What chords could go under this?

Ok hi! Sorry for being so ignorant about theory, but I thought mabe I could get some answers here. The melody is D B Flat A G. Sometimes it will switch to D B A G though. I've figured out that this is in B flat major (or minor I'm not sure), but every chord I play under this sounds dissonant and I'm looking for a melancholy sound. Does anyone know what I could play?

Thanks in advance!

Disregard this thread. I just figured it out. :P

You have to realize that there are many possibilities. You could use any chords you want. In general though you want to have some consonances and it depends mainly on what notes you want to emphasize and what style.

You could use Dminor/Ddorian. There is no 3rd, an F or F#, in the "melody". You could also use Dmaj or Dmix or even Dlydian. These all contain B and not Bb but it could work.

The melody could even be modulating or changing modes. What this means is that you could use Dmaj chord when it is using B and Dmin when it is using Bb.

It could also use Bb7 and/or Bmaj7.... or Gmin and Gmaj.

The point is simply choosing chords that work with the notes. You could use one note per chord if the notes are long or if they are short you tend to remove the unessential notes and keep the esssential ones which will outline the harmony.

In this case, if, say, the B/Bb was very short relative to the others then we have essentially a D A interval which outlines the Dmaj or min triad. (or we could use Bbmaj7 Bmin7)

You could even use a chord such as E7 for example. Whats important is how each note functions over the chord. In this case all fit in certain ways. D being the 7th, G being the b3rd(so a blues like sound), B being the 5th, Bb being the flat 5th(another blues like sound), A being the 4th(implying an E7sus4). The melody might not work well for blues though and this assumes we are trying to get them all with one chord.

You can pick just about any chord and it would work in some sense. The reason is because you have 4 notes and there are only a total of 12. So there are many chords that contain at least one of the notes. And even chords that do not contain the notes at all can still be related in some way(as tensions if your doing jazz). For example, C#min even works in some ways as does most other chords.

Its mainly about choosing the chords for the context, style, and sound you want to present. Some chords will work much better than others for that.

In some sense you have the choose to harmonize 0 notes, 1 note, 2 notes, 3 notes, or 4 notes. In this case you can't harmonize 4 because they do not form a 7th chord... but you can do 3 notes with 1 harmonization of Gmin/Gmaj with A being the M2nd. If you do 2 notes then you have many more chords to use.

You also can choose how many notes to harmonize at at time. You can do all of them, one each beat, one each bar, etc...

Nice post!

I guess I should also mention that you can use other chords to "harmonize" too. I mainly just mentioned the traditional chords(7th's) but you also have the options of using more modern pitch collections.

D B Flat A G are all the notes of Gmin sus 2(or technically what is Gm9 which is not at all an uncommon chord). With B instead of Bb you have G9. Since there is no 7th it is not as strong as a true G9 and different voicings and inversions can change that effect. Those notes alone will most likely be heard as a Gmin or Gmaj with added 2nd/9th than a true dominant chord. (but depends really on the context)

If you want to think of this as some type of D chord then note that it's probably going to sound more like Dm7(add13) because Bb will imply an F(the 5th) and the B will imply F# giving more of a D7sus4(or D13 like chord) type of feel. (inversions and voiceings also make a big difference)

I suggest you experiment with all the options and try random chords if you want. But also keep in mind the most important notes of the melody will tend to outline consonant chord tones in the underlying harmony but that putting any explicit harmony can change that.

Just remember than anything can work but usually some things work better than others and even some things that sound bad in one context can work very well in another.

I'm stealing this melody.

So, this thread is an association game. :)

for your primary melody D Bb A G

First two notes Eb Major

Last two notes A Major

use G as the base note for everything

or

for your secondary melody D B A G

First two notes E minor

Last two notes A Major

use G as the base note for everything