Melody

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Melody

OK, not all music relies on melody but the overwhelming majority does. How many times have you heard a snatch of melody and it's instant recall time? You know exactly where it came from. Even if you can't remember where its origins lie, the damn thing nags you silly until you eventually find out. That's the power of melody. That recall depending on how old you are! will often bring to mind a particular memory. It may well bring submerged emotions to the surface. Powerful stuff!

What constitutes a melody? At its most basic, a string of notes that rise and fall. But that's not enough.

  • Load blocks/oddnotes (Figure 5.1).

    Figure 5.1. oddnotes.lso

    graphic/05fig01.gif


Listen to this group of notes. Not very memorable, is it?

  • Now load blocks/igetit (Figure 5.2).

    Figure 5.2. igetit.lso

    graphic/05fig02.gif


It's the same order of notes, but what a transformation. It's instantly recognizable as Eine Kleine Nacht Musik by Mozart, an absolute master of melody. What brought about the transformation? The rhythm. Without a rhythmic shape, the melody does not exist.

What else? A distinctive shape, brought about by the pitch of the notes as a melody unfolds. A string of adjacent notes soon becomes monotonous without a leap large or small, up or down of some kind.

Take another look at the first few phrases of Exile (exile/ exile ). Now this is a gentle melody, nothing very dramatic, which gradually climbs a scale. To make it a little more interesting, there is a leap of a fourth between the first two notes (A and D). Each time the melody climbs a step, there is a return to the A before leaping back up again and continuing the ascent.

High climax points within the melodic shape are also important for emotional intensity. In this case the highest note arrives at the beginning of each chorus (high E marked green).

Low notes can have the opposite effect and are often used to calm things down. The English horn does just that between bars 53 and 61 (Track 4).

A good melody can be likened to well-written prose . A readable page of text contains clearly defined phrases and frequent use of punctuation. Bear this in mind when writing melodies. Time taken crafting a memorable melody is time well spent.

[ LiB ]


Creative Projects with Logic Audio
Creative Projects with Logic Audio
ISBN: 1929685793
EAN: N/A
Year: 2003
Pages: 239

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