And, voila, we’ve got a brand-new melody line!Unlike step-wise motion, skip-wiseor disjunctmotion is when the melodic line
jumps all over the musical staff. Instead of moving predictably from one tone
or semitone to another, any interval can exist between notes in a piece with
disjunct motion.If you were to take our structural tones and apply skip-wise motion to them,
one possibility would look like Figure 8-4.Passing Tones .................................................................................................
Passing tonesallow smooth, scale-wise motion in tonal music by “filling in”
the space between two structural tones. Whenever the structural tones are at
least a third apart, the passing tone is a diatonic scale degree in between —
meaning that if the two notes in question in the key of C, are C and E, then the
passing tone would be a D.However, other intervals may also have passing tones between them. Two or
more passing tones might be used to smooth over a leap of a fourth (from C
to F, for example, the passing tones would be either D or E, or both), or a
single, chromatic passing tone may be used to strengthen the movement of a
major second (from C to D, the passing tone would be a C sharp/D flat).& 4
(^4) Ó œ œ œ
œœ œ# ̇ Ó œ œ œœ œ œœ# œ ̇Œ ∑
Figure 8-4:
Our melody
is changed
using skip-
wise motion.
&4
(^4) Œ œ œœ œ
œœ‰
j
œ
J
œ‰œ
œ
œ œ œœ œ œœœ# œ ̇w
Figure 8-3:
Our melody
is changed
using step-
wise motion.
Chapter 8: Developing Your Melodies 81