Adding Neighbor and Passing Tones to Your Melody
Once you have a chord tone melody, you can add more interest and movement by including neighbor and passing tones. Neighbor tones are the notes in the scale that are immediately above and below the chord tone. For example, the neighbor tones for the C note in the C scale are D and B respectively. Passing tones are the notes in the scale that are between two chord tones. An example would be the notes in between the C note and the G note, if the chord was C Major. In that case the passing notes are D, E, F. Notice that the passing notes include a chord tone (E) in this case. Passing notes proceed stepwise to resolve in a chord tone of the current chord or in a chord tone of the next chord in the progression.
First is the basic chord tone melody used as the base for the examples below.
Here are three examples. The first example includes neighbor tones. The second example includes passing notes. The third example includes both neighbor and passing tones.
Neighbor Tone Example:
Passing Tone Example:
Neighbor and Passing Tone Example:
Now you try. Start with a chord tone melody and then add neighbor and passing tones. See how many different songs you can create using a basic Chord Tone Melody like the one above.