Idiot's Guides - Music Theory
Page 11
To get a feel for how melodies are constructed, let’s take a look at some melodies from well-known pieces of music. You’ll see that, although they all have their distinct sound and feel, these melodies also have a lot of factors in common.
Dvořák’s New World Symphony
We’ll start with a tune from Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony #9 in E minor (“From the New World”), more commonly known as the New World Symphony. This is a popular piece of orchestral music, and consists of several different sections; the melody we’ll look at is just one of many used throughout the work, and it goes like this:
One of the main melodies in Dvořák’s New World Symphony.
Let’s first get a feel for the mechanics of the melody. As you can see, the time signature for this melody is 4/4, so there are four quarter-note beats in each measure. The key signature is D♭, with five flats. When you listen to it, the melody has a happy sound, which means it’s in a major key—D♭ Major, to be precise. The piece of the melody we’re looking at is four measures long.
If you look at (or listen to) this melody carefully, you’ll see that it breaks into two, two-measure phrases. The first two measures end on a note (E♭) that doesn’t feel like an ending note (it’s the second note in the scale); this sets up a kind of tension that you want to hear resolved. The second two measures resolve the tension by effectively repeating the first two measures, but ending on a more satisfying tone—D♭, the tonic of the scale.
This is a common technique, setting up some sort of tension in the first part of the melody that is then resolved in the second part. This helps to make a melody interesting; if you think about it, it’s also a very logical, symmetrical, almost mathematical construction. (If you look at it like a mathematical formula, the first half of the melody “equals” the second half.)
Another technique used in this melody is the repetition of specific rhythms. Look at the rhythmic pattern used throughout: dotted eighth note, sixteenth note, and quarter note. This “dum de duh” pattern is played twice in the first measure, and twice again in the third measure, establishing a kind of rhythmic signature for the entire piece. This rhythmic repetition helps to establish a familiarity for the listener; you hear the rhythm once, then you hear it again, and it feels familiar; almost comfortable. In fact, a listener expects to hear some repetition; if every measure of a melody is completely different from all the preceding measures, the melody will be difficult to remember.
Bach’s Minuet in G
Our next example is Johann Sebastian Bach’s Minuet in G—although you might be familiar with it as the melody of the pop song “A Lover’s Concerto,” performed by the Toys back in the mid-1960s.
The melody for Bach’s Minuet in G—also appropriated for the pop song “A Lover’s Concerto.”
This melody differs from Dvořák’s melody in a number of ways. First, it’s in 3/4 time, not 4/4. Second, it’s in the key of G, and is based on the G Major scale.
Beyond those differences, you can hear a lot of similar techniques in use. Note the rhythmic repetition between measures 1 and 2 and measures 3 and 4, and the continued repetition of the first measure in measures 5 through 7. Also note the very slight tension created in measure 4 (the end of the first half of the melody—it sounds like there’s more coming), which is then resolved in the second half of the melody.
There’s something else interesting about this particular melody. The first half of the melody has an insistent upward motion; the second half uses a downward motion to deposit you pretty much where you started. Even though not all the notes go up (or down), the general flow of the melody moves in those directions, and thus propels the melody forward.
You need to have some sort of motion in a melody, or you’ll put the listener to sleep. That motion can be in the tune, or in the rhythm, but it needs to be there, to help the melody get from point A to point B.
“Michael, Row the Boat Ashore”
Next up is the traditional folk song “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore.” The words to this tune, simple as they are, can actually help us see the melodic form. When you read the words, you can clearly see that the song consists of two near-identical halves—rhythmically, anyway. The first time Michael rows his boat ashore (hallelujah!), the melody has a slight upward motion, and ends with a slight bit of tension on the fifth note of the scale (A). The second time Michael goes boating, the melody sways downward slightly, and resolves itself by ending on the tonic of the key.
NOTE
The two quarter notes before measure one are called pickup notes; that little half measure is called a pickup measure. You use pickup notes and measures when the melody actually starts up before the first beat of the first measure.
Symmetry, repetition, tension, and release—these techniques are used over and over to create memorable melodies.
The melody for the folk song “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore.”
Pachelbel’s Canon in D
Our final melody is a bit different from the ones we’ve examined so far. It’s different because rhythmically, it’s very simple—nothing but half notes.
You’ve probably heard this melody before—it’s Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D (sometimes just called “Pachelbel’s Canon”—like he only wrote this one!), and it’s been used in a number of different movies and television shows. It’s a compelling melody, despite its rhythmic simplicity.
The very simple melody for Pachelbel’s Canon in D.
This melody also is different in that it doesn’t use a lot of symmetry or repetition. (Except for the repeated half notes, of course!) It’s actually the stepwise intervals between the notes that propel this melody forward; each pitch leaning forward to the next, one after another, almost in a giant spinning circle of tones. And then the last note, C#, is the leading tone of the scale (D Major); you jump back to F# (the third of the scale) and start all over again.
The point of examining this particular melody is that you don’t need fancy rhythms to create a memorable melody. Pure tones, played slowly and simply, can be quite lyrical—if you pick the right ones!
The Building Blocks of Melodic Form
Now that we’ve examined some simple melodies, let’s look at how melodies are constructed. You’ll need to know this if you want to compose your own melodies.
The Motif
For a melody to be truly memorable, there needs to be a piece of the melody that really reaches out and grabs the listener’s attention. In pop music, this is called the hook, because it’s the part of the song that hooks the listener. In more traditional music, this piece of the song is known as the motif or motive. Whatever you call it, it should be memorable enough that you want to repeat it not only within a longer melodic phrase, but throughout the entire composition. (And the listener wants to hear it again and again!)
A motif is typically fairly short—a few notes (think of the five whistling notes in Sergio Leone’s theme from the movie The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) or, at longest, one or two measures. You can reuse a motif throughout a composition by varying it in one way or another—repeating the same tones with a different rhythm, playing the tones up or down a specified interval, playing different tones to the same rhythm, and so on.
A simple four-note motif.
The Short Melodic Phrase
The motif is often part of a more complete melodic phrase. This phrase is typically two or four measures long and contains a complete musical thought or statement. For want of a better term, we’ll call this the short melodic phrase or the short melody.
A short melodic phrase typically defines itself by coming to some sort of easily identifiable endpoint, either in terms of chord structure or rhythmic complexity. In essence, the endpoint of a melodic phrase is where the music breathes. And these short melodies often function within an even longer musical phrase to set up and resolve tension.
The motif used within a two-measure short melodic phrase.
NOTE
Of all the short melodies wit
hin a longer composition (and there should be more than one), one of them should be memorable enough to become the theme of the composition. The melodic theme defines the composition, and is typically repeated several times throughout a piece.
The Long Melodic Phrase
Short melodic phrases combine into longer melodic phrases. You typically put two or four short melodic phrases together into a single long melodic phrase. The end of a long melodic phrase is a major breathing (or resting) point; after all those short melodies, your composition needs to take a significant break.
Four short melodic phrases combined into a single longer melodic phrase.
Composing Your First Melody
Now that you know some of the techniques you can use to create a melody, let’s put those techniques to work.
As you learned with Pachelbel’s Canon, a melody doesn’t have to include complex rhythms. The right notes on the right pitches are all you need to start any new tune.
One of the primary rules of composing is to base your melody on a specific scale. And, as you’ll learn in Chapter 9, there are three notes in a scale which, when played together, create what we call a major triad. These three notes represent a good place to start for our first melody.
For simplicity’s sake, let’s start in the key of C, using the C Major scale. The three notes we want to use are the tonic, the third, and the fifth—C, E, and G. So let’s start our melody with two half notes and a whole note, starting with C and progressing up to G on the whole note.
This gives us the first two measures of the melody:
The first two measures of our first melody.
Let’s elaborate on these notes a bit. If you want to give the melody a little more of a flow, you can fill in the blanks between these three notes by adding notes in the step between each pitch. We’ll do this by turning the half notes into quarter notes, and adding passing tones between the C and the E, and the E and G. (That means we’ll go from C to D to E, and from E to F to G.)
DEFINITION
A passing tone is a subsidiary tone you have to pass through to move from one important note to another. The passing tone is not part of the underlying chord structure, but is often situated between two of the notes in a triad.
The result looks like this:
The first two measures, with passing tones added.
We’re still left with that single whole note sitting there. It’s okay to leave it like that, but doing so makes this part of our melody sound like nothing more than a simple major scale—which it actually is! Fortunately, we can add a little more interest by using another technique called a neighboring tone, in which you land on the main note (in this case, the G), slide briefly to an adjacent note, and then return to rest on the main note (G, again). The result sounds a little like “doo-de-doo,” which is slightly more interesting than a plain “doo.”
DEFINITION
You create a neighboring tone by starting on a pitch, moving up or down by a step (either half or whole) and then returning to the original pitch; the neighboring tone is the one that “neighbors” the original note. Like a passing tone, a neighboring tone typically is not one of the three notes in the underlying chord triad.
You can place neighboring tones above or below the main tone; for our little melody, we’ll use the neighboring tone above the G—which happens to be an A. Keeping the rhythm simple, we’ll now start the second measure with a quarter note on G; then follow it by a quarter note on A and a half note on G.
The result looks like this:
Embellishing the melody with a neighboring tone.
This is a nice little melody—but it’s really only half of a melody. Ending on the fifth note of the scale, as it does, actually sets up some melodic tension. When you hear this melody, you want to resolve the tension, and somehow get things back to where they started—on C.
There’s an easy way to do this, of course. All you have to do is create a sort of mirror image of the first two measures, but with a downward motion from G to C.
The first thing we’ll do is copy the first measure into a new third measure—except we’ll copy it with the first note starting on G, and with the quarter notes moving down in a G F E D progression. (Note that this progression puts two of the C Major triad notes—G and E—on the primary beats of the measure: one and three.) Then we’ll end the run with a whole note in the fourth measure, positioned on the tonic note: C.
Your completed melody looks like this:
Your completed melody—play it loud and proud!
That wasn’t so difficult, was it? Granted, this melody won’t win any Grammy awards, but it is a legitimate melody, and it’s quite singable. (Trust me, I’ve heard worse.) The key thing is that you’ve seen that creating a melody isn’t hard, as long as you know the basic theory involved.
Now, there’s certainly a lot more to learn about composing melodies, some of which you’ll read about in Chapter 19. Skip to there if you want to continue along this melodic track, or continue on to Chapter 9 to learn about another important component of a song: chords.
Exercises
Exercise 8-1
Listen to a variety of popular songs and classical compositions, paying particular attention to the main melodies. Analyze the melodies in question and determine what qualities they have in common. Listen in particular for longer melodies made up of shorter melodic phrases or motifs. When you find a melody that is particularly appealing to you, try to determine what makes it so listenable.
Exercise 8-2
Using the techniques you’ve learned, take the 4-measure melody we created in this chapter and expand it into a 16-measure composition.
The Least You Need to Know
Melody is the most important part of a composition; it’s the part that people remember.
A melody consists of a logical progression of tones and rhythms—a tune set to a beat.
Longer melodies are built from simple motifs and short melodic phrases.
CHAPTER
9
Chords
In This Chapter
Understanding major, minor, diminished, and augmented triads
Extending chords to sevenths, ninths, and beyond
Creating altered, suspended, and power chords
Inverting the chord order
Writing chords into your music
Lesson 6, Track 41
More often than not, music is more than a single melodic line. Music is a package of tones, rhythms, and underlying harmonic structure. The melody fits within this harmonic structure, is dependent on this harmonic structure, and in some cases dictates the harmonic structure.
The harmonic structure of a piece of music is defined by a series of chords. A chord is a group of notes played simultaneously, rather than sequentially (like a melody). The relationships between the notes—the intervals within the chord—define the type of chord; the placement of the chord within the underlying key or scale defines the role of the chord.
This chapter is all about chords—and it’s a long one, because there are many, many different types of chords. Don’t let all the various permutations scare you off, however; at the core, a chord is nothing more than single notes (typically separated by thirds) played together. It’s as simple as that. If you can play three notes at the same time, you can play a chord.
This chapter, then, shows you how to construct many different types of chords, with a particular emphasis on the type of harmonic structure you find in popular music. (This is important; the study of harmony in classical music is much more involved, with a slightly different set of rules.) And, when you’re done reading this chapter, you can find a “cheat sheet” to all the different chords online at idiotsguides.com/musictheory, a quick yet comprehensive reference to every kind of chord imaginable—in every key!
Forming a Chord
Okay, here’s the formal definition: a chord is a combination of three or more notes played together.
Let’s do a little exercise: sit
down at the nearest piano and put your right thumb on one of the white keys. (It doesn’t matter which one.) Now skip a key and put another finger on the third key up. Skip another key and put a third finger on the fifth key up from the first. You should now be pressing three keys, with an empty key between each finger. Press down and listen—you’re playing a chord!
Basic chords consist of just three notes, arranged in thirds, called a triad. The most common triads are constructed from notes plucked from the underlying scale, each note two steps above the previous note. So, for example, if you want to base a chord on the tonic of a scale, you’d use the first, third, and fifth notes of the scale. (Using the C Major scale, these notes would be C, E, and G.) If you want to base a chord on the second degree of a scale, use the second, fourth, and sixth notes of the scale. (Still using the C Major scale, these notes would be D, F, and A.)
Building a three-note triad.
Within a specific chord, the first note is called the root—even if the chord isn’t formed from the root of the scale. The other notes of the chord are named relative to the first note, typically being the third and the fifth above the chord’s root. (For example, if C is the chord’s root, E is called the third and G is called the fifth.) This is sometimes notated 1-3-5.