CHAPTER
8

Melodies

In This Chapter

• Creating a melody from tones and rhythms
• Analyzing existing melodies
• Learning the building blocks of melodic form
• Composing your first melody

Lesson 5, Track 36

In the first part of this book (Chapters 1 through 4), you learned all about notes and pitches. In the second part (Chapters 5 through 7), you learned all about note values and rhythms. By themselves, pitches and rhythms don’t amount to much. But when you combine them, they create something wonderful—a melody.

Melody is defined as a logical progression of tones and rhythms—a tune set to a beat. But pay close attention to that word “logical.” A melody isn’t a random conglomeration of notes; the notes have to relate to and follow from each other. In other words, a melody has to make sense, or else it’s just a bunch of noise.

All that said, this textbook definition of melody, however precise, doesn’t go far enough for my tastes. To me, a melody is the most memorable part of a piece of music. It’s the song you sing, the notes you hum, the musical line that stays in your mind long after the record is over or the band has stopped playing. The best melodies pack an emotional punch; they make us jump with joy or weep with sadness. When done right, melodies can tell a story without words, or reinforce the meaning of a song’s lyrics.

Combining Tones and Rhythms

If you think back to Chapter 1, you’ll remember how we discussed various ways to describe the tones in the song “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” We finally settled on the traditional labeling of tones using the letters A through G. Each tone in the song is assigned a letter corresponding to its precise pitch; anyone reading the letters knows which tone to sing or play.

Assigning tones, of course, is only half the story. When you sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” you give each tone a specific rhythmic value; each tone takes up a specific place in time. The rhythm of the song is described by using different note values, the half notes and quarter notes that we call music notation.

By combining the pitch values with the rhythmic values, we can now notate the entire melody of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” The notes on the staff tell us what pitches to sing; the note values tell us how long to sing each pitch.

The result looks like this:

The complete melody for “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

All melodies are described using similar notation. You set the key signature and the time signature up front, and then fill in the notes of the melody from there. Naturally, you have to arrange the notes within measures, with each measure holding the appropriate number of beats. When you’re done writing down the notes, you’ve written your melody.

Common Melodic Techniques

Every song—every piece of music—has a melody. Some longer pieces (such as much orchestral music pieces) have multiple melodies. Some melodies consist of multiple parts, with different parts repeated in different parts of the song. No matter how the music is constructed, the melody is the heart of the song—the part you should be able to sing or hum or whistle all by itself, with no other instruments needed.

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.

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.

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.)

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.”

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.

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.