Coming up with great sounding harmony ine is not quite as simple as playing a static intervl above the original melody.
The art of creating harmony is every bit as involved as the art of composing.
The best harmony lines are beautiful melodies in and of themselves.
A great harmony line doesn’t always move in parallel to the original melody; it has a shape of its own and its own relationship to the song’s chord structure. It also has a unique relationship to the original melody, avoiding direct conflict or dissonance but often moving in counterpoint to the original line.
Where to begin?
With your ear attuned to the underlying chords of the song, start picking out other pitches that sound right. Then start connecting those pitches with appropriate passing tones.
Try to create a new melodic line that follows the rhythms of the original melody.
This approach to soloing results in an alternate melody — a melodic line that the composer might have come up with but didn’t. This is completely a new melody , your melody, built frm the basic structure of the song itself, based on all the techniques you’ve learned in this chapter and in those previous. It is atype of solo that is pleasing to the ear; quite closely related to the original melody but different enough to stand alone as a solo.
You don’t have to learn fancy scales or advanced chord theory
Start with the original melody and go on from there.
Tags: harmonize melody, harmony