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Melody

There are 2 important relationships that melody has:

  1. Melody to its tonal centre (tone tendencies)
  2. Melody to the underlying harmony

Melodies exist on a continuum of independence to dependence.

  • a fully dependent melody is a melody with a single note, and the interest must be created by the underlying harmony
  • a fully independent melody is a melody that can exist
  • without a harmony behind it and still retain its musical interest.

Chromatic notes tend to resolve to the nearest diatonic note, usually in the direction indicated by the accidental

  • ex. C# resolves to D and Bb resolves to A
  • ex. White Christmas by Irving Berlin (“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas”)
  • ex. Bali Hai

Like harmony, melodies have tendencies to resolve. Non-chord tones resolve to chord tones in one of 3 ways:

  1. The unstable note resolves immediately to the stable note
  2. A phrase ends on an unstable note, and a subsequent phrase ends on the stable note (ex. Phrase 1 ends on a 6, and phrase 2 ends on a 5)
  3. Within a phrase, an unstable note is followed by a stable note, but with other notes in between (this resolution could be within a single measure, or it could appear several measures later)

Components of a good melody

  • Stay within the rough boundary of an octave and a half
  • Consider the contrast of steps and leaps, where steps are movements adjacent notes of a scale, whereas leaps skip over at least one note (ie. non-adjacent notes).
    • leaps catch the ear of the listener, but too many leaps can be disorienting. steps provide stability, but overusing them can yield bland melodies.

Using memory to improve melodies

  1. Write and record the melody, making sure not to play it too much so as not to engrain it firmly in the mind
  2. Step away from the melody for a period of time until you've forgotten most of it
  3. Attempt to re-create the melody after the period of absence. It's ok to listen to listen to the first couple of seconds to get you in the right ballpark, but the point is to get the essence of the melody correct. Recalling it this way and forcing ourselves to attempt to reconstruct the melody can result in coming up with better versions of our melodies.