The obvious thing: Listen to lots of Bach and things from that era, i.e. the Baroque Era.

Chord Progressions and so on, i.e. harmony, became more popular in later eras for a variety of reasons but what you're talking about, counter melodies/counterpoint, is referred to, also, as Polyphony and it's from an earlier era.

Basically, it's very expensive and resource intensive to maintain a whole orchestra of the sort where you're doing Harmony, so that comes at a later date because it requires a more developed economy to support.

Counterpoint/Polyphony also tends to be in very different ranges of instrument, it's one of the reason why those distinctions exist, i.e. a bass might be involved in counterpoint with a violin, or the corresponding registers on a keyboard type instrument. But listen to lots of thing by Bach. One of the things to keep in mind is that playing/composing precedes theory, i.e. someone like Bach was very good at playing those things, which he then wrote down, after which he elaborated on them.

Because Bach was so good at those things, people studied him extensively, after which they codified a set of rules. Just listening to lots of stuff like that will naturally influence what you're likely to play, provided you practice a lot on a keyboard, i.e. you'll become more likely to accidentally play a good counter melody, which you can then elaborate on. . .

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Joseph_Fux

https://archive.org/details/imslp-ad-parnassum-fux-johann-joseph

https://archive.org/details/KentKennanCounterpoint

 

Last edited: Oct 25, 2023

The vocal, bass and guitar on this track are all using different melodies. Did they study counterpoint? Probably not.

 

Last edited: Oct 25, 2023

Please don't hate me for saying (again) that composing music shouldn't be an intellectual process that first invokes formulas and recipes even though they are invaluable for breaking down and revealing in a common musical language how a composer composed, I can only liken it to studying the structures of poetry and expect that knowledge to express beauty and move the listener or reader emotionally. As a composer you either hear it or you don't, and no matter the high degree of one's lexicon of knowledge, nothing in the world can help you make art if you are not a lightening rod to that beautuful energy. Working within the rules is one thing, being ruled by them is entirely another and cannot possibly assist in being a vessel of real creativity. If that were the case AI could write a symphony greater than someone like Beethoven could ever hope to imagine (which they have attempted to do (but only with the direct aid of a human composer) by compiling from the master's last known notes a 10th Symphony).

 

Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not him. :-( Unlike him I seldom struggle with harmonies and melodies. I mainly struggle with purpose. Why write anymore stuff that has been done a million times before? We've already heard the I, V, VI, IV sequence and its variations so many times over and over. I just can seldom hear anything that moves me in music anymore. Not in my head and not external. And sure can't get excited about CCR because I already hated this band back in the day. While I loved bands like ELP, Yes, Genesis, Camel etc.

Sorry, my problem. Not yours at all!

 

In that case we should give up speaking too, because all the words in the dictionary have been used so many times already

 

I think this goes both ways.

The absolute vast majority of humanity has no obvious talent for music. At the same time, much/most? of the music often considered 'beautiful' was written by those same talentless people. But it took those people training to acquire the skills necessary to unearth their talents. Learning music theory was their shovel.

More than anything, counterpoint is a pedagogic tool. It's a set of textbook exercises to introduce students to the basics of harmony/intervals - quite comparable to learning the ABC.

I think for most people, understanding music theory in general or counterpoint specifically will greatly help them express what they're trying to say with their music.

Of course, there are also many people who end up putting on the blinders after their second music theory book. But that's a character flaw and not a reason to reject music theory.

Just like no poet ever has rejected learning the ABC for fear of spoiling the genuineness of their artistic output.

 

I fully agree with you! Music should come from the heart and not from intellectual knowledge. As soon as you allow knowledge to take over from intuition it all can start to become artificial. However....not all composers have the luxury of writing music from the heart and need to write music for theater plays, documentaries, TV-series, etc. How do they deal with this?

 

music always has hearts the will or won't respond to it. counterpoint is a tool that helps you compose faster, but you will always have to choose the right notes.

 

I Totally agree. There are only couple of Musical Geniuses like Bach for Countermelodys and Beethoven (His best Pieces were written when he had mad hearing Problems, but he did know how each chord and melody would sound like in his head), but most people don't have that kind of Talent. But there is so much Music out there which reached Billions of People and the Composers don't know about counterpoints and stuff like that, you can create stuff by feeling and ear without knowing anything. It's good to know some Music Theory when composing to talk to other musicians in the right way and to know what you are doing to make the process faster, but it isn't nessasary.

 

A good analogy might be with a chef. A good chef knows the tools, the temperatures, what to add, where and when, the seasoning. From years of knowledge and experience.

Me, I had beans on toast for dinner. Pizza tomorrow (home-made, straight from the freezer to the oven).

 

I guess that it all boils down to what a person is willing to sacrifice in terms of integrity if they cannot muster the muse on demand. It's nice to make money in music, though as is in any field there is individual sacrifice when someone else is calling the shots and making the rules and you need to fall in line (the end of real journalism comes to the front of my mind by way of example in modern corporate media)

Writing for theatre plays or a musical film should in a sense be a labor of love as a rule, using your wits and dramatic sense to write in the voice of each character, in character to augment and help carry the story forward. You'll bring to the fore perhaps the adage "the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts" kind of a glue to help the production shine greater than the footlights themselves. Deadlines are the thing in my mind regarding writing for both theatre and film and not repetitious riffs as one must for television. In a way I'm happy that the children's science show that I wrote the theme song for wasn't picked up by PBS as it certainly would have bored the shit out of me to have do the same routine time and time again each episode.

Documentaries should also be another opportunity to soar though in a more subliminal way as a bed for the facts of the matter. A gentle hand (and fingers on the fader) is generally called for to not step on narration and the visual story being told. Deadlines are too a thing here.

If it's all too much then there is always AI to fall back on...until the majority of the composing jobs are all gone and you're out of work.

 

Send me all of your files.

 

Those howls are 6th species!

 

Dark Side:
FLS :: PR SCRIPT :: AUTOHARMONIZER - Automatically Generates Countermelodies

https://forum.image-line.com/viewtopic.php?t=312184

Light Side:

 

Well, that's mostly harmonising. Little 'counter' or 'melody' generated by that script.

It's a start though!

 

Music of the East is emotion-oriented and the music of the West is thought-oriented. In the East, the emphasis is usually on a single melody, and usually all their musical instruments play the same single melody collectively, but in the West, the situation is more complicated, at least in the case of Old West music.
In the East, musicians do not involve themselves in the relationships between notes because they only focus on a single melody. Unfortunately, this simplistic approach has permeated modern western music and has diminished its greatness.

 

I don't know which kind of Oriental Music you are listening to but is not like this they have much more than a single Melody going on at least what i am listening to. Also they use microtuning a lot and different Scales and its very complex instead of beeing simplistic.

 

In oriental music, you usually hear only one melody at different moments which means that oriental music has not made any special progress over the years.