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Melody vs Harmony: Unity and Variety in Art
Repeat:
The tune trumps the chord (see Chapter 9).
As you will learn in Chapter 9, bearing this fact in mind will help you enormously in your songwriting. Your brain zeros in on the tune, which, again, is why a chord-free melody stands on its own, but a tune-free chord progression (harmony without melody) does not.
As long as the melody is in a state of imbalance, no accompanying chord can bring it back into balance.
At the same time, your brain has to be able to identify a succession of notes and accompanying harmony as “music” in the first place. That's why unity and variety in art are so important—not only in visual art, but also in literary and musical art. For the collective musical mind of an audience to find a piece of music memorable and emotionally potent ...
- The piece must have enough tonal unity to be coherent ;
- It must also possess a sufficient variety of tonal disturbance and tension to be mesmerizing.
Unity and variety. Both are essential. The trick is to have them in the right balance. That means a melody and its chords must necessarily be tonally related in some way. What way?