Ask yourself what the melody really needs.
Yesterday was Alice Parker’s 98th birthday. She continues to inspire and teach me and countless others with her brilliant perspective on music and life.
Today, I’m reflecting on unison – that simplest and most challenging approach to writing for voices.
So much of Alice’s writing begins in unison, and large sections of her pieces often have no countermines or “harmony.” My impression from Alice is that this is for a simple reason: a melody shouldn’t have anything added to it until it needs it. This is just as buildings are constructed on the most straightforward foundations, paintings on the clearest sketches, and the most complex dishes can be made from the simplest ingredients treated properly. A beautiful Christmas tree is beautiful even before you add any lights or ornaments to it! Start with the melody, then ask what it needs – and add only that, at the right time.
I write, teach, and make music because I fell in love with the sound of voices in harmony. So for me, it’s a struggle to restrain my instinct to add more harmony always. But the writing is better – the music is better – when there is nothing in a piece that isn’t needed.
And I will point out that this instinct to simplify and let the melody lead the way doesn’t start and end with Alice Parker. Around the same time, in a very different musical world, Gene Puerling was doing the same thing in his arrangements for The Hi-Lo’s. I sometimes look at my own arrangements and estimate a unison percentage. Is this around the percentage that Alice or Gene would choose?
When we overharmonize, we rob the melody of its innate strength – or we’re compensating for a melody with no strength of its own. If we can be brave enough to relinquish the harmony and let the melody be the star, we mature as writers.
More unison! Your music will thank you.