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Counter Rule for Better Melodies

Learn how to avoid this common fault many songwriters & producers make in their backing melodies! ►FREE Book: https://HackMusicTheory.com/Books​​ ►Online Courses: https://HackMusicTheory.com/Courses​​ ►Songwriting & Producing PDF: https://HackMusicTheory.com/Bestsellers 0:00​ Introduction 1:14 The Fault 2:36 The Fix 5:53 The Rule 6:13 The Example 6:33 The Djend THE FAULT Firstly, just to clarify. A fault is not a mistake. A fault is a weakness. In other words, an area for improvement. So, what’s the fault in this backing melody? Well, in order to answer that question, we first need to ask another question: What’s the purpose of a backing melody? You see, once we understand what a backing melody is supposed to be adding to the music, we’ll understand why this backing melody is weak. In other words, why it is not fulfilling its purpose. So, backing melodies are most often used in hooks and choruses, when producers want to add depth to the music, which also thickens the sound. The idea is that this addition will make the section stand out. But, in order for a backing melody to add depth, it needs to be perceived by our ears as a new musical layer. Otherwise, it’ll merely be the lead melody’s shadow, which our ears will ignore. In the same way that when we’re walking down the street, our eyes ignore people’s shadows. And that brings us to our backing melody’s fault: It’s shadowing our lead melody, which is just a polite way of saying that it’s copying our lead melody. And nobody likes a copycat, especially lead melodies! The result of our backing melody being nothing more than a shadow, is that it does not fulfill its purpose: to add depth. THE FIX Right, so now you’re probably thinking: How can I write backing melodies that will be perceived as new musical layers, so they actually add depth? Easy! You write your backing melodies using counterpoint. What’s counterpoint? Well, counterpoint is the technique of adding musical layers by writing melodies with countering contours. For example, if we take the first bar of our section, and instead of having our backing melody copy the contour of our lead melody, we change our backing melody so it counters the contour of our lead melody. Now, there’s numerous ways to counter a melody, but the best way is to literally go in the opposite direction. We do that here when our lead melody goes from B down to G, while our backing melody goes in the opposite direction, from A up to B. And we do it again when our lead goes from G up to A, while our backing goes from C down to B. When a lead melody and backing melody move in opposite directions, that’s called contrary motion, and it’s just one of the ways to write counterpoint. Finally, to add even more musical depth, play around with countering your lead melody’s rhythm, too. You’ll notice in our example, there’s a few times where our backing melody plays a different rhythm to our lead melody. The most obvious example of this is in the beginning of our second bar, where the lead melody plays one long note, and the backing melody counters that with four short notes. And remember, you don’t have to always have both melodies playing at the same time. You’ll hear in our final example that there’s a couple of places where our backing melody has a rest, in order to give our lead melody some space. Lastly, we love the life lesson that counterpoint teaches us. One melody can be completely and utterly opposite to another melody, yet they coexist in beautiful harmony. And not only do they coexist peacefully, but the music would be weaker without both melodies. In these extremely polarized times we’re living in, we find this lesson so helpful when encountering people with drastically different views to ours. They counter us to create communal counterpoint, and together our different ways make society stronger. The only caveat to this, though, is that both melodies need to be in key, otherwise they’ll create dissonance against the underlying harmony. So as long as both people’s ways are in key, in other words, they’re not creating dissonance against nature’s harmony (like racism does, and sexism does, etc.), then the world is a better place thanks to that societal counterpoint. THE RULE Our Backing Melody Rule is that your backing melody should add depth to your music, by countering the contour of your lead melody. And the way you do that, is by using the magic technique known as counterpoint. --- ABOUT Hack Music Theory is the fast, easy and fun way to make music. Taught by award-winning music lecturer Ray Harmony, and his protégé wife Kate. COPYRIGHT & CREDITS © 2021 Revolution Harmony Revolution Harmony is Ray Harmony & Kate Harmony Script & all music in video by Revolution Harmony Book promo filmed & edited by Maurits Nienhuis All stock footage courtesy of Pexels