass part leaps up to it, drawing even more attention to it. So by this point, the listener knows you either suck, or you're trying for "non-traditional". The problem is, there's just enough traditional elements in there to make them never sure.

Your second to last chord is a V/V - with #4 in the melody - traditionally it would go to V but you skipped it and went to I directly.

So basically, you're using very traditional sounds in a very non-traditional context. It's like writing a technical manual for a computer in old English!

Again, this is not "wrong", it's art. And whether it's fair or not for listeners to hold you to some archaic standards, they will do it nonetheless.

So how do you write traditionally? Immerse yourself in traditional music - so you know what to do.
How do you avoid traditionally "restrained" music? Immerse yourself in traditional music - so you know what not to do.

So you've got nice ideas here, but they don't really do anything except cause confusion. Maybe you should check out my article on the Chord Progressions of classical music (in the Articles section) and maybe some of the other articles I've written about chords and inversions, etc.

But don't give up!!!

Best,
Steve

[Exen]

Well I was thinking more melody wise than anything, I have those classical chord progressions written down in my little music book I keep. Though I will look into proper use of inversions etc. Mainly I was asking about the melody. Sorry I didn't specify.

[Ron Ofir]

I don't know much about classical music, but here are to things that sounded weird to me:
1. There's a pretty big jump in the 2nd bar after the melody goes up to C#, sounds kind of weird to me.
2. In the penultimate chord you use G# for some reason. Why? I think A sound much better, and if you add another C at that last chord, you get yourself a pretty classical sounding cadence (I think it's a perfect one? Or maybe G has to be the highest note of the dominant for it to be so?)

[stevel]

Originally Posted by Ron Ofir

I don't know much about classical music, but here are to things that sounded weird to me:
1. There's a pretty big jump in the 2nd bar after the melody goes up to C#, sounds kind of weird to me.
2. In the penultimate chord you use G# for some reason. Why? I think A sound much better, and if you add another C at that last chord, you get yourself a pretty classical sounding cadence (I think it's a perfect one? Or maybe G has to be the highest note of the dominant for it to be so?)

See, same things I pointed out :-)

Steve

[stevel]

Originally Posted by Exen

Well I was thinking more melody wise than anything, I have those classical chord progressions written down in my little music book I keep. Though I will look into proper use of inversions etc. Mainly I was asking about the melody. Sorry I didn't specify.

The melody is OK except for the funkiness at the end (the #4) - which actually isn't bad if the harmony is fixed.

The only thing that's a bit quirky is the beginning of the 3rd measure - sounds like 1 8th 2 16ths which jumps around. You've got all this stepwise motion then suddenly you've got this much quicker, and leaping thing - it doesn't sound like "melody" as much as it does an ornament of the melody - though unfortunately, it's so prominent it sticks out like a sore thumb. Try to find the "main" note in beat 1 of measure three, and build from it like you've done the rest of the melody. You'd want more consistency rather than this "interruption" usually in this type of melody (interestingly, this melody begins just like the Alma Mater of my University!).

Best,
Steve