Chapter 8:Melodies 101
A sixteen-measure melody, consisting of four four-measure phrases.
Make It Move
A good melody doesn’t just sit there; it goes someplace. You can propel a melody
rhythmically, or tonally, through the “motion” of the tones. In this sense, motion
refers to the progressive upward or downward direction of the pitches, or what
some call the contourof a line of music.
A good way to think about the upward or downward motion of a melody is to
look at the starting note and the ending note—while ignoring, for the time
being, all the notes in between. To create an upward-moving melody, make sure
the ending note is at least a third (and ideally a fifth or more) higher than the
starting note. Same thing with a downward-moving melody; force the last note
to be lower than the first one.
All the notes between the first and last notes help you move to that final note.
The notes don’t all have to go in the same direction, but they do have to gradu-
ally move up or down to where you want to end.
A melody with upward motion.
Note that it’s okay to have a melody that starts and ends on the same note.
What you can do is make the midpoint of the melody higher or lower than the
starting/ending pitch. If you choose a higher midpoint, the first half of the
melody will have upward movement, and the last half will use downward
movement to return to the home pitch.
Take Small Steps
The most singable melodies progress in small steps, which means each note is
only a step or two away from the previous note. The smaller the steps between
the notes in your melody, the more lyrical your melody will sound.
When you throw large jumps—of three or more steps—into your melody, it
starts sounding random, and becomes much more difficult to play or sing. It’s
much better to use a series of passing notes within your chosen scale to move
from one main note to another.
A melody that pro-
gresses in half or whole
steps uses what is called
step-wiseorconjunct
motion. Melodies that
progress by leaps larger
than a whole step use
what is called skip-wiseor
disjunctmotion.Definition