Adding Movemnt To Homophonic Textures.

Hello everyone

I would like some help with adding more movement and in the background so it isn't just substained notes, while still having a clear main melody.

From From 1:45 onwards in this track is a perfect example of what i want to achieve:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EifKiFVHH64&list=PL0CDE7010D68F72A9&index=18

What would be a good way to go about this? There is no sheet music of this track for me to study and I'm not good enough to transcribe something so complicated.

From what I could figure out there seems to be an abundance of parallel 5ths and 4ths and even some parallel 2nds and 7ths. So it's cool for me to use them if I'm not actually trying to write contrapuntal music and want to keep the melody in the background? There is so much movement in the background of this track and I have no idea what thoery practices to apply to achive similar results.

Thanks for your time

EDIT: Sorry for spelling error in title

study counterpoint 

study counterpoint 

I have, it's the fact that this track doesn't seem to follow counterpoint guidelines for the background melodies that's throwing me off.

Seems pretty normal to me. 

Study counterpoint - and then break the rules =)   I think that understanding concepts is the most important part of the study, at first, to change your thought process on melodic writing. 

Also, take care of your orchestration for both clarity and impact...*shrugs*?  Sorry, I have no other advice than that.

 Study counterpoint - and then break the rules =)   I think that understanding concepts is the most important part of the study, at first, to change your thought process on melodic writing. 

 

Also, take care of your orchestration for both clarity and impact...*shrugs*?  Sorry, I have no other advice than that.

I've been writing out an analysis of a Vaughan Williams piece to get a better handle on some of the rules.  (Because I know nothing and the examples in my theory book aren't enough to pound the information into my tiny brain.)  Conclusion:  Vaughan Williams breaks most of the rules about half of the time, but it all still works.  He follows the rules when they are helpful and gleefully chucks them when they aren't.  On the other hand, I analyzed a nice quiet little Lutkin piece.  He follows ALL the rules to the letter.  I like that piece too, it's just a different style of thing.  It all depends what you want as a sound.  You just need to figure out what you want and how to achieve it.  (I haven't got the ear skills to tell you what's going on specifically in your example piece though.  Sorry.)  (:

Thanks for the responses everyone.

So would you guys consider this track (from 1:45 onwards) a contrapuntal piece, but making one of the lines more apparent through dynamics and orchestration?

Thanks for the responses everyone.

 

So would you guys consider this track (from 1:45 onwards) a contrapuntal piece, but making one of the lines more apparent through dynamics and orchestration?

 No, this is absolutely not a contrapuntal piece. It is still regularly moving block chords with a bit of consonant decoration in the mix. Contrapuntal music inplies that all the lines are of equal (or nearly equal) importance to the texture*, such as is found in Bach and some Steve Reich pieces.  To be honest, if you write in this style, which is essentially the same as pop music, it's very difficult to produce true counterpoint becuase you will always have a bass and harmony notes however much movement you add to disguise them, and have all voices playing chord tones all the time.  Getting away and creating a genuinely new textures from this involves having harmonic movement unconstrained by the barlines.

*Properly contrapuntal music is as much about rhythm as pitch.