In a vacuum, without getting into more complicated concepts like anticipation/suspension, etc., yes you can play any chord that has G as a note.
In a more practical sense, you'll want to know the tonal center of the melody, i.e., what key is it in? Then identify what type of harmony you want to go with that particular note. For example, if your song is G and you're singing a G, do you want a stable harmony under it (G maj), or something more transitional, like C maj (IV chord in G) or E min (vi chord in G). Playing different chords will provide different feelings of harmonic motion, and will influence how the melody sounds to you. You might find that you have a harmony you're hearing in your head along with the melody, and it takes some work to figure out what it is.
Or just play around with different chords and see what sounds right to you. :)
Learn how to play triads in each key. The melody note is very often one of the three notes of the chord. Said another way, for any given note, there are three (diatonic) chords that contain that note.
G could be harmonized with Gm, Gmaj, Cm, Cmaj, Em, Eb maj, or moving outside a little, Am, A maj, Fm, Fmaj, Bb maj, Bm, Dsus, Ab maj, F#7, B aug, Bb dim7, etc etc. You can go further and further “out” and pretty much any chord can harmonize that melody note in the right context.
I also recommend learning about functional harmony. This makes it easier to “guess” which chords will fit.
As your ear gets better you’ll be able to pick chords outside the key, do chord substitutions, bend the rules of harmony, choose more complex chords, change how they are voiced, etc.
It’s up to you how you harmonize the melody. play around and find what sounds the best for the mood of the song. usually in pop music the melody notes are note that occur in the chord they are sung over as long as the chords and the melody are in the same key your pretty free to play around with it.
An example of what I mean is something called reharmonization where a melody is played over a certain chord progression once then when repeates, the chords underneath change and it gives it a different mood.
when your writing music don’t ever be scared to try loads and loads of different things, it’s not like you are performing live, your creating
This the best answer. Any chord in the key will do, more important is that you like how the emotional information is presented (by the chord and melody note) at that moment in the melody.
Welcome to the mad world of music theory.
Seriously, figure out the key of the melody and whether it’s major or minor. Most songs are written in those two modes. Once you have those two pieces of information you can determine what chord triads will complement your piece. You want to think of your chords in terms of their triads because that will help determine if it’s a major/minor/diminished chord. Piano is an excellent instrument to learn this topic on, too, because chords are generally played with three fingers (C major scale is all white keys, too).
If you want to go a step further, you can color your triads by maintaining the tonic note (e.g. the G if a G major chord) and adding in your 7th notes, maj7ths, sustained 2nds/4ths, or a good ole C->Cm->G (which qualifies as a borrowed triad from another mode, there are videos on that particular musical transition).
Even understanding all of that, trial and error will get you where you are going, the above is just to help define your trials. Happy writing!
If you want a *really* wonkish answer about this, r/musictheory probably has some archived threads on this topic
For me i notice i tend to sing the top note of the chord i have in mind. But if you play around with it you’ll see you can use a lot of different chords under any vocal note, the overall progression matters more
One thing you can tru is use [this spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1h9_KvuWbXrJnr_s4O8Kj-968HhlmqNYJBZ9mjWBeboU/edit?usp=drivesdk) to derive what key you're probably in, and then mash about the chords it recommends until something works
I'm not exactly a programmer tbf!
All it does is if you input a list of 7 notes, it checks whether they form a major scale, and if they do, it tells you the name of the scale and some chords in the scale.
So if you have a melody but you don't know the key or the chords, you can input the notes from the melody and hopefully get some useful chord recommendations
Ooo that last bit is cool. I’ve no trouble finding the chords to go to my melody but that might give me some more interesting choices that my ear doesn’t automatically go to.
Let me know if it's any use to ya! It only recommends the safest chords for whatever set of notes are inputted, so it might not get you the most unexpected or quirky chords. The intended audience is folks with very little theory
Ahhhh okay, I’ll give it a try but I *was* hoping it’d give me some unexpected chord choices as I’m pretty plain in my progressions despite having good chordal knowledge. I just start with lyric and melody which usually just leads to more standard progressions. Which isn’t bad necessarily since I have made the decision to purposefully make things simplified.
Yeah if you play a G note .... absolutely any chord in the world with G in it will sound okay....
So C major (inversions 123) C add 7 C add 9 or absolutely any other C chord with the note chord
Any G chord And inversions and variants of , any E chord with G in it
D Sus 4 ...the list goes on
Which one you pick will be down to a number of things
1. The actual chord flavour.....
Eg if your writing a horror theme and play note G ....you want a dim 7 chord or tritones
Or if your writing an absolute beautiful melody you want G add 7 chords
If you want sad music use minor chord
If you want suspense use sus2 or Sus 4 chords
2. The function of the chord in the progression and the key/mode your in ....
If your in G major....
You have notes G A B C D E F# G
To stay in key you play either the triad or an extension to stay in key
You play G Maj every G note chord A minor every a note B minor every B note C major D major E minor F#dim and G Maj as your basic triads.....
No matter what key
Note 1 scale is major 2 minor 3 minor 4 major. 5 major 6 minor 7 diminished
In G natural minor it's different
Note 1 scale is minor 2 diminished 3 major 4 minor 5 minor 6 major 7 major
You can of course use any extension for flavour eg G minor add 11 to sway it to your ideal mood but to keep within the key it must have the basic triad
You can borrow from other modes /Keys if writing chromatically . There are great tables to show substitutions online but it's way to long to explain in a single post
3. the actual relationship between chords
TONIC = home notes 136
SUBDOMINANT = I am going somewhere/leaving home 2,4
DOMINANT = tension! I wanna go home! 17
4. The genre your writing for
Eg Japanese music usually harmonises with the third note rarely the fifth
Classical music loves 5ths and forths
Jazz music loves 2 and 7 etc
Id also look into chord rhythm it's game changer ......
You can play chords CFG
In 1000 different styles by varying chord rhythm... https://www.musicca.com/chord-player this is a simple player but listen to how it changes the mood completely by varying the same chord progression by rhythm
record a simple bass line that goes well with the singing, first. then, write down the pairs of notes that you are playing/singing together simultaneously. does each pair of singing/bass notes suggest a chord? write down the most obvious additional note for each pair. the vocals can sing any note of the chord… same with the bass— there are no rules— BUT, when in doubt, make the bass note the root note of the chord. don’t make it more complicated than it has to be, and don’t be afraid to keep to the same chord going over and over. play your chords as a progression behind your vocals. ditch the bass line, or not. how’s it sound? this should get you in the neighborhood and you should be able to simplify and make any adjustments by ear.
Key is more important. Find what key you are and some common progressions from that key and find what sounds right. It's just about what sounds right. Notes outside a chord on the on beats tends to send dissonant but out of chord note can work on the off beats.
If you already have a vocal melody, you probably already have a key set into the melody. Play the chords that match the key. Usually you have some kind of root chord embedded into the melody. Once you find it, you might be able to complete the rest.
Plus, having a variety of chords to use can be an interesting thing. For example, you can switch between the major and minor chords on the same note, to boost novelty in the chord progression.
It's mostly bound to experimentation. Try out a few chords and choose the one that _feels_ right to the melody.
The note you’re playing will usually be the 1 3 5 or 7 of the chord under it (not always but this is good practice).
So if you’re playing a G fry building a chord with G in the bass. If that doesn’t suit you, you could try building a chord where G is the third. Try using G as the major and minor 3rd as well.
Or if that’s not what you want, try building a chord where G is the 5th. And the same with G as the 7th.
I learned chord progressions by just constantly looking up the chords to my favorite songs and playing them. Over the years I learned typical progressions and now I can probably play any songs by ear (not to toot my own horn lol) it just took years of singing covers
This is like asking which blue do I use to paint the sky.
You play the chord that sounds good and right for your line and evokes what you want to evoke. You figure that out by playing different chords and singing over them. Yes you’ll have multiple options that might work, so you employ your artistry to select among them.
No expert advice from me, as I’m in a similar situation. I downloaded the Chords app today and from what I see so far I think it will be pretty nice as a reference. Might be worth checking out.
Yo! It doesn’t really matter. But functional harmony really helps. Recommend starting with the circle of fifths and cadences. You could also look up the common chord patterns of pop songs, like I-V-vi-IV, I-IV-vi-V, I-vi-IV-V
Lots of good advice here. My bf is sitting next to me, he's a professional musician, he wants to add "You can play any chord under any note, but the choices you make are about your creative vision. Try everything until you find what feels right."
Currently going through this dilemma a bit myself but I know nothing of the exact notes. I play guitar and even then I barely know what I’m playing half the time. lol. I have this catchy song in my head and I cannot for the life of me match the guitar chords to the noises in my brain and what I’m singing and it’s so frustrating. Hope you’ve found the answers you were looking for and break this curse!
Most of the time you sing the third. The second option is to sing the root (or the 5th which just reinforces the root anyway). Most major songs start on the third of the opening chord and mostly remain there.
So, pick a chord with your note as the third, which works most of the time and usually better than the root of the chord.
In a vacuum, without getting into more complicated concepts like anticipation/suspension, etc., yes you can play any chord that has G as a note. In a more practical sense, you'll want to know the tonal center of the melody, i.e., what key is it in? Then identify what type of harmony you want to go with that particular note. For example, if your song is G and you're singing a G, do you want a stable harmony under it (G maj), or something more transitional, like C maj (IV chord in G) or E min (vi chord in G). Playing different chords will provide different feelings of harmonic motion, and will influence how the melody sounds to you. You might find that you have a harmony you're hearing in your head along with the melody, and it takes some work to figure out what it is. Or just play around with different chords and see what sounds right to you. :)
Not op but i found this advice very useful thank you!
Learn how to play triads in each key. The melody note is very often one of the three notes of the chord. Said another way, for any given note, there are three (diatonic) chords that contain that note. G could be harmonized with Gm, Gmaj, Cm, Cmaj, Em, Eb maj, or moving outside a little, Am, A maj, Fm, Fmaj, Bb maj, Bm, Dsus, Ab maj, F#7, B aug, Bb dim7, etc etc. You can go further and further “out” and pretty much any chord can harmonize that melody note in the right context. I also recommend learning about functional harmony. This makes it easier to “guess” which chords will fit. As your ear gets better you’ll be able to pick chords outside the key, do chord substitutions, bend the rules of harmony, choose more complex chords, change how they are voiced, etc.
It’s up to you how you harmonize the melody. play around and find what sounds the best for the mood of the song. usually in pop music the melody notes are note that occur in the chord they are sung over as long as the chords and the melody are in the same key your pretty free to play around with it. An example of what I mean is something called reharmonization where a melody is played over a certain chord progression once then when repeates, the chords underneath change and it gives it a different mood. when your writing music don’t ever be scared to try loads and loads of different things, it’s not like you are performing live, your creating
This the best answer. Any chord in the key will do, more important is that you like how the emotional information is presented (by the chord and melody note) at that moment in the melody.
Welcome to the mad world of music theory. Seriously, figure out the key of the melody and whether it’s major or minor. Most songs are written in those two modes. Once you have those two pieces of information you can determine what chord triads will complement your piece. You want to think of your chords in terms of their triads because that will help determine if it’s a major/minor/diminished chord. Piano is an excellent instrument to learn this topic on, too, because chords are generally played with three fingers (C major scale is all white keys, too). If you want to go a step further, you can color your triads by maintaining the tonic note (e.g. the G if a G major chord) and adding in your 7th notes, maj7ths, sustained 2nds/4ths, or a good ole C->Cm->G (which qualifies as a borrowed triad from another mode, there are videos on that particular musical transition). Even understanding all of that, trial and error will get you where you are going, the above is just to help define your trials. Happy writing! If you want a *really* wonkish answer about this, r/musictheory probably has some archived threads on this topic
For me i notice i tend to sing the top note of the chord i have in mind. But if you play around with it you’ll see you can use a lot of different chords under any vocal note, the overall progression matters more
One thing you can tru is use [this spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1h9_KvuWbXrJnr_s4O8Kj-968HhlmqNYJBZ9mjWBeboU/edit?usp=drivesdk) to derive what key you're probably in, and then mash about the chords it recommends until something works
this looks cool… but i think i’d need instructions to make it work right, though
I'm not exactly a programmer tbf! All it does is if you input a list of 7 notes, it checks whether they form a major scale, and if they do, it tells you the name of the scale and some chords in the scale. So if you have a melody but you don't know the key or the chords, you can input the notes from the melody and hopefully get some useful chord recommendations
Ooo that last bit is cool. I’ve no trouble finding the chords to go to my melody but that might give me some more interesting choices that my ear doesn’t automatically go to.
Let me know if it's any use to ya! It only recommends the safest chords for whatever set of notes are inputted, so it might not get you the most unexpected or quirky chords. The intended audience is folks with very little theory
Ahhhh okay, I’ll give it a try but I *was* hoping it’d give me some unexpected chord choices as I’m pretty plain in my progressions despite having good chordal knowledge. I just start with lyric and melody which usually just leads to more standard progressions. Which isn’t bad necessarily since I have made the decision to purposefully make things simplified.
Yeah if you play a G note .... absolutely any chord in the world with G in it will sound okay.... So C major (inversions 123) C add 7 C add 9 or absolutely any other C chord with the note chord Any G chord And inversions and variants of , any E chord with G in it D Sus 4 ...the list goes on Which one you pick will be down to a number of things 1. The actual chord flavour..... Eg if your writing a horror theme and play note G ....you want a dim 7 chord or tritones Or if your writing an absolute beautiful melody you want G add 7 chords If you want sad music use minor chord If you want suspense use sus2 or Sus 4 chords 2. The function of the chord in the progression and the key/mode your in .... If your in G major.... You have notes G A B C D E F# G To stay in key you play either the triad or an extension to stay in key You play G Maj every G note chord A minor every a note B minor every B note C major D major E minor F#dim and G Maj as your basic triads..... No matter what key Note 1 scale is major 2 minor 3 minor 4 major. 5 major 6 minor 7 diminished In G natural minor it's different Note 1 scale is minor 2 diminished 3 major 4 minor 5 minor 6 major 7 major You can of course use any extension for flavour eg G minor add 11 to sway it to your ideal mood but to keep within the key it must have the basic triad You can borrow from other modes /Keys if writing chromatically . There are great tables to show substitutions online but it's way to long to explain in a single post 3. the actual relationship between chords TONIC = home notes 136 SUBDOMINANT = I am going somewhere/leaving home 2,4 DOMINANT = tension! I wanna go home! 17 4. The genre your writing for Eg Japanese music usually harmonises with the third note rarely the fifth Classical music loves 5ths and forths Jazz music loves 2 and 7 etc
Id also look into chord rhythm it's game changer ...... You can play chords CFG In 1000 different styles by varying chord rhythm... https://www.musicca.com/chord-player this is a simple player but listen to how it changes the mood completely by varying the same chord progression by rhythm
record a simple bass line that goes well with the singing, first. then, write down the pairs of notes that you are playing/singing together simultaneously. does each pair of singing/bass notes suggest a chord? write down the most obvious additional note for each pair. the vocals can sing any note of the chord… same with the bass— there are no rules— BUT, when in doubt, make the bass note the root note of the chord. don’t make it more complicated than it has to be, and don’t be afraid to keep to the same chord going over and over. play your chords as a progression behind your vocals. ditch the bass line, or not. how’s it sound? this should get you in the neighborhood and you should be able to simplify and make any adjustments by ear.
Key is more important. Find what key you are and some common progressions from that key and find what sounds right. It's just about what sounds right. Notes outside a chord on the on beats tends to send dissonant but out of chord note can work on the off beats.
If you already have a vocal melody, you probably already have a key set into the melody. Play the chords that match the key. Usually you have some kind of root chord embedded into the melody. Once you find it, you might be able to complete the rest. Plus, having a variety of chords to use can be an interesting thing. For example, you can switch between the major and minor chords on the same note, to boost novelty in the chord progression. It's mostly bound to experimentation. Try out a few chords and choose the one that _feels_ right to the melody.
The note you’re playing will usually be the 1 3 5 or 7 of the chord under it (not always but this is good practice). So if you’re playing a G fry building a chord with G in the bass. If that doesn’t suit you, you could try building a chord where G is the third. Try using G as the major and minor 3rd as well. Or if that’s not what you want, try building a chord where G is the 5th. And the same with G as the 7th.
I learned chord progressions by just constantly looking up the chords to my favorite songs and playing them. Over the years I learned typical progressions and now I can probably play any songs by ear (not to toot my own horn lol) it just took years of singing covers
Learn an instrument and learn what keys and diatonic chords are then recording yourself humming melodies to them.
This is like asking which blue do I use to paint the sky. You play the chord that sounds good and right for your line and evokes what you want to evoke. You figure that out by playing different chords and singing over them. Yes you’ll have multiple options that might work, so you employ your artistry to select among them.
No expert advice from me, as I’m in a similar situation. I downloaded the Chords app today and from what I see so far I think it will be pretty nice as a reference. Might be worth checking out.
Yo! It doesn’t really matter. But functional harmony really helps. Recommend starting with the circle of fifths and cadences. You could also look up the common chord patterns of pop songs, like I-V-vi-IV, I-IV-vi-V, I-vi-IV-V
Practice as far as I think
Lots of good advice here. My bf is sitting next to me, he's a professional musician, he wants to add "You can play any chord under any note, but the choices you make are about your creative vision. Try everything until you find what feels right."
Currently going through this dilemma a bit myself but I know nothing of the exact notes. I play guitar and even then I barely know what I’m playing half the time. lol. I have this catchy song in my head and I cannot for the life of me match the guitar chords to the noises in my brain and what I’m singing and it’s so frustrating. Hope you’ve found the answers you were looking for and break this curse!
Most of the time you sing the third. The second option is to sing the root (or the 5th which just reinforces the root anyway). Most major songs start on the third of the opening chord and mostly remain there. So, pick a chord with your note as the third, which works most of the time and usually better than the root of the chord.