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Lesson 1

Musical

Example

Lesson 1

Secret

Score

Lesson 1

Score/

Music

Establishing the key signature

If your opening melody suggests a C Major chord, you are most likely going to be writing your melody in the key of C Major. So with these first five notes, not only have you established your first chord, but you also have established what key you'll be composing in.

Why is that important? Because once you know what key you are in, you can choose all the other notes (from that key) that will work well for the remainder of your melody.

Building the Harmony

Since we know that our first chord is a C Major chord, let's start to build the harmony by giving the root note ("C") of that chord to the left hand:

Notice how much fuller this sounds with just a little bit of left hand harmony?