# Do people have greater difficulty perceiving harmony than melody?



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

It's a pattern I've noticed on this forum. 
For example,



Kreisler jr said:


> janxharris said:
> 
> 
> > Sibelius 5th is extremely ambitious - harmonically (perhaps you can tell me the key of this passage from the 1st movement or comment on the ambiguity of this chord? (sounds like a C pedal with an F#, E and F natural)), in its writing for shimmering / crosshatching strings (in the B melody of the 1st movement)
> ...


Also, I've noticed that some people talk about melodies a lot, but not harmonies.
How are dissonant intervals in harmony "more difficult" to "hear or perceive" than dissonant leaps in melody, for example? They're all (equally) about "just listening", in terms of music appreciation, right?


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Most people, including musicians, do not think or listen "vertically". Playing an instrument generally means thinking "horizontally" - playing one note at a time, like a melody. Learning to hear the vertical notes, ie chords, is natural of course for people who play instruments capable of playing more than one note at a time: piano, organ, guitar. Even Ukulele. I've always found that those players have a much better aptitude at recognizing chord progressions. It takes years to develop an ear to hear and understand chords, dissonant intervals or not. It's a skill not nearly as easy as hearing a melody. I have a friend who is a very skilled jazz pianist and he can do something that just amazes me: he can listen to a song and write down the chord progressions in real time, rarely making a mistake. The tune gives him more trouble, but from decades of playing jazz charts, he's got the chord part down. Even listening to a classical work he can tell you what the chord process is. There is one thing about chords that even people with weak skills can identify: parallel fifths. They stick out like a sore thumb and are obvious to practically anyone.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

> It takes years to develop an ear to hear and understand chords, dissonant intervals or not. It's a skill not nearly as easy as hearing a melody. I have a friend who is a very skilled jazz pianist and he can do something that just amazes me: he can listen to a song and write down the chord progressions in real time, rarely making a mistake.


This skill is something that I developed when I was a teenager, playing guitar, and learning the songs I heard on the radio. I can not only listen to a song and write out the chord progression but can also detect what key the song is in based on the sound of the guitar chords. When I got to music school and during the ear training class I was light years ahead of the students who had a Classical background. I was not special or more talented, I was just like all musicians who learned to play by ear instead of studying scores. But they were light years ahead of me at sight-reading music. I eventually developed that skill, at least with playing bass.

I don't agree that hearing melodies is harder, it is the same skill, but instead of hearing chords, you are hearing intervals. Most good musicians (who can read music) can notate a melody by listening to it as it plays in real time. Those who can't read music can hear a song and play it without much work. Contemporaries of Bob Dylan commented on his facility at learning songs very quickly; hearing them one time and being able to play them that night at a club.

After playing Jazz for a while and listening to the repertory musicians can know who is playing the sax, or trumpet by the sound of the horn each musicians gets.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Back in my twenties I thought I knew the Brahms Fourth really well . Then I was walking through a student union one day and someone upstairs was playing a transcription of the first movement on a public piano. I was transfixed. Without all the orchestral color getting in the way, the vertical structure came out loud and clear and it was a whole new ballgame!


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## Waehnen (Oct 31, 2021)

I was playing the Sibelius 7th symphony harmonies on the piano the other day from the score. I was kinda overwhelmed by the harmonic mastery of it all. I do not pretend to be able to pick it all up by just listening to the music. No way! Of course I recognize elements of the harmony, like pedal points, whether it is a triad or if there are more notes, if it is a dominant chord, if there is the tritone involved etc… But the Sibelius 7th style is always also both horisontal so the polyfony is as crucial as the chordal structures.

Of course harmonies are harder to pick than melodies. There is more happening at the same time. One note versus 3 notes even if it is just a triad. One note is just one of 12 possibilities in relation to the key. A triad has so many more possible varieties. I would say, endless varieties.


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## Philidor (11 mo ago)

I always found harmonic progressions easier to recognize and write down than melodies. When I needed to write down some melody, I mostly constructed some sensible harmony around it and then I knew "this is the third of the chord" or similar. - And yes, I am coming from the piano, as a child, without having a complete harmony, I wouldn't ever have been happy by playing one single note at a time. So luckily, I started with the piano and not with some string or wind instrument.


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Definitely melody for me. With melody you have to analyze how it works. With harmony it's easier to mentally paint in.


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

"Hearing" harmonies and "following" melodies can be straightforward or difficult depending on the piece.

I don't think I have any difficulty "hearing" the harmonies, if this just means noticing that there is more than one tone/note (as opposed to being able to name them). How can anyone appreciate the texture/depth (choose your favourite term here) of, say, Vaughan Williams' Pastoral Symphony if you can't hear the harmonies?

Or anybody's anything, come to that.


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## progmatist (Apr 3, 2021)

Most people can't hear the individual notes in a chord. They can hear the difference between chords, but not the notes within.


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

progmatist said:


> Most people can't hear the individual notes in a chord. They can hear the difference between chords, but not the notes within.


This might seem pedantic, but can we agree what we mean by "hear"? I can certainly "hear" that there are, for the sake of argument, three melodic lines being played simultaneously and choose to actively follow what one is doing rather than another. Is that what we're talking about?


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

I wonder how many professional musicians can perceive in real time and note down harmonic analysis/progression of 1900-1910 music like Strauss, Webern, Schönberg etc. The comparison of that Sibelius passage with other music of ca. 1900-15 that is usually perceived not only by laypeople as fairly complex harmonically (in fact it puzzled a few professional musicians at the time) was the point I tried to make in that out of context quotation. And most listeners have no semi/pre/professional education in harmony, so can hardly to be expected to know stuff some professionals can't hear/analyse.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Kreisler jr said:


> I wonder how many professional musicians can perceive in real time and note down harmonic analysis/progression of 1900-1910 music like Strauss, Webern, Schönberg etc. The comparison of that Sibelius passage with other music of ca. 1900-15 that is usually perceived not only by laypeople as fairly complex harmonically (in fact it puzzled a few professional musicians at the time) was the point I tried to make in that out of context quotation. And most listeners have no semi/pre/professional education in harmony, so can hardly to be expected to know stuff some professionals can't hear/analyse.


But the layman who enjoys Classical music need not know any music theory, or be able to hear/analyze harmonic or melodic content in the music of Sibelius or Wagner, or any composer.


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## verandai (Dec 10, 2021)

I can imagine that if someone mainly has learned a melodic instrument, it's more difficult to hear chords or harmonic progressions.

When you've learned piano/organ or similar instruments, you're automatically trained to play several notes simultaneously and also read the corresponding sheets.

I had to learn the other direction though, when I started playing/composing music besides classical music. At the beginning, I had no experience at all in reading/writing leadsheets. I was mostly able to hear which notes were contained in a harmony (or in a chord progression), but I was too slow in translating them to a chord notation on the fly (at least when chords were more complex than a triad).

Back then, I was thinking much more in notes than in chords. But after training myself, it got much better - now I'm also able to read/think/write in chords.

I believe that the foundation for a good musical hearing is laid at a quite early age. But it's still possible to choose later on, in which direction you want to develop it.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

As a pianist/keyboardist/guitarist/singer i find I don't really have much more to add. Most things have been covered.

Except for *rhythm*. As a pianist, I actually play a percussion instrument, and most of what I play is pitting at least two rhythmic ideas against each other simultaneously.

Often what I play is polyrhythmic. But even working with the choir on an a cappella piece like Run To You, I find that rhythm is so important. This particular piece is in 6/8, but often wanders seamlessly into a 3/4 (or even 1/2) territory, creating a wonderful vagueness of rhythm confusion. It SOUNDS like it's in 3/4 when it starts.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I think it's not difficult to hear that more than one note is being played, but I believe it's much easier to hear the melody than to hear the harmony. Professional musicians I know have told me the same thing. 

One professional musician told me a technique to hear the inner notes in chords. I was told to play those notes on the piano repeatedly until I was familiar with them. Then when I heard the full music, it was much easier to hear the inner notes of the chords. I don't think many people need techniques such as this to hear the melody.


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## VoiceFromTheEther (Aug 6, 2021)

The premise of the thread is strange. Is the OP a three-headed dragon that sings in chords?


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

I'm obviously not understanding the question if the majority view is that the harmony is hard to perceive.

Can someone enlighten me?


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

Clearly interval training is vital for a composer in order to develop a melodic sense. Interval training can also be adapted to encourage mentally hearing the intervals sound at the same time, i.e as a dyad, thus encouraging the beginnings of a harmonic sense.

A good approach to achieve this is to physically play an interval as separate notes until one has memorised them and can sing them in one's mind. Then mentally, reduce the time between each note, gradually moving them closer together until you can hear them as one sound in your inner hearing. 

It does take practice, but is easily do-able over time. The principle can then be used in many other ways to encourage inner hearing, such as memorising more complicated chords and progressions and even 'hearing' different rhythms.

I don't think a layperson needs to perceive harmony to any technical extent. Melody always implies harmony in many styles and so the listener's perception and appreciation is coloured as much by the vertical inference as it is the intervallic succession and interplay.


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## progmatist (Apr 3, 2021)

Forster said:


> I'm obviously not understanding the question if the majority view is that the harmony is hard to perceive.
> 
> Can someone enlighten me?


It is difficult for those of us who have no trouble perceiving harmony to fathom how most people can't. Just like those of us who watch for bicycles and motorcycles while driving can't fathom how other people don't see them.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Forster said:


> I'm obviously not understanding the question if the majority view is that the harmony is hard to perceive.
> 
> Can someone enlighten me?


I think the discussion seems to be about different things so maybe we should try to define what we mean by "perceiving harmony" and "perceiving melody".

I assume we all generally mean the same thing by perceiving melody - we hear the individual notes and have some sense of how they relate to each other in pitch and rhythm. Apparently people are quite good in general about repeating rhythms, but many are not good at repeating pitches. Unless one can't differentiate notes at all, one can hear melodies. I assume we are not talking about singing a melody back or certainly not knowing the intervals between notes in a melody. We're simply saying that someone can hear separate pitches with a particular rhythm.

When we say perceiving harmony, we all generally can hear the sound waves produced from chords, but many of us have little idea what notes the chord contains or even what the relation between notes are. Some (many?) would not be able to distinguish 3 note chords from 4 note chords. There was a thread on TC about a study that trained people to hear the inner note of a dissonant chord, and that training allowed the people to hear less dissonance. In some sense those people heard the chord, but they certainly did not hear the individual notes.

When I state that perceiving harmony is much harder than perceiving melody, I simply mean that hearing the note structure of harmonic music is much harder than hearing the single notes played one after the other.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

mmsbls said:


> When I state that perceiving harmony is much harder than perceiving melody, I simply mean that hearing the note structure of harmonic music is much harder than hearing the single notes played one after the other.


It is very hard for someone who is untrained in music or cannot play a chordal instrument, e.g. piano or guitar, to recognize and distinguish harmonies. If this is something you wish to do, all you have to do is learn to play the piano or guitar.


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## verandai (Dec 10, 2021)

progmatist said:


> It is difficult for those of us who have no trouble perceiving harmony to fathom how most people can't. Just like those of us who watch for bicycles and motorcycles while driving can't fathom how other people don't see them.


I can imagine how it is to not "hear" harmonies, because technically I couldn't do it myself until a couple of years ago.

As I didn't have the theoretical knowledge of harmonics, I couldn't exactly specify the chords I was hearing (only simple harmonies). But f.e. when I was hearing half-diminished chords etc, I was able to hear/name the contained notes - but not to translate them into harmonies, just because of the missing knowledge.

Also, I didn't have the need to learn this information, because I never had to read or write chords/harmonies back then. I was just reading and writing scores, also when copying some music from an audio recording. But now I'm glad that I also can deal with leadsheets, it helps a lot with people who can't read scores 

The hints from Mike are really good. Once the hearing is good enough, it's helpful to hear music from an audio recording and try to write it down to a score. With a score playback you can compare where you've made mistakes. The difficulty level can be varied by the speed of the music and the number of instruments.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

*Do people have greater difficulty perceiving harmony than melody?*

I find it a little harder to _hum_ harmony. I don't do so badly with melody ... depending upon whom you ask.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

It's occurred to me that as a kid I would listen to *Beatles* records every way possible. All four speeds (78, 45, 33, & 16), all treble or all bass, just left channel, or right channel, just so I could hear all the components as separately as possible. It helped that the fledgling newfangled stereo was being worked out, and the stereo separation was quite stunning.

Sometimes the lead vocal would be LEFT, while the harmony vocals would be RIGHT.

I learned an awful lot about "harmony" in this way.


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