"I can come up with cool chords, but can't figure out a melody to go with it that doesn't sound cheesy..."

"My arrangements are all over the place. I can come up with a cool loop, but then when I try to add something to it, it feels completely disjointed and out of place."

These may seem like three separate problems, but they are all variations of the same root issue: HARMONY.

It's pretty obvious how this relates to chord progressions. That may be the first thing that comes to mind when we think of harmony.

But harmony is simply how notes relate to one another. Any notes.

This is harmony:

This is harmony:

This is harmony:

...it's simply linear harmony instead of vertical harmony.

I found a great visual example of this in my own composition teacher's little handbook on 20th Century Harmony.

Zaninelli was demonstrating polychords in this example, but makes a point to note that the melody itself is harmonically independent from the chords beneath. In this style he's attempting to avoid doubling whenever possible, so that the notes of the melody don't spoil the notes in the chords and vice versa.

This example may be a bit hard to digest if we aren't familiar with more dissonant harmonic languages, but the concept is important. Strong melodies go on their own harmonic journey.

How Harmony Affects Arrangement

I used a term there: harmonic language.

What does that mean?

Great fiction writers are known for their world building (think Herbert or Tolkien). They set up the "rules" of their world and then adhere to them - not because they aren't creative, but because they understand what it takes to immerse their readers into a new world.

When they break those rules (think the last season of Game of Thrones), an army of angry critics take to Twitter to let them know about it. They broke their own world, and destroyed our immersion in it.

Composers do this too. Since our language is harmony, we have to work to keep a consistent harmonic language. At least, if our goal is to immerse ourselves and the listener in a new world.

Messiaen used diminished polychords. Ravel used extended tertian. Hindemith used quartal harmony.

Composers like Schoenberg or Stravinsky would experiment with a number of harmonic languages throughout their careers, but would NEVER break the listener's immersion within a single piece or single movement.

They understood the importance of harmonic consistency.

Or to quote Mr. Z once more:

Harmony affects nearly everything we do as composers and artists, but I don't often hear it talked about in this way.

I'd like to build a more in-depth resource to help you understand it, as Mr. Z did for me all those years back.

If that's something you'd be interested in, you can learn more about it HERE.

If enough of you are interested, I'll build it for you.