Harmonizing Compositions

Harmonizing Compositions - a handy checklist for composers and teachers | composecreate.com

There’s now a pretty extensive index of how to work on composing melodies with your students.  Check out the Index of Composition Corner Articles for lots of ideas! Several of you have asked about how to proceed with harmony, so I wanted to write some posts about harmonizing compositions.

Ways to Harmonize a Melody

It might be helpful just to begin listing all of the things you could teach in regard to adding harmony to a composition.  Here are some of the things that I cover:

Basic Harmonization:

  • Primary chords in closed position
  • Secondary chords (including diminished and augmented
  • Seventh chords (not to mention 9th, and all the jazz chords)
  • Accompaniment patterns with chords (alberti bass, Chopin style flowing bass, etc. )
  • Closed and open position chords

More Creative Harmonization

  • Borrowed chords (chords that do not officially belong to the key in which you are composing)
  • Neopolitan 6 chord
  • Color notes (add2, sus4, etc.)
  • Quintal harmony
  • Quartal harmony
  • Clusters
  • Counterpoint (note against note)
  • Whole tone diads and chords

I’m not going to cover all of these, but I wanted to give you an idea of how extensive you can get when helping students add harmony to their compositions. Use these ideas for harmonizing compositions and just think of all the theory that you can cover when presenting just one of these concepts to a student!

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