Music: An Appreciation, 10th Edition (Kamien)

Chapter 6: Harmony

Interactive Chapter

ELEMENTS OF MUSIC: HARMONY

When folksingers accompany themselves on a guitar, they add support, depth, and richness to the melody. We call this harmonizing. Most music in western culture is a blend of melody and harmony.

Harmony refers to the way chords are constructed and how they follow each other. A chord is a combination of three or more tones sounded at once. Essentially, a chord is a group of simultaneous tones, and a melody is a series of individual tones heard one after another. As a melody unfolds, it provides clues for harmonizing–some of the tones of the melody are usually included in the chords of the accompaniment. But a melody does not always dictate a specific series, or progression, of chords. The same melody may be harmonized in several musically convincing ways.

Here is an example of one simple tune with 2 different harmonizations:

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