Tag Archives: non-harmonic tones

Composition: here are the notes that make your music more effective (part 1)

The ‘appoggiatura’

Today we start a new cycle of video lessons that will allow you to learn very effective kind of notes that should be used to compose a great melody.

There are many reasons why these notes are so fascinating, but maybe the most important is that:

these notes can change the whole harmonic result.

Remember, all great songs are made up of notes like these!
For this reason we need to know them in depth and how to use them in the right way.

To make the most of this lesson, I suggest you to watch the following lesson (if you haven’t already done):

Strong beat and weak beat, rhythmic accents, downbeat and upbeat

Learning material of this lesson

6 videos	40 mins
1. Introduction to the new cycle of videolessons	2m 06s
2. Non harmonic tones and strong beats	7m 40s
3. What is the ‘appoggiatura’?	8m 58s
4. How to use ‘appoggiatura’ on secondary strong beats	7m 53s
5. Ascending ‘appoggiatura’	7m 36s
6. Hot to mix different kinds of ‘appoggiatura’	6m 15s
+ 1 pdf file

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Do you want to know how to make your melodies more interesting and agile? (Part 1)

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How to make a melody more interesting

In the precedent lessons we spoke about non harmonic tones. These notes however, in the costruction of our melody, allow us to obtain only steps between adjacent degrees of the scale we are using.

A good melody is not only done between adjacent steps but a furher element is necessary to give variety.

So what is this element of variety?

It is the disjunt motion.

How can we obtain disjunct motion in the composition of our melodies without using only the chord notes?
It is what you will learn in these lessons in which the first non harmonic tones will be introduced allowing us to obtain disjunct motion and to make our melodies even more interesting.

Learning material of this lesson

4 videos	29 mins
1. Why disjunct motions are so important?	3m 33s
2. Anticipations: what they are and how to use them	7m 57s
3. A further element of variety for our melodies: indirect anticipations	7m 34s
4. How to compose a melody using anticipations	10m 06s
+ 1 pdf files

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Non harmonic tones: today we are going to speak about Auxiliary tones

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The Auxiliary tones

In the last lesson we spoke about the first type of non harmonic tones: Passing tones.
Thanks to these, we are able to give character to certain types of melody.

In this lesson we will speak about Auxiliary tones and see them more in depth.
The use of Auxiliary tones enables us to give a contrasting characteristic to the melody.

Thanks to this video lesson, other than learning exactly what Auxiliary tones are, you will also learn:

What auxiliary tones are
What distinguishes them from passing tones
What double aux. tones are
What chromatic aux. tones are
How to compose a melody using only passing and auxiliary tones

Preview of this lesson:

Learning material of this lesson

7 videos	52 mins
Intro	2m 50s
1. The auxiliary tones	11m 56s
2. The double aux. tones	5m 05s
3. The aux. chords	9m 10s
4. The chromatic aux. tones	9m 05s
5. How to compose a melody by using passing tone and aux. tones pt.1	7m 01s
6. How to compose a melody by using passing tone and aux. tones pt.2	6m 59s

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The first step to start composing a melody: the passing tones

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Non harmonic tones; the passing tones

Today we begin discussing in a more meaningful way the non harmonic tones (non chord tones) that will greatly help you in the act of composing melodies, as we were saying in previous lessons.

Also, as you will see further on, this knowledge will help you understand better some concepts tied to other subjects: in fact, it’d be difficult to learn how to play the keyboard or the the modern piano without having mastered the non harmonic tones.

But this is another issue and we will tackle it in due time.
In today’s lesson we will approach the first kind of non harmonic tones:

the passing tones

We will try to understand what they are and how they can be used.

How to compose melodic fragments

Some foreview: in the next lesson I will teach you to put into use what we learned today and I will reveal some small tricks and tweaks that by using the passing tones, will let you start composing some melodic fragments on the piano which will already be catchy and nice to hear!
But to be able to put into practical use all of this, it’s essential that you understand what the passing tones are, and for this very reason, today’s lesson is really important.

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Learning material of this lesson

3 videos	33 mins
1. What are the chord tones?	9m 35s
2. The passing tones	13m 19s
3. Let’s learn to use the passing tones	10m 21s

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You’re finding it difficult to write a melody? Here’s something that can help you!

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How to write a melody

Chords and harmony are an extremely important part of composition, but of course they’re aren’t everything!
Another important part is the melody, and it isn’t always easy to write a melody.
You might have found yourself from time to time, while playing the piano or the guitar, in the situation where you found a very interesting sequence of chords, and not being able to compose a vocal melody on which you could sing.

The “non-harmonic tones”

We will begin today with a series of video lessons that approach the so-called “non-harmonic tones”, which will help you a lot in composition and writing arrangements.

In today’s videos we will approach two themes in particular: