Figuring Out Chords

[Whyte Ice]

Whenever a melody pops into my head and I want to use it, I usually have a really hard time figuring out chords to go along with it. I try to figure out the melody on a keyboard note by note and go from there but sometimes I can't even do that.

Is there anything that could help me? Does anyone else have this problem?

 

[Emusic]

Had it earlier. There aint much that can help you except for practice, practice and practice. Just keep on playing. It will come more and more. The more you practice the faster it comes.

 

[mikeh]

I agree that practise and experiance are needed. While understanding how melody and harmony work is all based on musical theory - when you play enough you start to understand what key a melody is in, which in trun tells you what chords are likley to be used in that key.

 

[Cosmic]

Hi Whyte Ice,

If you are serious about getting better without going the complete school/theory route, this may be useful. Apart from the chord reference guide, I used all of the below to get to some pretty decent playing skills over 3 years, practicing virtually every day.

Look on the web for a piano chord reference that has visual representation of the chords (where to put your fingers.)

If you can play C major, F major and G major, you can write a major-key song (well, at least you'll have the chords for one.)

Won't give you a ton of choice, but those three chords will give you a good base from where to go. Play them until you can do them in your sleep.

Then play them in every combination you can think of while humming or singing melodies to them, to feel how your choices of the three chords change the melody you are singing.

Then you can "look" at D minor and A minor (on the web reference.) because they complement the above 3 chords very well.

Practice them 'til you are blue in the face. Now at least you have a small but flexible 5-chord working base. Now incorporate your two new minor-key chords with your three major-key ones in as many combinations as you can think of. Just have fun with them. Sing with them, see how it feels.

A note about excercise: at first your hands will be tired and somewhat achy; stop when you feel it. If you plan on applying yourself, practicing every day, something very valuable: warm up your fingers and hands like a gymnast before an event.

If you are lucky in your search, the web site will have info on/links to fingering the basic C-scale on a piano (you've heard it, up and down, up and down.) Do it slowly at first, then faster, and do it until you hate it, then keep doing it. And excercise each hand, no cheating
You are doing it to warm up your hands, to strenghten your tendons, to increase your flexibility, and to prevent small
ligament tears which can be painful (it's the precursor to repetetive motion syndrome.)
Always start your playing day with those, no matter how good you get. Your hands will like you for it.

Smaller doses of slower playing, then bigger doses of slower playing, and on and on to faster playing.
You'll be amazed at how strong your fingers become from this.

I don't mean to overwhelm you with info, so just keep of this what you like, even if it is for future use.

This takes work. It takes patience. But, short of music classes, or being a natural-born genius, this is the simplest solution to just getting playing I can come up with. You will find that, with some discipline and a decent ear, you can go quite a ways on your own. The more you play, the more you will discover.

Best of luck,

CC

 

[Rokket]

A technique I use is to carry a small recorder, and if a melody hits me, I will hum it or whatever into the recorder. Later on I will listen to it and play around with chords until I get as close as possible to it. This will work well to, in that you hum in the same keys you are comfortable singing in. As everyone else stated, it takes practice. A problem I ran into a lot when I was younger was hearing a melody in my head, which came from the music I was exposed to, and achieving it was next to impossible due to my skill level. And of course, with time I overcame that with, you guessed it, practice.

 

[Emusic]

when you play enough you start to understand what key a melody is in, which in trun tells you what chords are likley to be used in that key.

And when you have played far beyond that you will stop thinking about keys and just use your ear. I was stuck to key thinking for years. Now I just play the chord that sounds good. Wich leads to weird chords not following the logical system of a specific key. I was stuck to the maths of music, as it is easy to use maths on a piano (my instrument). The real freedom comes when you stop worrying about those and just use your ear to make those tunes.
But that takes practice and there is no shortcut to it.
Keep on practicing.

FYI, this reply was intended to the thread starter, not the guy that is quoted.

Good luck!

 

[mikeh]

Emusic has a very valid point that with much practise and experiance you can "think outside" the box and to a degree you can get away from the common theory (the 4th is major, the 2nd is minor, etc etc) and you can start to try "whatever sounds right".

I have found the more I play (on both keys & guitar) the more chords (or versions of chords) I learn. This allows me to position my fingers to find many chords, some of which I know work in a given key or in a given progression, and some of which I don't know until I try.

The point being, before I played enough until I could try numerous chord configurations (meaning, I now know how to form the chords) I had to think about what may or may not work. Now, my hands often can instinctively go to a given chord (which may be perfect for the melody, or at least gets me close enough to tweak).

I do find that whenever I find a chord or melodic phrase "by ear" further analysis consistantly provides a legitimate musical theory application. People who play completely by ear and claim to have no knowledge or need for theory are indeed applying theory, even if they do not realize that fact.

I compare that to someone who claims to know little about english grammer, yet they form sentances. With more practise, they can learn to form more intelligent sentances.

 

[dragonworks]

If you take do re me fa sol la ti do in the key of C you have the following
C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C
If you build a chord on each note you would have the following
Cmajor, Dminor, Eminor-Fmajor-Gmajor-Aminor-Baugmented-Cmajor
These would be the chords I-II-III-IV-V-VI-VII
Take a verse from the song "Like a Rolling Stone
the chords behind the verse are C-Dm-Em-F-G
this is a 1-2-3-4-5 progression.

Any song in the key of Cmajor will nine out of ten times consist primarily of these chords.
This can be applied to do re mi fa sol la ti do in any key.

So if you have a melody in the key of C major, try these chords first.

If you take a minor scale say in the key of Aminor which is the following

A-B-C-D-E-F-G-A
thats enough, you get the drift, go learn a little theory, it helps alot when writing.