What's the fuss about harmony? - Part 2/4

Take a deep breadth. We have not even started. There are two more things that you need to be aware of. Firstly, the concept of chords in a harmony context – for every note in the S-line (known as root note) , you need to fill in the corresponding A, T and B components – this has to be within the scale of the note that you started with – this is described now as chords of the S-note. There are hundreds of harmony rules for constraining how you can write this. Now visualize what side by side chord placement means – when you cleverly place them, honoring a whole bunch of rules, you have created a chord progression! Most of Raja’s great melodies are very clever chord progressions. He is able to do his lilting interludes due to his mastery over these harmony rules (outside the scope of this discussion).

Secondly, WCM also has a whole bunch of rules around intervals –WCM has very strict rules on how the notes should be formed within a scale – in other words, the time interval between these notes. What Raja does is places intervals that appear awkward from a WCM perspective – he kind of follows and breaks the rules. Why does he do it? That’s how he accommodates CCM.

Here is a summary of the major steps: 1) Select the scale for the melody and write the melody line one bar at a time 2) Write the chords for the melody following the WCM rules 3) Work through the chord progressions again following the rules 4) Play around with the intervals to accommodate CCM/HCM.