But where will we find the exact notes to give to our melody? One way would
be to limit ourselves to the notes within a particular scale. In our examples,
we’ve stuck to the key of C major and used notes that we know make musical
sense together — that is, notes from the C major scale. So, using notes from
the major scale is one very common method of finding notes.Let’s Eat(,) Grandma! .....................................................................................
It’s fun and instructive to see how meanings can totally change depending
solely on your melodic choices. Figure 5-4 shows three words with two differ-
ent melodies.The first version is an invitation to Grandma to join in the feast. The second
one, though, sounds like an invitation for Grandma to bethe feast. “Let’s eat,
Grandma” is very different from “Let’s eat Grandma”!Going further, we could make the second version even darker and more
threatening by using a minor scale instead of a major scale (Figure 5-5).&4
4
œ
œb
œ
œ œ
Let’s eat Grand - ma!
Figure 5-5:
This is more
a case of
“Run,
Grandma,
run!”& 4
4
œ
œ
œ
œ œ
Let’s eat, Grand - ma!
&4
4
œ
œ
œ
œ œ
Let’s eat Grand -ma!
Figure 5-4:
Tw o
possible
melodies
show
different
possibilities
from one
spoken
phrase.46 Part II: Melody and Development