dressing up harmony/playing from melody only

[Bob]

I'm given a melody.  A simple melody.  I could harmonize it with I IV V and that's fine. 

But I'd like to expand what I can do.  I'm thinking this really isn't too much from college piano accompaniment.  Keyboard 101.  Except if you're a piano major, you don't have to take those and I didn't.     I realized what happened in them later.

For a rhythmic pattern, I've got 1 5 1 steps of the chord in the LH, kind of a slow tango sound.  Or blocked chords.

And basic I V, with some IV ii and vi. 

Apparently that's where I'm at for making up things on the spot for this kind of melody.

And it does sound ok to just add sevenths in.  Gives a different flavor that way.



I'm wondering what I can do to make it sound a little slicker.  Or at least to make it sound a little less crude.  I guess crude is the root position chords.  I'm not using a close hand position for them, but playing 1 5 1 steps on them sounds a little cookie-cutter-ish to me. 

But good enough for now.  I'd like to expand myself a little in this area though. 

Any ideas?

[mezzo piano]

How about a walking bass line with your LH using a pentatonic and extensions and alterations on your RH using shell chords. Now you are playing Jazz.

[Bob]

It needs to stay vanilla though.  It can't get too jazzy.

[guendola]

I tried to put together a few basic rules but it exploded, so I had to give up. What you really need is a basic understanding of the major scale and the three flavors of minor scales and the general idea how scales and chords are constructed. There are thousands of websites with good information, unfortunately I don't know a single one in English, so you have to look for yourself. One problem will remain: These websites usually don't care about specific music styles, so you have to experiment with the new knowledge to see how to apply this to your music.

A few things to look for:
Relation of chords to each others
Chord alterations
Chord inversions (good for making bass lines that aren't simply 1-4-5)