Is there some trick for counterpoint beyond 2 voices?

Question

I really suck at chord harmony, so whenever I compose, I tend to use counterpoint a lot. Counterpoint is somewhat easy when you just have two voices. Because I just compose for fun, I generally do something like cheat by having just two voices for a large amount of instruments, and then extremely basic harmony. My problem is that, I tend to compose counterpoint incrementally. I first write one voice, disregarding the fact that I am going to add a second voice. Then I write my second voice, being careful to avoid dissonance, octaves, perfect fifths, and other bad sounds. It feels like solving a system of equations really. When I go to write my third voice, the only "feasible solutions", i.e., the only solutions what don't result in dissonance, are very unconnected and can't form a melody. Even if I manage to snug in this third voice, it would be a terrible contrived melody with occasional huge jumps to "get out of the way" of the other voices. Things like incorporating a theme are totally impossible. Adding a fourth voice is 100% impossible for me; no matter where I put my notes, it's going to clash with some other voice. How to fix this problem? I am far from an experienced composer, but is my approach on counterpoint completely off the mark? Should I be writing the voices all at once? My measly training in composing was all simple accompaniment based on chords, which I honestly don't intuitively get. I can on the other hand easily sit down at a piano and improvise some two-voice counterpoint.

Answer 1

You should begin writing your counterpoint with your cantus firmus (melody). From there you can begin to add in your other voices. This will help you create your "theme". To make things simple, there are multiple ways that you can simplify avoiding perfect intervals, dissonance, etc. The first is common tone/stepwise motion. Keep the common tone (if there is one) to the chord that you are moving to and move your other voices contrary to the bass in a stepwise motion. 2. All the parts will move by stepwise motion (no bigger than a 3rd). 3. Tertian Leap/common tone/stepwise. Sort of a mix of all three, keep the common tone between the two chords, the 3rd of the chord will jump to the 3rd of the next chord, and all of the other voices will move in stepwise motion.