Chapter 3: What resonates more in you melody or harmony?

It took many years before I accidentally met other classical music composers.

One of them, Tobias Braun, I met because he played the piano for a Trio I had written.  The sound studio had recommended 3 players to me.  When it came to the actual recording session I was stuck in England visiting my daughter who lives there and could not get back for 2 months or so because of Covid.

So I met Tobias afterwards and learned that he is a music teacher at a local music high school and also a composer.  I also discovered that he was very knowledgeable about Cubase and sound libraries and how one has to go about if one wants to produce a decent sounding audio file from a composition.  After a few recordings it had become evident to me that I could not afford to have my compositions played by professionals anymore and needed to find a different way to do so.  More on that topic if I get around to it in a later chapter but it is really important to me to be able to create really good sounding audio experiences without having to become a sound engineer. Sadly I cannot afford to pay real musicians to play my compositions (other than the few times I did but then had to stop).

Tobias and I hit it off and have worked together for 2 years already.  During that time Tobias had mentioned to me that he came to composing via harmony rather than like me via melody.

This made me remember what a lecturer at the music university where I had studied had told me before.  I had admired him for the way he could spend long times at the piano modulating and playing great sounding chords all without having to see a score or think or pause.  I attended many of his lectures and we got to know each other well because he agreed to give me private tuition.  At one of our meetings he told me that composing songs did not come easily to him at all.  I did not understand him and thought that maybe he was trying too hard and told him to just relax enough and let the ideas pop into his head (like I tend to do).  Now I understand that he came to music also via harmony and not like me via melody.

Then I met Guy Shahar through my daughter who lives in England.  Guy lives in England and he is also a fellow composer.  We agreed to meet during one of my visits to my England to see my daughter and granddaughter and started a lively email correspondence afterwards as well.  Guy also told me that he came to compositions via harmony rather than melody.

So while I was always thinking of how to compliment a melody with a counter point driven second melody Tobias and Guy would think about complementing their ideas by expressing harmony.

So I suspect that what is easy for the one is difficult for the other and vice versa.

That probably also means that each “type” has to work hard and learn what comes easy to the other type.

For me, who loves to find melodies to fit in with other melodies should I need to practice applying harmony more?  Alternatively should the harmony oriented composer focus more on creating melodies?

Anyway my curiosity was raised and I decided to ask ChatGPT to give me more insight.  I explained that I had experienced with Tobias and Guy.  This is what I learned:

ChatGPT Feedback

Horizontal versus Vertical Composing: 🎵 1. Two Different Instincts, Both Ancient

Your friends are part of a long lineage of harmony-driven composers — people who hear in blocks, who feel the emotional meaning of chords and tonal colors first, and then imagine melodies emerging from that harmonic “landscape.”

You, on the other hand, belong to an equally long lineage of melody-driven composers — people who hear in lines, who follow a thread of motion through time, trusting that harmony will grow naturally from the interweaving of beautiful melodic gestures.

In short:

• Harmony-driven composers think vertically (stacked sounds).

• Melody-driven composers think horizontally (moving voices).

Neither approach is superior; they simply reflect different kinds of inner hearing.

🎶 2. Historical Echoes of This Difference

Melodic (horizontal) Palestrina, Bach (in counterpoint), Mozart (in melodic invention), early Schubert: Flow, singability, independence of line

Harmonic (vertical) Wagner, Brahms, Debussy, Rachmaninoff:  Color, sonority, emotional gravity

Balanced Beethoven, Chopin, Fauré:  Melody inspired by harmony, harmony shaped by melody

So your way of composing “melody first” is absolutely classical — in fact, it’s how most music before the 19th century was conceived.

🌿 3. What Happens When You Compose Melodically

When you lead with melody:

• You are guided by contour, rhythm, and breath — the human voice, essentially.

• Harmony becomes a by-product of motion, not a pre-existing grid.

• The result often feels more natural, lyrical, and timeless.

However, the challenge (and opportunity) is that you must discover your harmony afterward — to let it emerge rather than impose it.

This is, in fact, how most contrapuntal music and early choral writing were born: line first, harmony second.

🔀 4. When Harmony Leads

For your harmony-minded friends:

• They might start from a chord progression or modal atmosphere.

• Their melodies trace the emotional arc of the harmony.

• The result often has lush color and strong tonal direction, but can sometimes lack the independence and vitality of line that melodic composers achieve instinctively.

🌸 5. What You Can Learn (and What They Can Learn from You)

You can learn:

• To use harmony as emotional shading for your melodies.

Try re-harmonizing the same melody several ways — notice how it transforms the feeling without changing a note of the line.

• To think occasionally of “implied harmony” while writing: even if you don’t hear chords, imagine what consonances or tensions your melody suggests.

• To explore polyphony as harmonic generation: if you add a second, third, or fourth melodic line, their interaction will generate harmony naturally — no need to “think chords.”

They can learn from you:

• That melody gives music its narrative — it’s what the listener remembers and hums afterward.

• That harmony without a strong melodic identity can sound static.

So, in a way:

Harmony-driven composers paint the emotional sky.

Melody-driven composers trace the journey beneath it.

🧭 6. How to Integrate Both Worlds

You can strengthen your work (without losing your melodic heart) by:

1. Sketching harmonies after the fact — once your melody exists, play simple triads under it and notice which progressions feel most natural.

2. Using modal thinking — Dorian, Lydian, etc. — to give your melodies a sense of harmonic color without fixed chordal thinking.

3. Listening to line interactions — your own polyphony will create harmony; observe what kinds of vertical sonorities appear and which ones speak emotionally to you.

• . - . - . -  End of ChatGPT - . - . - . -

Interesting is it not?  Amazing also how ChatGPT comes up with this?

I imagine that when teaching composition to someone it is important to know where the student is coming from, i.e. is that person harmony or melody driven?

Tobias told me many times how my focus on melody had made an impression on him.  But for me to tell him to try harder to create melodies rather than focus on  harmony would not help him at all.  For him melody has to come out of creating harmonies.  How he can do that I have no clue.  For me harmony has to come out of polyphony, i.e. creating melodies that come together to create harmonies. An alternative would be to create first a melody and then to plug in music theory to add notes as harmonic elements to the melody.  I have learned over the last 13 years of me composing that this does not produce the music I want to compose.

Even for 2 voices in a duo playing them at the same time, one on top of the other and later vice versa does not make the most of 2 voices.  The human mind seems to give preference to the highest voice in any case which means that the lower voice does not get the same attention as it may deserve.  You may have to “sneak up” on the 2 voices in some way by giving them each top billing a bit and only bring them together later, for example.

Doing that I really enjoy.

Trying to do the same with 3 or 4 voices makes it all more complicated and more difficult but many composers have done so very well in the past.

So now I am thinking that if I am supposed to “discover” harmony via polyphony how should I do this if I have 4 instruments?

I have found it interesting that when I listen to a fugue I tend to focus on wanting to hear the starting melody in the other voices rather than discover what the other voices are like.  I am not doing this on purpose.  I think my brain is wired that way.-:)

It appears that for my “style” of composing I need to apply polyphony in my compositions in order to create at the same time harmony between the voices.

I have not done this before and have no clue if this approach is right or not nor what I will learn from trying to see if it works.  But it will force me to try to give different instruments their own voices and look for ways to bring them together into happy marriage.

Trial and error is the answer.  Luckily I do enjoy composing and trying something new is also bit exciting.

So my idea is to apply polyphony to 2, 3 and 4 voices and find ways to create compositions that use polyphony to create harmony and that you will want to listen to.  I will review the results in the following chapters.