Music Composition DUMmIES

Another way to express this idea is to just write chords and derive your

melodies from them as we did in Chapter 8 with non-chord tones. There

is no reason why you couldn’t extract a melody from the upper chord tone,

another from a middle chord tone, and so on. They don’t have to have the

same rhythmic phraseology.

When combining voices, it’s important to really consider the way each tone

combines with every other tone. So let’s take a little stroll through musical

tones themselves.

The Five Elements of a Musical Tone ........................................................

No matter what sound you are using in your composition, there are five ingre-

dients that give it its identity. It doesn’t matter if you are using synthesizers,

orchestral or folk instruments, or found sounds — the five ingredients are

always there.

Knowing these ingredients may help you to decide what sounds you want to

write for, or it might help you to find or create the appropriate synthesizer

sounds for your piece. The five elements of a musical tone are as follows:

Pitch

Duration

Intensity

Timbre

Sonance

&

&

4

4

4

4

1

w

Œ

œœœ

2

œœœœœ

̇

̇

3

̇ ̇

̇œ

œ

4

̇. Œ

̇ ̇

5

w

̇œœ

6

œœœœ

œ

œ

̇

7

w

w

8

̇. Œ

w

Vo ice 1

Vo ice 2

Figure 16-6:
Tw o
different,
independent
melodies
can define
tonality with
only two
notes
playing
at a time.

Chapter 16: Composing for Multiple Voices 203