MELODIC MUSE by Andy Timmons
IN HARMONY.
This month, Andy Timmons takes a look at his song “That Day Came,” which he recorded for his 2016 album, Theme From a Perfect World, as a means for exploring how to present a melody while supporting it with small two-note chords, often referred to as dyads, and other chord voicings that serve to fill out the harmony.
IN HARMONY.
This month, Andy Timmons takes a look at his song “That Day Came,” which he recorded for his 2016 album, Theme From a Perfect World, as a means for exploring how to present a melody while supporting it with small two-note chords, often referred to as dyads, and other chord voicings that serve to fill out the harmony.
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MusicTranscript
00:00Hey everybody, Andy Timmons here, and welcome back to Melodic Muse for Guitar World.
00:22Today we're going to look at my tune, That Day Came, as a means of exploring how to have
00:27a melody but to support it with dyads and chord voicings to fill out the harmony.
00:57So, let's get started.
01:12Looking at the melody of That Day Came, it's very simple, quite honestly.
01:17The overall tonality is F sharp minor, and I'm starting on the...
01:29It's a very, very kind of, you know, scalar simple melody, but actually how I'm harmonizing
01:34it with the chords and how I'm modulating it, so a bit of songwriting discussion here
01:39as well as how I'm kind of modulating keys within this first part of this first verse.
01:44But that first note is that C sharp on top, and I'm just playing a full F sharp minor
01:48chord.
01:52So let that chord ring, but making sure that the melody sticks out on top, and that's really
01:57the key to any kind of, if you want to call this chord melody playing, which it really
02:01is, it's really how to get that melody to sing and have it be the most prevalent voice
02:07that you're hearing because that is the singer, that's the melody.
02:15There's that melody, I just kind of even lead into that, I even kind of, I even support
02:21one of the melodic notes before the next chord comes in.
02:24I'm fingering a C to a C sharp, and then to the melody note, so it's still kind of giving
02:31me that feeling of F sharp minor, but there it's just a sixth.
02:39So that last, where that melody is headed, is the seventh, the flat seventh of a C sharp
02:47dominant chord.
02:48So a very classic just harmony of one minor to five dominant, kind of very classically
02:55influenced, I would say.
03:02Now instead of a full chord, I really don't need to play the full chord all the time to
03:07give the listener the sense of the harmony, and all I'm adding is, with that flat seventh,
03:11I'm adding the C sharp, and I guess we're going to have to call it an E sharp, which
03:16is the root and the third of that chord.
03:19So as long as you've got that, sometimes you just need the root and the melody note, or
03:24sometimes the root and the third, but there you go, you've got everything you need to
03:29know that it's, instead of, nothing wrong with that, but these are the kind of editing
03:39choices that I'll go through when I'm voicing a melody with chords.
03:44I just try to find just the right amount of support that it needs to get across the motion
03:48that I'm trying to portray here, so, and if you recall, it sounds like I'm going back
04:00to that F sharp minor, but what's going to happen is, now I've completely taken us out
04:08of that F sharp minor tonality, and I've played an F major with that A as the melody, right?
04:17The A is the third of that F major chord, and here I am just playing an F and a C, and
04:25then skipping a string and playing that A melody, so, and that's going to resolve to
04:39basically an A major, so I've taken us out of the key of F sharp minor with that pivot
04:44chord of F major, but that leads back to A, which is going to set up going back to
04:48F sharp.
04:49Another thing that I hope you'll notice is that I'm really very carefully choosing which
04:53finger I use for the melody, because that's going to be really, really tantamount to how
04:59that melody sustains and sings, so, see, I can hold that note and add the harmony, and
05:08I do the same thing when I'm going to the F major, you know, I lead in with that pinky
05:16again so I can add that harmony, and here's a tricky one, not too tricky, so that melody
05:28and then sliding down to, now I've just got the open A string, A octave, and E, and the
05:40melody finally kind of gives us the sense of, oh, that is A major, which is of course
05:48related to F sharp minor, I've kind of taken us to A major, AKA F sharp minor, but that's
05:53a, so it's just scalar, except I lead into that top voice again, this repeats, same pivot
06:09chord with the F major coming up, now same melody, right, but now I'm going to go to
06:20C major, but I've got to also get the correct finger to support with the voice, now I'm going
06:27to use my middle finger because, that's what I would normally use to play that little C major
06:32triad there, so instead of using my ring finger, you see, I make that choice, because of where
06:41the melody's going, I can sustain that, and if I did it with my third finger, I'd have to break
06:47it up, so those little details is really what can give your melody that chance to sing and really
06:56get to the heart of what you're trying to express here, so it walks down very beautifully, so even
07:06though I went to C major, natural C major, and then kind of a G over B idea, and then A major
07:12again, so twice I've already taken us out of the key that was established within that first bar,
07:19because to me, as a writer, and as a, you know, as somebody that loves to play great melodies,
07:25I'm looking for a place to take the listener, I want something to move them, and a lot of times
07:30that can be created by taking this somewhere they're not expecting to go, and the chords on
07:37their own can sound beautiful. There we go again, and getting into the next section, I go to the
07:51melody of E, but it becomes the sharp 11 of that B flat for another time.