Ableton Forum

a piano player would be able to do this by ear, any suggestions for me who doesnt play piano,
just mess around with some chords until it sounds right ??

definitely 'use your ears' is the first step.

if you can find a single note that seems to fit the song most of the time, that's probably the key the song is in. from there you can find that key's major scale and twiddle around on that. if it sounds sad, it might be a minor key.

Live's plug in 'Spectrum' has a notes mode, dunno how much that will help.

time to learn to play piano??

music is logic. a major scale in chords is Imaj IImin IIImin IVmaj Vseventh VIminor VIIdiminished.

I tonic is the key. then there is the IV subdominant, and the V dominant. these are the backbone, you can harmonize all melodies with them... their substitutes are VIminor(I), IIminor(IV) and IIIminor(V), to make it sound better.

in Eb it's Eb, Ab and Bb. respective Cmin, Fmin and Gmin. with these 3 (6) chords you should be able to harmonize the tune.

if one of them doesn't fit it means that the song goes out of the main key, but, hey, this is another story.
simple things (folk) go the main street... abba and zappa don't...
and johann sebastion bach is god.

good to know that some computerheads still care about harmonies...

you may want to get a book on this. it helps a lot to know what you are hearing.

ctrl.z.jones

ok this is helpful, never seen this software that was linked ?

i guess ill see how i can work this out, what was the book that was recommended ?

I know a standard book in college courses is Tonal Harmony with an Introduction to Twentieth-Century Music

by Stefan Kostka and Dorothy Payne

http://www.amazon.com/Tonal-Harmony-Ste ... 620&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Workbook-Tonal-Ha ... 620&sr=8-3


Depends on how much you want to dig in to theory.

Another great book is How Music REALLY Works!, 2nd Ed
available from http://www.completechords.com
they also have a very cool chord poster http://www.completechords.com/PGS_Produ ... Poster.htm

which may give you want you need to play around with your melody.
it covers the common chords/relative minor and just about every other possible chord based on each key signature, shows fingerings and inversions. They have a free download PDF version as well.

Hope this helps, good luck on your studies!

Use Harmony Navigator: http://www.cognitone.com/

harmony navigator ? never heard of this, can you actually import a mp3 melody line and generate chords ??

can you import a melody line to get suggested chord possiblities to use ?

In the first instance, locate a musician who knows chords and get them to compose it for you. In the longterm you'll want to learn this yourself.

You can ether learn music theory, or else you can take a trial n error approach - the efficiency of the latter depending on how quickly your ears/brain pick things up.

learn some music.

you'd be surprised; music is as easy (and potentially complex) as the alphabet, only its ABCDEFG ABCDEFG ABCDEFG ABCDEFG ...

it's AA#BCC#DD#EFF#GG# 5/7ths more difficult.