Music Composition DUMmIES

Three ways to give them what they want would be to use the following tools:

Rhythmic displacement

Truncation

Expansion

These three methods are all ways to help make your short or long phrases

expand into full-fledged compositions.

Rhythmic displacement.......................................................................

You can expand a rhythmic idea by changing the meter of the phrase.

Rhythmic displacementis a favorite tool of jazz players. They pass around a

theme, with the rhythm of each solo differing just enough to make it sound

like they’re not all playing the same piece of music — even though they

pretty much are.

In the example shown in Figure 7-10, we’ve taken our original theme and

expanded on it by changing the rhythm of the repeated theme.

By changing the values of some of the notes, we’ve changed the tempo and

even the mood of the repeated phrase.

Truncation .............................................................................................

When you truncatea verbal phrase, you cut it short (for example, Jefferson

Starship truncated their name to Starship after guitarist Paul Katner left the

band). When you truncate in music, you’re cutting a repeated musical phrase

short, as shown in Figure 7-11.

&b 4

4

œ.

j

œ œ#.

j

œ ̇ œ

œ œ œ ̇# œœœ

œ ̇. Œ

Figure 7-10:
Here is our
phrase after
employing
some good
old rhythmic
displace-
ment.

Chapter 7: Building Melodies Using Motifs and Phrases 75