My First Melody Was Boring. Let's Fix It Using Music Theory.
[THIS IS A ROUGH TRANSCRIPTION OF THE VIDEO]
Today I’m going to transform one of the first melodies that I ever wrote using only concepts that can be learned in the first year of music theory class. Let’s get to it.
Now. For some Disclaimers and Parameters:
There is no right or wrong way to write a melody. Only better and worse ways to achieve your artistic intentions. The melody we are looking at today isn’t inherently bad. Composition is a craft of writing and rewriting, of revising and re-revising. Even the best melody in the world is not impervious to change.
There are infinite possibilities for transforming this melody. Today, I’m showing you exactly one of them, along with my specific thought process. Your results may vary. That would actually be a cool experiment to try. Let’s do that. Everyone send me your take on transforming this melody. My email is in the description. Maybe that will be another video down the road.
Music Theory cannot tell you how to write your melody. Even though we are going to be using music theory concepts, I am still the composer who is making subjective artistic decisions.
This melody exists in the abstract, disembodied from any larger work. Therefore the decisions I make today are also in the abstract. I would likely make different choices if this was a part of a piece, and I was trying to achieve a specific emotion, color, mood, etc.
For the sake of simplicity, 1) I’m going to leave it at 2 measures. If I was really trying to work this into a composition, I’d probably take the material and make it longer. That concept could probably be its own video. 2) I’m not going to tackle orchestration. This will be for a piano. 3) this is only using concepts from theory I and II, so no modal borrowing or secondary dominants, or anything like that. Again, that could probably be its own video.
Part 0. The Prime
I wrote this melody in 10th grade. Who knows what for. Perhaps boredom. I found it in a folder labeled “geometry”.
Not bad. Starts and ends in a logical spot. Contour is okay, could use some work. Stepwise motion sounds young for me.
Part 1. Melodic Contour.
First let’s fix the melodic contour.
Instead of opening with stepwise motion, let’s outline the tonic chord.
Up to C instead of down to A. Gives us some upward momentum.
Bump all of those up a step, land on D - gives the shape a highest note
I kinda like that figure so I’ll leave it. Gives us some good medium-range voice leading.
Let’s encircle the tonic note, and give it a little more tension for the resolution
Part 2. Harmonization
For this part, I’m just going to give the most logical chord (either I, IV, or V), probably at half notes.
With all three of these, the melody is also the root of the chord, which I don’t think is particularly interesting, so we’ll keep that in mind for later.
A way you can build some momentum for the resolution is to speed up the harmonic rhythm. We’ve been going along changing the chord at half notes, but what if these last two were quarters? That kind of ramps us up for the end of the phrase.
And now our melodic changes have set us up nicely for a I6/4 V I cadence.
Part 2a. Left Hand Rhythm
Block chords aren’t terribly interesting. One way we can get around that without too much extra thought is to give the bassline a pattern. For example, the Alberti bass pattern.
Alberti bass is a particular arpeggiation. In root position it 1 5 3 5. This 1) outlines the chord and introduces more movement, 2) places the bass note on a strong beat, and 3) gives us a pedal point, which our ears tend to like.
If we have an inversion, the bass note of the inversion is on the downbeat instead of the root. These inversions typically follow voice leading rules.
In our case, we’d have a G root, C 2nd inversion, keeping G in the bass, the V in first inversion with F# in the bass, and then we have our cadence which moves chords faster than we can repeat the pattern, so I’ll go against the pattern here in favor of better counterpoint.
Part 3. Right Hand Rhythm, Take 2.
Another thing we can do is take our rhythm and make it more interesting. These are some really subjective decisions here.
I’m going to take our first figure and make these two 16ths. That takes it from sounding like it outlines the tonic triad, to sounding like it encircles our landing point here, the C.
We could just repeat that figure to sequence up to the D natural, but I’m going to make those notes longer rather than shorter. The triplet kinda makes it sound like the melody is working really hard to ascend.
Then from there, we really have almost two voices in the melody in this measure. I’ll draw them with stems going in opposite directions.
I want to retain this walkdown, and this do ti do.
Like we did with the harmonic rhythm in the last part, let’s increase the speed of our rhythm - so 16ths. But straight 16ths sounds very baroque to me. So, I’ll knock it off center and give it some syncopation.
It’s not an exact science, but I’d like to emphasize the walkdown - and a way I can do that is by making those notes longer.
Then we can fill in this figure with our “second voice”
Now we’ve honored both “voices” and each figure as a whole is a bit of a sequence. Not exactly, but close.
And finish out we’ll keep that encircling figure to get us back home.
Part 3b. Left hand rhythm, Take 2.
So now let’s create our own left hand pattern. I’ll start with the bass note and place it on the strong beats. That will keep us grounded now that we’ve knocked our melody off kilter.
Now we need to come up with a pattern. There are some tricks that we can use here to get more mileage out of our material. Let’s imitate the rhythm and the shape of our melody. Instead of a direct counterpoint, let’s try starting with two 16ths (followed by the 16ths in the melody); and the melody goes down and then up, so I’m going to try inverting it here.
That worked well for the first one, but I’m going to intentionally avoid a 3:2 polyrhythm here, so that can just be a dotted quarter.
Same pattern here. But I can already tell we’re going to have to mess with it because of our melodic rhythm.
Don’t be afraid to break your pattern if it doesn’t make sense. I’m going to break with the pattern here in favor of better counterpoint. In counterpoint, we typically like 6ths and 3rds if possible. So, if I can’t get one of those, I might have to abandon that in favor of a good voice leading in this particular left hand voice.
We’ve also got our I6/4 V7 I cadence. That will also mess with the pattern. I’ll just fill this rhythm in with notes from the chords.
I’m also going to imitate the pattern here at the end. Just for fun.
Part 4. Reharmonization, Part 1.
The harmony right now is pretty straight forward. Let’s try a reharmonization for our melody. We’ll go back to block chords for a second.
Reharmonization attempts to find a substitute chord, usually with the same function, which will give the melody a different feel.
There are a billion different ways to do reharmonization, and we’re sticking to theory I/II, so I’ll be staying within the diatonic collection.
Let’s try putting the melody in a minor key. So, instead of G major, let’s try E minor.
So what we can do is just change all the IVs and Vs to ivs and vs.
I’ll keep the C major though, I think VI in a minor key is lovely.
I’d like to go with a iv, v, i cadence at the end. Perhaps in theory class, you’d more often hear a V, because of the classical era, but I think v fits better here.
One other thing, I’m going to add a C major chord here to help with the momentum of this progression.
Part 4a. Left hand rhythm, with reharmonization
Now that we have decided our new chords, we can plug them into our left hand pattern.
Again, let’s start with our bass notes on strong beats.
I’m also going to change this first C major to be so that it’s in second inversion to make the bass voice leading a little smoother.
I said I wanted to avoid a 3:2 polyrhythm here, but I think we can make it a true counterpoint, and that would sound nice, so let’s do that. So, that’s a 6th and a 6th, and a 10th.
So now continuing the pattern like we did before creates something interesting because of that chord I added. To outline a B minor chord and tie that F#, we’ve got a suspended note in our C major chord, which according to the pattern resolves down. That E is also tied, being a member of both C major and A minor. But what if it resolved up? G is a member of C major, and having it carry over to the A minor would make it an Am7.
From there, I’ll do what I did last time and fill in with members of the chord.
And just for fun, I’m going to make this G an F#. That will probably get you points taken off on your theory homework. But I like it enough that it’s worth the points off.
Part 5. Timbre/Dynamics.
Of course, music isn’t just notes and rhythms, it’s how we play them. So, lastly, let’s add some articulation and dynamics.
First, I think this can be slowed down a few clicks, maybe to 90.
Obviously, I think some pedaling to give it just a little more resonance would be nice.
As I’ve listened to this melody hundreds of times now, I think the most natural shape of the phrase is soft and it grows and it peaks about right here and then it dies down to the resolution.
That would give us this sort of dynamic shape. But I think the melody isn’t compelling enough to justify a forte marking here. I want the melody itself to reflect getting louder.
So, let’s make one final adjustment. I’m going to give the last bar an octave displacement, pivoting on the downbeat. Which, means I want this pattern to change a little.
And now I’m making changes that I can’t really justify or explain, so maybe let’s stop there.
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