Chapter 7
Building Melodies Using
Motifs and Phrases
In This Chapter
Exploring motifs
Building a melodic phrase
Avoiding boredom by varying the theme
Changing up the rhythm
Truncating and expanding your melodies
Exercising your phrase- and motif-building
I
f you wrote melodies for the landscape drawings in Chapter 5, you may
have noticed that some of the landscapes suggested repetitivethemes and
some didn’t. Some lent themselves to the use of a few short statements,
whereas others seemed to demand more of a single, long narrative. Musical
themes in composition are characterized by three main categories:Motif:A motif is the smallest form of melodic idea. It can be as short
as two notes, like “cu coo,” or the first two notes of the theme from
Star Wars.Melodic phrase: A melodic phrase can be up to four or more measures
in length. Often a phrase is not really a complete musical idea. Phrases
are usually separated by slight pauses, breaths, or rests. You can think
of them as being similar to a single line of poetry. Several phrases make
a period.
Period: A period is a complete melodic idea. It can be 4, 8, 16, or even
more measures long. It constitutes a musical completeness and can con-
tain motifs or short or long phrases. When we refer to musical forms
using letters (ABA and so on), each letter usually represents a period.You use these three kinds of melodic elements to build your compositions.