Working with melodic suspensions

Delaying the resolution of melody notes produces a powerful musical technique we call a ‘suspension’

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We start with a simple melody, accompanied by a new bass note every bar. We’re in C minor and as the melody steps up through three bars, the bassline steps down. Both drop on the final chord. So the bass moves from C, through Bb and Ab to arrive on G for the last bar.

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There’s no tension in the melody because each phrase of the tune resolves ‘perfectly’ on each downbeat of the bar. So the tune hits a D over the Bb (part of a Bb chord) and an Eb over the Ab and so on.

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Let’s extend the duration of each of the previous notes before each resolves, so that there’s an ‘overhang’ at the beginning of each new bar. We call this a suspension, as it suspends a note before letting it resolve. This tension and resolution is powerful.

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Let’s take our piano melody and arrange it for strings now. We’ll start with a cello line playing the bass part and violins playing the tune. Each suspended note uses MIDI controllers to ‘peak’ in intensity at each bar line’s suspension, before resolving.

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Let’s extend our melody and harmony. It’s dull just to repeat the notes exactly, so create a new four-bar shape, using C – Bb – Ab – F minor. Now the end of our phrase can resolve down through two steps in order to reach a C, prolonging the tension further. Here’s the same track rearranged as the beginnings of a dance track. We’re starting with the same chord progression and then moving onto new chords but the idea is the same; by suspending the resolution of each melody note against its harmony, the melody has more interest.

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