Contents
3. Scale and Melody
In preparation part I explained that one basic principle in songwriting is that you should use a single scale across all the instruments, otherwise a song can easily be messed up. Quality change involves alteration of pitches so you must be careful of scales you play.
Alteration in Accordance
The most basic choice is altering scales according to the altered chord.
Thus chords and melodies are in accordance.
Stronger Alteration
But as for IVm and III, there are cases where the contiguous notes also get altered as if they gravitate toward the altered notes.
You can choose either of them freely, depending on what melody line you want to make. There are even more choices for scales, which will be explained in later chapters.
Ignore Alteration
Not many but sometimes a tricky measure is taken on IIIIIVI—Melodies totally ignore the alteration.
- IVIIIVImII
In the example above, III and II are used but melodies involve no alteration, just playing ordinary major scale phrases. By alienating chords from melodies, the effect of quality change is minimized, while creating fascinating harmony at the same time.
Theoretically there’s strong dissonance occurring, but you won’t have any bad impression on it. Such technique is widely used from Jazz to Pops today. It sounds poisonous in a good way…or a bad way, so you have to be careful whether it works fine1.
4. Add Seventh / Tension
In the previous article you learned adding notes to a triad. Combining quality change and embellishment notes results in even more thrilling sounds! Let me introduce some instances.
- IImIIIVImVmIVIIIVImII
Here three quality-converted chords are used; III,Vm and II, all of which are embellished with extra notes. Let’s watch what notes are added.
This is the first half. III is dressed with F, which is the “dangerous” pattern where the extra note is just semitone above the Rt, but III creates the peak of instability so it works perfectly.
This is the second half. What deserves attention is some notes ignore alteration here again, which is kinda advanced technique. This can easily bring dirty feel of Jazz, it’s my recommendation😎
5. Subjectivity and Individuality
In this article I verbalized musical mood using subjective words like “hope”, “happy”, “nostalgia”, “twisted” bla bla. Traditional theory books will not mention this much subjective level impressions. The impression of a chord can actually change depending on the context, such as what comes before or after. So it’s not really desirable to develop a fixed impression talk of “this chord is like this” too much.
Given that, normal theory books in general just say that you may interchange chord qualities or they’re interchangeable. But talking of “may” or “able”, you may choose anything and you’re able to do anything from the start, in reality.
So LMT chooses to take one step further and illustrates actual usages of chords with examples and verbal explanation so that learners can utilize them, not just use them. But, needless to say, YOUR impression on these chords need not be exactly the same. It may vary depending on situations and perception. You can remember them with your own words, or it’s not necessarily verbal in the first place.
The point is: you can roughly guess what mood a quality-converted chord will bring by the theoretical logic of major/minor property or chord functions. Keep in mind that theory does not rule you, but just supports your aesthetic decisions. This is the proper relationship between theory and practice.
Summary
- Chord types like major/minor is termed a quality of chords.
- In LMT, the word quality change refers to changing the quality of a chord.
- IIIIIVIIVm can be easily utilized as a replacement for its major/minor counterpart.
- Im and Vm is a bit advanced, whose usage is limited when compared with other quality-changed chords.
