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A problem with my harmonisation

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I have a little melody:

wt3.MID

I have a string accompaniment:

Tango.mid

But there is something dubious about this harmony. I cannot figure out what exactly it is.

Maybe it's not even an issue of my harmony per se but chord spacing instead - I need to check that.

Someone direct me to point(s) that they find.

Melody_in_Question.mid

Questionable_Harmony.mid

Well, I was thinking it had something to do with the lack of straightforward or stable emphasis on 5ths or 4ths or etc to give the harmony more orientation, but now I'm thinking it might be because the harmony hugs the rhythm of the melody too much earlier in the MIDIs. Maybe it's a combo of a bunch of little things. But I think the third time there's a pause in harmony around 7 seconds, something sounds odd about that. Maybe just the way it drops off and the harmony that it drops off on, I'm not sure. But that pause sounds oddest to me. The rest I think would sound alright if you put it in the development of a piece and built up to it.

It's difficult to comment because much depends on what you want. The harmony itself sounds ok by and large. It isn't how I'd harmonise it but so what?

Is it possible to reduce the tempo merely so that you can diagnose it yourself? Sometimes helpful to find what's going wrong if anything, keeping in mind that things might work at one tempo but not another. Turning the speed up sometimes gives too fast a pace to the harmonic rhythm. I've had to unclog works because of that before now.

  • Author

OK, thank you both for the replies. That strange pause - well, I don't think it should be filled in, but I did change it slightly. There was a 2nd inversion chord somewhere that I fixed. And I agree thst the harmonic rhythm changed too quickly; but should I re-scan these "secondary dominants" as I harmonised them to "appogiaturas".

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