For a hi-res PDF of the scored examples from this article, click here.

Much of the music we hear today is modal. That is to say, utilizing scales or tonal centers that roam beyond traditional major and minor scales and key signatures. World music especially has had a great deal of influence on popular music styles over the last fifty years.

A lot of rock music utilizes the Mixolydian and Dorian modes; two thirds of all Pink Floyd songs use E Dorian- very convenient if you’re traveling from an E minor 7th chord to an A dominant 7th:

Audio Example: E_DorianExample.mp3

Hungarian Minor is a favorite of mine- I use it all the time:

Audio Example: HungarianMinor.mp3

And then there are those of us who feel that all 12 notes are fair game, and then some.

Sound too egg-heady for you? Don’t worry about it. Just experiment, use your ear and keep what sounds good. I suspect that a lot of composers intellectualize about the harmonic content of their work after the fact. They were winging it, it sounded cool, and they analyzed it later. So that’s what I’m going to do.

I’ll start with a rhythmic diagram, which in this case is just a form outline with the different time signatures I’d like to use, and then I’ll write a single note melody for guitar:

Audio Example: PanTonalGuitarOnly.mp3

I’m calling this melody Pan-Tonal because it freely uses fragments of different modes and scales, but there is no obvious tonal center or key signature. I’m pretty much using all twelve notes, but the melody is not overtly chromatic, and in fact, the larger intervallic skips are what I’ll use for mapping out how I will harmonize the piece.

In the first four beats of the first measure, I’m using the melody notes to construct the chord to harmonize with it- in the second part of the measure I’ve clustered a whole-tone scale against the D in the melody. In measures three and four I noticed that I was pretty much using the notes in an E Melodic Minor scale (E F# G A B C# D# E), so the notes of the piano underneath supports that, however briefly.

Here in measure 11 I’m harmonizing the melody by creating three-part diminished chords between the guitar and piano (starting at beat 3 of this 7/16 measure), the last two notes of the measure are harmonized in 6ths moving down chromatically to an arpeggiated D9th chord at the beginning of measure 12. The last couple of beats are a little ambiguous to analyze with conventional diatonic theory, but they still contain a lot of thirds and it worked for my ear so I left it.

In these last few measures I’m using a variety of single note intervals to harmonize with the guitar melody, and by measure 15 it kind of hovers around a Gm Major 7th before finally resting on a D7 flat 9 chord.

I created the bass part by listening to the guitar and piano part, trying to figure out what the root of the harmonic climate might be and rhythmically locking it up with the drum part (which I wrote right after composing the guitar melody).

Once again, I’m mainly looking at what I did after the fact. While I was working I was using my ear and accessing information and musical experiences that I’ve been accumulating over the years to try to make this stream of consciousness pan-tonal melody work for me. It might not work for you, because it’s kind of an acquired taste, but here’s the whole theme, score and sound file:

Audio Example: Pan-TonalMelody.mp3

Composer, guitarist and arranger Steve Kirk's music has been featured in film, video games and TV. This includes music for the Disney game version of "The Princess And The Frog", Microsoft Games "Voodoo Vince" , the FarmVille Theme for Zynga Games, and to be released in Spring 2011, Cantina music composed for the Star Wars MMOL game The Other Republic.

Steve teaches guitar, music theory and composition privately in Oakland, California, as well as Blue Bear School Of Music and Community Music Center- both located in San Francisco, California. He is also the guitarist for Club Foot Orchestra and Orchestra Nostalgico.