Lesson video

Hello, welcome to the first lesson of the unit, Fundamentals of Composition.

My name is Mr. Farrell, and this lesson is called Melodic Fundamentals, where we're gonna be looking at the basics of how melodies work and how to compose our own.

Today's outcome, I can explain features of effective melodies and use these to compose a simple melody.

Let's look at some key words.

A melody is the tune, usually the most memorable feature in a piece of music.

A scale is a particular set of notes.

Conjunct is a type of movement between notes based on small intervals or steps, sometimes referred to as step movement or step motion.

A phrase is a short section of melody, often lasting one, two, or four bars.

The tonic note is a home note in a key, and it's the note that the key is named after.

So for example, the tonic in C major is the note C, and the tonic in a minor is the note A.

So, in our lesson today, our first section, we'll be looking at basic melodic features.

Now, to understand melodies, we must first understand the fundamental features that melodies are based on.

So, we're gonna be considering the pitch and the rhythm of melodies.

Melodies are usually based in a key, and therefore use the notes of a particular scale.

Now, you may have heard of scales before, especially if you play an instrument.

What types of scales are you familiar with? Pause the video and come up with an answer.

You might have said major, minor, or chromatic scales, or perhaps pentatonic or blues scales.

Now these are all fantastic answers, they're just examples of different types of scales which have different sounds.

Most Western music is composed in a key.

But what does it mean for music to have a key? Well, a key is a set of notes which complement each other.

They work well together if they're put in a piece of music together.

Now, a key is built around a particular home note called the tonic, and that note gives the key its name.

So, the key of C major is built from the note C.

Now, if we're composing in the key of C major, we use chords from that key.

And for the melody we're choosing from the seven notes of the C major scale.

The C major scale is all the notes of the key of C major played in order starting and ending on the tonic, which is C.

So, let's have a listen to that now.

(calm piano music) Now, melodies use the notes of the scale in different ways, not just in order like we just heard there.

We're gonna listen to two melodies now.

And as you listen to them, I want you to think about what the key difference between those two melodies is and which one you might prefer.

So, here's melody number one.

Have a listen.

(calm piano music) And now melody two.

(calm piano music) Now that we've heard both melodies, feel free to pause the video and think about what's the key difference between those two melodies and which one you prefer.

So, the first melody has large intervals or leaps between notes.

Now we describe that as disjunct.

The second melody has small intervals.

It's moving step by step between notes.

We would describe this as conjunct.

We're going to listen to two conjunct melodies now.

So both of these melodies move step by step through their notes, but there are still gonna be differences between them.

Let's see if we can pick them out.

Here's number one.

(calm piano music) And now melody number two.

(calm piano music) Now that we've heard them both, we can pause this video and answer the question.

So, the answers, the first melody mainly ascends in pitch.

The notes generally get higher as the melody moves on.

Whereas in the second melody, it mostly descends in pitch ending up in a lower place than where it started.

Well done if you got that right.

Considering the shape can help us to create a balanced melody, disjoint melodies can be a bit tricky to compose jumping around too much can make the music seem unsettled so the notes need to be really well chosen.

Conjunct melodies can be a fair bit easier to compose as the intervals need a bit less consideration.

Now, a check for understanding, true or false, this melody is conjunct.

Let me play it for you.

(calm piano music) Now that we've heard the melody, pause the video and answer the question, is the melody conjunct true or false? Well done, if you said true.

Now, how can we tell if the melody is conjunct or not? Pause the video again and see if you can figure that out.

We can tell that the melody is conjunct because the intervals, the steps between the notes are small.

It's not disjunct where the melody notes would be jumping around a lot.

Now, we've discussed the pitch aspect of melody, now we're going to look at the rhythmic element of melody.

So, I'm gonna play two melodies for you now, and I would like you to compare the rhythm in these two melodies.

Let's listen to melody number one.

(calm piano music) And now melody number two.

(calm piano music) So, the first melody doesn't repeat any rhythms, whereas the second melody uses some repeated rhythms. This makes the second one more memorable and therefore more successful.

It also uses longer notes at the end of a phrase.

In a melody in 4/4 time, that might be a minim or a semibreve.

Now, what effect do long notes have on the melody? We're gonna listen to two more examples, and I want you to focus on the ends of both melodies.

Okay, let's listen to melody number one.

(calm piano music) And now melody number two.

(calm piano music) So, what effect did the long notes have on the melody? The long note at the end of melody number one makes the melody feel more finished and complete, whereas the shorter notes at the end of melody number two makes it feel like it could keep on going.

It doesn't feel quite so settled and finished.

Let's have a check for understanding now.

Which of these notes would be most effective to end a melody? A minim? A crotchet? A quaver? Or a semiquaver? We'll pause the video now and answer the question.

The answer is a minim as it's the longest of the four notes we had to choose from.

A minim lasting for two beats.

Which statement best describes how we should use rhythmic repetition in a melody? It should be based purely on repetition? It should use some repetition? Or it should use no repetition? Pause the video now and have a crack at that one.

A melody should use some repetition.

So, well done if you've got that.

A melody based purely on repetition would probably be a bit boring to listen to just doing the same thing over and over again.

Whereas a melody that used no repetition at all wouldn't be very memorable, it wouldn't stick in the listener's ear.

So, a melody that uses some repetition, not too much, not too little, it's probably the most effective.

Okay, run to Task A now.

Now Task A has three parts to it.

The first part is on the stave, draw the notes of the C major scale ascending, so getting higher.

The first two notes and the final C have been drawn for you already, so you just need to fill the gaps.

Part two is to fill the gap in this melody by drawing two descending conjunct notes.

So, at the end there you should have space for two notes to fill the gap.

Part three, this melody in front of you should end on a C.

Draw a note that fills the remainder of the bar and is a suitable length for the end of a melody.

Pause the video now and have a go at those tasks.

Okay, let's go through the answers.

So, on the stave drawing the notes of the C major scale, you can see this is what it should look like.

We've got all the lines and spaces represented going, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, all the way through the C major scale.

Part two, you should have put in two quavers at the end of the extract E and D, descending down to our final note of C.

And number three, our melody should end on a C, so we've got a C in there, and the correct length would be a minim, a nice two beat note to end the melody and complete our final bar of 4/4 time.

So, moving on to features of effective melodies.

We're gonna play two melodies for you.

We'd like to answer the question, which of these two sounds more effective and why? So, melody number one.

(calm piano music) And now melody number two.

(calm piano music) Now, you may have liked both melodies, but the second melody has more effective features, and we're gonna delve into that in a bit more detail now.

So, melody number two uses two bar phrases with some repetition.

You can see this is what the melody looks like written down in sheet music.

What is the pattern of the repetition? Let's see if you can spot it.

So, breaking up our melody into these 2-bar phrases.

You can see that these two phrases at the start of both lines are identical to each other.

They're exactly the same.

Whereas these phrases at the end of each line are very similar, but they have a little bit of a difference at the end.

Now, bars one and two, repeat into bars five and six.

Bars seven and eight are development of bars three and four.

And this is a very common strategy when composing melodies.

This melody is mostly based on conjunct movement.

It uses small intervals and steps.

This is one of the things that makes it quite effective.

But you might notice it doesn't use conjure movement completely.

There are a few intervals that don't move in step, but they're still small intervals, they're not jumping around all over the place.

The melody also uses some rhythmic repetition.

We'll notice that bars 1, 2, 5, and 6 use the same rhythmic construction of four quavers followed by a crotchet.

It also ends on a long note, a minim lasting for two beats, creating a feeling of being finished.

Two notes from the scale are particularly effective when used at the end of the phrases, and it's something that this melody does very well.

Bar four.

So halfway through our melody, ends on a G, the fifth note of the scale, which feels unfinished.

Whereas bar eight, the ending ends on a C.

The first note of the scale, the tonic, which feels finished.

Many melodies finish on the tonic note so that the final phrase sounds finished and complete in the key of C major are tonic note.

Our main note, our home note is a C.

The phrase end at the halfway point, which in an eight bar melody would be bar four should sound unfinished so that will end on the dominant or fifth note of the scale.

A quick check for understanding now, what is the tonic in the key of C major? Is it C, D, A, or F? You can pause the video and answer the question.

The answer is C.

C is the tonic of the key of C, and you can tell because it's the note that gives the key its name.

Which two are often effective features in a melody? Mostly disjunct movement? Mostly conjunct movement? A long note at the start? A long note to end the phrase? So you can pause the video now and pick which two of those features are most often effective.

The answers are mostly conjunct movement, and a long note to end the phrase are the typically effective features in a melody.

Well done if you've got that right.

Now, our last one, true or false, effective melodies often end on their tonic note.

Pause the video, answer the question.

The answer is true.

The tonic note helps the melody to sound finished, which is how the end of a melody should sound.

The dominant note is the one which sounds most unfinished.

Now we're onto task B.

So, this one has got two parts to it.

We're going to listen to a melody, and then I want you to identify two effective features of this melody.

And then one way this melody could be made more effective, there's a number of things that we can consider in our answers here.

Is the melody using two bar phrases with some repeated phrases.

What about conjunct intervals moving by step? Is it only using notes from the C major scale and starting on C? Has it got long notes to end the phrases in bar four and eight? Does bar four finish on a G? Does bar eight finish on the tonic? So, consider those effective melodic features that we've looked at while listening to the extracts now.

(calm piano music) So, looking at the answers to those questions, identifying two effective features of this melody.

You could have said it used mostly conjunct intervals only notes from the C major scale and starting on C.

It's got a long note ending bar four on a G.

It's got a long node ending bar eight on the tonic, which is of course C, and it uses two bar phrases.

So, if you used any two of those, well done.

Now, the answer to question two, which was to identify one way that this melody could be made more effective.

And this is all about the repetition.

This melody should repeat some phrases or ideas.

At the moment, there are no repeated phrases, although some of the rhythms have been repeated, none of the sequences of pitch have which at the moment means it's probably not the most memorable piece of melody in the world.

Okay, moving on to our final section of our lesson, which is composing a simple melody ourselves.

Now, we've looked at the key features of an effective melody so far, it's the use of two bar phrases with some repetition, mostly conjunct intervals moving by step using notes from the C major scale.

Long notes to end the phrases in bars four and eight, bar four should ideally end on a G sounding unfinished, and bar eight should finish on the tonic sounding finished.

Now, a lot of very effective melodies don't use all of these features.

They're not all compulsory, but they are a very useful guide.

The most important guide, however, is your ear.

So it's always important to listen to your ideas and check that they sound musical and effective to you.

So, we are now going to look at three videos, which will show you in more detail how to compose and record an eight bar melody.

So, the first video here, and we'll show you how to improvise a two bar phrase repeating it in bars five and six so we're going to watch that video.

(calm piano music) The first step to creating our eight bar melody is to work on our initial two bar phrase.

I'm gonna start off by using a DAW.

In this case, I'm using GarageBand for this.

You might be using a DAW, or you might also be using notation software which I'll also talk you through in a moment.

Now to begin with, we're gonna be working in the key of C major so I need to make sure that I'm familiar with the C major scale.

That's all the white notes starting on C.

(calm music) That's my C major scale.

And remember that tonic note, the C is a really important note when we're thinking about writing our melody.

And generally we want to be using the notes of the C chord quite a lot.

So that's C, E, and G.

They want to feature quite heavily in our melody to make it feel like it's in that key.

Now, I'm gonna start off by just improvising some ideas, trying to create a two bar phrase, and I'm mostly gonna be moving by step, that's conjunct movement.

So mostly gonna be moving to notes that are next to each other rather than jumping around notes.

It's okay to have the odd leap, but we want to mostly have conjunct motions.

So, I'm just gonna improvise some ideas, I'm gonna put the metronome on so I can hear the beat until I come up with something that I like.

(calm piano music) There are various different ideas there.

You'll notice that most of them are starting on one of the notes of the C chord.

So, I was starting either on C, on E or G, or sometimes the highest C as well.

So that's a good idea as a general rule to start on one of the notes from that C chord that'll help it feel like it's in that key.

So, I've come up with an idea that I like that's two bars long, so I'm now gonna record it in if I'm using a DAW.

Here we go.

(calm piano music) So, it's mostly conjunct movement, and there I was starting on the G from that C chord and using the notes of the C major scale.

Now, there's a couple of ways I could do this.

Like if I'm just using a DAW that's fine, that's done.

(calm piano music) But what I could also do if I want to use notation software is I could open up the score of what I've just played and it'll show me there exactly the notation of what I've just played so I could then move that into notation software if that's how I'm doing it.

So, if I open up my notation software here, I could just copy across those notes so that I have the same melody.

(calm piano music) Just gonna make sure I'm getting the same notes as that melody there.

It finishes on the minim there.

So now if I listen to this in my notation software, it should sound the same.

(calm piano music) So, we can hear that I've got that two bar phrase and whichever software you are using, get it written in notation, 'cause then we can reanalyze it and use it properly as we go.

Now, the one final thing I want to do is to copy that melody, that idea from bar one and two into bar five and six.

Because remember, we want to phrase the repeats.

So, if I'm in a DAW, I'm just gonna copy and paste.

And if I'm using notation software, I can do the same, I just copy the notes of those two bars and paste them in bar five and six.

So, now I've got my first phrase and my third phrase done, and next we're gonna look at what we can do in our other phrases.

All right, our next video we're going to watch is about how to create a contrasting phrase for bars three and four ending on a G, which we're going to watch now.

For our second phrase between bar three and bar four, I'm gonna want to create some contrast with the initial phrase.

I also want to make sure that I'm still mostly using conjunct movement, although I can use some leaps and I want to try and finish if I can on a sustained G.

So, at the end of bath four, I want to be finishing on a G, and that's because it gives it that incomplete feel for the halfway point of our melody, we don't want it to feel too finished.

And a G in the key of C is really effective way of making it feel unfinished at that point.

So, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna loop my first four bars, including my first phrase, and I'm gonna improvise some ideas in this gap here that try and contrast with the original and finish on a G and then when I find one that I like, I'm gonna use that.

Here we go.

(calm piano music) So, I've tried a few different ones there.

I've got one that I like, so I'm gonna record in.

(calm piano music) So, I think that idea of contrast with the original, and it ends on that sustained G.

(calm piano music) And what I can now do again is open up the score.

So, if I want to narrow it into notation software, I can copy that through.

I could add in the notes myself just by drawing them in here.

So, start with some quavers.

(calm piano music) So, that's now copied exactly my notation from there.

And now I've got my first phrase, my contrasting second phrase, and then the repeat of my first phrase again.

And finally, our third video here will show us how to create a variation of that phrase for bar seven and eight ending on a C so we'll watch that now.

Finally, we're gonna create our fourth phrase.

There are a couple of things I want to consider in this.

First of all, I want some similarity between it and the second phrase that was our contrasting phrase that we created.

However, I don't want it to be completely different, and I don't want it to just be an exact repeat.

So I'm gonna be looking to have some similarity, but some contrast with that as well.

I also want to try and finish on a sustained C, and that's because that's our tonic note so ending a melody on the tonic note helps it feel really complete.

So, I'm just gonna listen to this second phrase.

Now, let's have a quick listen to it.

(calm piano music) So, what I could do is try and create a variation of that that maybe starts the same, but then changes and finishes on a long C.

So, I could do something like this.

(calm piano music) That would work.

It starts the same, but then it develops and changes.

Or I could do this.

(calm piano music) Again, still ending on a long C, but in that case, I'm going for the lowest C down here.

So, either of those would work, and you'll need to do some experimentation to try and vary that second phrase, but to make it finish on that note C.

So, when I'm ready, I can record it in.

(calm piano music) And again, if I open up the score, I could have a look at what I've played there.

That's this last section here, and I could copy it across into my notation software, or if I'm just working in notation software, I could just draw it in myself so I know what my notes were there.

(calm piano music) And now if I zoom out, we'll see I've got my four phrases.

Got my first phrase that repeats down here in about five and six.

Got my contrasting second phrase.

And then I've got my fourth phrase that varies the second phrase and finishes on that long C there.

So, that's the four phrases of my melody, and we can now listen to all four phrases together.

(calm piano music) Okay, now that we've watched those videos, we're gonna have a quick check for understanding.

Which note is effective for making a melody feel unfinished in the key of C major? Is it C? Is it E? Or is it G? Pause the video and answer the question.

The answer is G.

G being the dominant or the fifth note of the scale is the most unfinished feeling in the key of C.

Which note is effective for making a melody feel finished in the key of C major? Is it C, D, or F? You can pause this video and answer that question.

The answer is C.

C is the tonic note, the home note, the note that feels most finished in the key of C major.

What notes are appropriate for the melody to start on? Pause the video, see if you can answer this one.

The answer is, that the notes of the C chord or tonic chord are the most appropriate for the melody to start on.

So, in the key of C, those notes are C, E, or G.

When played together, they are a C major chord, the tonic chord in this key.

Okay, now we are onto task C, which is to create an eight bar melody on a DAW or some notation software.

I've got a list of success criteria which we can assess our progress on.

Ideally, you have created a two bar phrase for bars one and two starting on C, or a note of the C chord.

Bars five and six should repeat that phrase.

Bars three and four should use a contrasting phrase, ending on a long G.

Bar seven and eight, use a variation of that phrase ending on the long C.

You use mostly conjunct intervals moving by step wherever possible, and you use notes from the C major scale.

So, you can pause this video now and get cracking on that task.

All right, now that you've had a go at that, you can assess your melody against the success criteria.

Now you want to be able to develop your melody based on these answers to ensure that you then go on to meet all of the criteria.

So, using this grid here, you can put a tick in the box if your melody uses only the notes of the C major scale.

A tick if your melody uses mostly conjunct movements step by step.

If your melody has four two-bar phrases, if the first and third phrases are the same, and bar three and four, and bar seven and eight, those phrases should contrast with the first phrase.

The second phrase should finish on a long G.

And the fourth phrase should finish on a long C.

So, to summarize everything we've covered in today's lesson on melodic fundamentals, effective melodies, balance, repetition, and contrast, they're built using the notes of a particular scale and a variety of rhythms. Using two bar phrases and conjunct movement helps a melody to sound effective.

Melodies often use the dominant fifth halfway through to sound unfinished, and then use the tonic at the end to sound finished.

It is possible to write effective melodies without using all these rules, but they are a good starting point for composing.

That brings us to the end of today's lesson.

Hope you enjoyed it, and I'll see you in the next one.