02-19-2022, 12:17 AM
(This post was last modified: 03-04-2022, 08:18 AM by Mattias Westlund.)
Melody first, for sure. There's nothing I love more than establishing a leitmotif with a particular chord progression, then throwing the listener off completely by using the same melody with different chords accompanying it. John Williams does this all the time in the various Star Wars scores and it's amazing. A bold, heroic theme can be turned into something sad or even menacing, just by changing a few notes around.