What is Harmony in music ?

HARMONY

We had an exposure to harmony, when we used chords with melodies. This is the basic stage of harmony. When the Organ was invented centuries ago, musicians discovered the existence of harmony in sounds.

Today we know that colour is caused by waves of light. Different colors are produced by differing wavelengths which are basically vibrations. We find that sound waves too generate different sounds, and some of them are inter-related.

A chord exhibits such a relationship. The chords are classified as primary chords and secondary chords. To understand this we should go back to the harmony names that are given to the different notes of a scale:

Key Note, is the first note of the Scale. It is also called the Tonic. All the other notes bear a fixed relationship to this note and their distances from the Tonic are determined by the scale structure.

Two other notes, next in importance are the Subdominant (the 4^th) and the Dominant (5^th). Chords based on these three important notes are called PRIMARY CHORDS of the major scale. These are Major Chords.

There are four notes left out. Excepting the Leading Note (7^th), all the other notes produce SECONDARY CHORDS. In the major scale, these are Minor Chords.

The chord on the leading note is a Diminished Chord in the major scale.

The Minor Scales having different structure, will produce a different set of chords.

Parts of Harmony

The most common harmony is made of four parts for Choral Music. The top most part is called the Soprano and is generally in the higher range of the Treble Clef. It is complemented by a lower women