Composition Task One, Lesson 9
WRITING THE 'B' SECTION
You're now ready to write the 'B' section for your tune. All you have to do is to repeat the previous steps to construct another 8 bar melody. However, there are a few things you should keep in mind...
New sections should provide a contrast to the previous section, but they work best if they're connected to your A section in some way.
You can connect your sections together in a variety of ways, but again it's easiest if you start with the harmony. The most effective method is pick a new chord sequence that is in some way connected to the chords you used in your A section.
One way to do this is to simply transpose your original chord progression into another key. Because the chord movement will be identical, the two keys don't need to be directly related - you can transpose to any key you like, however it usually sounds best if you move to a closely related key (a key with a similar key signature). Closely related keys are found by either going up or down a Perfect 5th, or up or down a major 2nd.
From the key of C major (no sharps or flats), our closest major keys are:
G Major (one sharp) - Up a Perfect 5th
F Major (one flat) - Down a Perfect 5th
D Major (Two Sharps) - Up a Major 2nd and
Bb Major (Two Flats) - Down a Major 2nd
Another common way to find a new chord progression is to find a chord sequence that is based on another chord from the CHORD FAMILY of the key that you're in. Here is a brief introduction to the concept of chord families:
CHORD FAMILIES
The concept of 'Chord families' is one of the most important (and useful) aspects of music theory. Once you understand the underlying idea, you should start to memorise the chord families in as many keys as possible.
To do this, first memorise you major scales, and then memorise the chord qualities built on each degree.
CHORD FAMILIES: SUMMARY
Every major scale is made up of 7 notes, and each note can be thought of as a 'degree' of the scale. The degree measures the number of steps up the scale you have to take from the root or tonic of the scale to get to the note. Therefore the degrees of C major are
C D E F G A B
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
In music theory, we usually replace these numbers with roman numerals;
C= I D= II E = III F= IV G = V A = VI B = VII
We can build a 'family' of triad chords by stacking notes from the scale on top of each of these degrees.
The 'quality' (or sound) of each of these chords changes as we go up the scale;
I, IV and V are MAJOR TRIADS
II, III and VI are MINOR TRIADS and
VII is a DIMINISHED TRIAD
In ascending order, the quality of the chords of the major scale are:
I = MAJOR II = MINOR III = MINOR IV = MAJOR V = MAJOR VI = MINOR VII = DIMINISHED
In modern music, we usually label these chords like this:
In classical music MAJOR TRIADS are normally labelled with capital letters, and minor and diminished triads are labelled with lower case letters
We can make these chords sound richer and more interesting by adding another note on top of each one. These four-note chords are called '7th chords'. This gives us two MAJOR 7th CHORDS (I and IV), three MINOR 7th CHORDS (ii, iii and iv) one DOMINANT 7th CHORD (V) and one HALF DIMINISHED 7th CHORD. We'll look at the difference between these chords at a later point. For now, memorise these chord qualities.
I = MAJOR 7th II = MINOR 7th III = MINOR 7th IV = MAJOR 7th V = DOMINANT 7th VI = MINOR 7th
VII = HALF-DIMINISHED 7th (Minor 7b5)
Here is the C Major scale with the 7th chords labelled:
