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Aidan Doyle October SDA
Important definition
A melodic line (used interchangeably with “a melody”) is simply a musical sentence, or a musical phrase (in Twinkle Twnkle Little Star, think of the first melodic line as “twinkle twinkle little star”).
Melody
As I will say again later, rhythm is the most important element in music. That being said, melody is the most inclusive, and therefore triumphs over harmony and rhythm. For example, even the simplest melody, like has both rhythmic and harmonic elements. The notes are C, D and E in an upward shape, played as successive quarter notes with no rests. The rhythmic element is obvious (quarter notes are rhythms, the slash with no flag attached and a filled in note implies a quarter note- in common time (4/4), the quarter note is the beat). The harmonic element is slightly harder to perceive. Because the first and third beat of each measure are the strong beats, we will look at them to decipher the harmony. C and E fall on those beats (C being on 1, E being on three. While these could be flipped with the harmony not changing, putting C on the first beat strengthens the implication that I will describe shortly, because the first beat is the strongest), which means the implied harmony is C major, because the tonic of C (tonic simply means the chord that falls on the tonal center of any given key (a tonal center is literally the same as the name of the key) (a chord is just a three note structure built in thirds (a third is what is used to build chords-- if you take a C major scale, you can get thirds by skipping every other note. Therefore, a C major chord would be C [not D], E [not F] and G)) includes both C and E, and the third note (G) is the fifth, which is the least important not of any chord, unless it is altered some how (a 5th can be altered by raising it or lowering it a half step (a half step is the smallest divisible unit in western music) (the fifth is the least important because it doesn’t affect the quality of the chord (ie. major or minor), unless the chord is diminished or augmented (in other words, altered). If you are confused about quality, think about a song being happy or sad. If it is sad, it is probably minor (and vice versa). You could likely have all the harmony in that song missing the fifth, and it would not hurt the song too much. If you were to do so with the third, you would have a very different song that is neither or major nor minor (while that may sound strange, it can have a very cool effect)).
Melody unites everything in music. Even though I will be describing how to develop lines rhythmically, it is important to have a basic understanding of melody.
Here is the melody I will develop, with an audio file for those of you who don’t read music.
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/my-drive
Rhythm is often described as the most important part of music. In my opinion, this is completely true. Rhythm encompasses many subsections: time-feel (keeping the tempo, or the speed, of a tune consistent throughout, and keeping it feeling good), polyrhythms (multiple rhythms at the same time), rhythmic variation and phrasing (starting ideas on different beats, and using different phrase lengths (phrases are musical ideas-- they can be compared to a sentence)). If a musician doesn’t have a strong sense of rhythm, then they cannot do anything, no matter how harmonically or melodically proficient they are. That is why, this month especially, I have been putting an enormous amount of focus on rhythmic development.
Polyrhythm (two rhythms at the same time)
While this may seem like a very complicated subject (and it can be), for our purposes, it can actually be quite simple. Normally, one rhythm is set against another to create a polyrhythm, but because we are focusing on a single melodic line, the rhythm will be set against the beat to create the polyrhythm. Take the original line, then divide each half note (normally divisible into four eight notes) into 5 notes instead (called QUINtuplets. Quin=5). Then, to keep the harmonic rhythm consistent, you can add a note into each segment (harmonic rhythm is simply how fast the harmony moves (note the “tonic,” subdominant” and “dominant” in the picture above. That is one way of notating harmony). If we didn’t take the step, you would end up having the first note of the subdominant in the tonic, and the first two notes of the dominant in the subdominant (because there are usually only four notes in a half note-- by splitting them in five, you get an extra space, which should be taken care of (unless you don’t want to-- that will also create a cool sound)). This will look and sound like this.
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/my-drive
In order to make the development of the line clear, you could play these two lines in succession. You could also play one segment of the phrase, then repeat it but as a quintuplet, then continue with the line. You could also combine them in as many ways as you could think of.
Phrasing
This concept could be put under harmony or melody, but we will view it as a rhythmic concept for now. In order to develop the line in the context of phrasing, we will need to play with it a little bit. This line can be thought of as a phrase, so we can start there. Let’s try turning it into a 7 beat phrase, instead of a 6 beat phrase (I’m calling it 6 beats because it covers 6 beats, then lands on the first beat of the next measure (a beat is what we divide measures into-- think of tapping your foot to music. A measure is just a way of making music easier to read. The vertical lines are called bar lines, they divide a piece into measures). That would look like this.
(Try counting along with this one-- start on three from where I leave off then count to four throughout the example).
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/my-drive
Notice how the phrase ends a beat later? So this isn’t too bad. You might be wondering “doesn’t the harmonic rhythm not fit anymore with the melody?” You’d be right-- that’s what makes the line so hip.
Rhythmic Variation
Rhythmic variation isn’t terribly hard to achieve-- all you have to do is change the rhythm. You can do this by changing what beat the line starts on
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/my-drive
(The two eighth notes near the end with a line connecting them is another way to write quarter notes).
These are not the only ways to develop lines rhythmically, this is just what I’ve been working on.
Here are a few other ways to develop lines (including harmonic and melodic ways), if you are interested.
Put it in a different part of the scale (imagine the harmony not changing but all the notes are higher or lower. The relationship between each note will be similar, but not necessarily the same).
Play it in reverse
Invert all the intervals (if a note goes up a fourth, make it go down a fourth, if it goes down a major third, make it go up a major third, etc).
Play a line that has the same shape but different intervals. You could play it in a different key (this is called playing outside the tonal center-- it can be very hip if done properly).
Composition
Here is the composition that showcases the rhythmic development of a melody (not the same melody as the one I’ve been using).
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/my-drive
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