compose a transition that makes its own demands regarding the number
of measures required for your musical metamorphosis. How about an
entirely new melody just for the transition?
Build one theme up and up to the breaking point and let the next theme
coalesce from the fallout.If you can create enough of a ruckus, you will have plenty of musical
material floating around as the dust settles. This is a good way to go
from a fast-paced, exciting mood to a calmer, more serene one.- Write an instrumental solo that wanders from the end of one theme to
the beginning of the next.
Throwing a solo into your compositions is often a good way to break up
the scenery. If you are writing in a popular genre, you will probably want
to let the soloist improvise over some chord changes, but if you are able
to write the solo out for the musician, you have an opportunity to create
a bridge between almost any two melodic themes. You need to be espe-
cially knowledgeable about the instruments you are writing for when
you write solos.
It is worthwhile to note that some themes probably don’t belong
together in the same composition, and no amount of massaging them
will reconcile their differences. This doesn’t mean that you should dis-
card one of them. Save it for another piece.Chapter 8: Developing Your Melodies 87
Less is more
Many composers are guilty of trying to write too
much into their compositions. The old adage
“Less is more” is worth remembering. If you find
yourself doing this (and you realize it), cut your
melodies up at breathing points and make sep-
arate melodies out of them.
When we say “breathing points,” we’re refer-
ring to the places in a good melody where the
natural cycles occur. If you can’t find these in
your music, maybe you aren’t writing melodies
that breathe. It doesn’t necessarily mean that a
person singing your melodies wouldn’t have any
places to breathe (although that is an essential
consideration when writing for any instrument
that uses breath power), but that the cycle of
tension and release that should run through
your music may not be there.
You can read more about creating tension and
release in music in the sections on cadences in
Chapter 10.