Keyboard Harmony

Welcome to our Keyboard Harmony Free Online Course

Here at Inscribe Music we are passionate about helping improve the harmony skills of composers and pianists which is why we have embarked on a journey to bring you a step by step rout to mastering harmony at the keyboard.  Beginning with basic rules for harmonisation we will gradually expand your harmonic knowledge and vocabulary so that you can confidently harmonise any melody or idea at the keyboard.

This course assumes you have some keyboard knowledge and in particular how to construct a triad and knowledge of keys.

Lets get started:

The Primary Triads in Root Position

The three primary triads in the key of C major are C, F and G.  There are the triads built on the root of the C major scale (i.e. C), the fourth/sub-dominant (F) and the fifth/dominant (G).  With roman numerals these chords are called I, IV and V

The approach to keyboard harmony given here is to begin with some very strict rules for harmonisation in 4 voices (SATB) that you can become proficient at quickly and then to gradually widen and loosen the rules to allow greater freedom.

The rules for this stage are

1. The bass will play the root of chord I, IV or V

2. If two sequential chords have a common tone then keep that tone in the same voice and move the other voices to the nearest chord tone

3. You should give the soprano voice (highest note) according to the number above the bass (3 for the third, 5 for the fifth and 8 for the root) the interval between the bass and the soprano will usually be more than an octave (a compound interval) in order to leave room for the missing voices (alto and tenor)

4. The soprano, alto and tenor voices should complete the triad in close position - no missing tone and the root (bass) note will be duplicated

The example below shows a bassline and its possible harmonisation