Composition
Five Days – Five Techniques

This course covers various essential tools and concepts required to write original music.  The goal is to prepare a composer to be intentional about writing music.  That is, to set a goal and, by employing proven techniques, reach that goal.

We often think that melody comes from the heart or the muse or some mystical place.  Perhaps it does.  However, if your melodies rely exclusively upon those sorts of slippery inspiration, chances are you will write many pieces that sound alike or simply don’t go anywhere.  The muse often gets in to a rut, gets lazy and ends up quoting itself.  This course seeks to help your write, good, fresh, original, interesting melodies.

Mozart said that he heard a new melody every time someone spoke.  Words convey melody if you listen thoughtfully.  So does traffic on a beltway, the squeal of the brakes on a subway train, a jet engine, someone’s footfalls on a tile floor, the thwack of a bird’s wings as it takes flight, a dog’s howl, and the evening song of tree peepers in the spring.  Melody is everywhere.  A major part of your task as a composer is to hear it, transcribe it and transform it into a full composition.  That requires mastery of fundamental compositional skills.  This course takes a detailed look at five of those skills.

When you complete this course and work through the handouts you should be able to:

1.  Write an original melody
2.  Recognize motives in music and create original motives
3.  Apply reliable techniques for altering a motive in order to generate melody
4.  Describe the nine shapes of melody
5.  Write a melody based up an English language phrase or a complete lyric
6.  Write a melody using the technique of theme and variation.
 

The Five Techniques

1.  Melody from Words
2.  Melody by Theme and Variation
3.  Melody from Contour Waves
4.  Melody from Commission
5.  Melody from Motive
 

Guidelines and Procedures

1.  Guidlines for good melodies
2.  Suggested procedures

Lead Sheets for Examples of Music

Acknowledgement of Sources

The information in this course comes from many sources.  Click here to read about three important works you might wish to explore to gather addition details about musical composition.

Technique 1

Creating Melody from Words

Composers often create melodies to deliver lyrics.  Just as often, a instrumental piece can be created using human speech as the generator of melody.  Click Here to learn a process for turning words into melody.

Lead Sheets for music examples:

Said the Moon

Technique 2

Theme and Variation
 

One of two states often confronts a composer.  Either you can’t think of a melody or you admire a melody someone else has written and would like to write something similar.  What to do???  The answer is BORROW. 

Mozart and just about every other household name among the major composers did this.  You can too.  Start with a melody you know.  Use elements of it as the theme of your composition and vary pitch, rhythm, meter and any other aspect of the composition.  Allow someone else’s successful work to drive your own creativity.

Click here to learn a process to use the technique of theme and variation as the means to create new melodies.

Lead Sheets for music examples:

On Top of Old Smokey in All Diatonic Modes

On Top of Old Smokey- three variations

Banks of the Scamander

Technique 3

Creating Melody from Contour Waves

Percussionists embrace the aphorism: “if you can say it you can play it.”  Composers should have a similar aphorism:  “if you can draw it you can write it.

Melody is a temporal succession of pitches – one tone following another.  The combinations of ascending and descending scales segments that create melody have contours.  Melody looks like a wave.

Click here to learn about the nine fundamental shapes of music and how to use these to create melody.

Lead Sheets for music examples:

The Rat and the Raven

Liberty

Technique 4
Writing from Commission

It would be nice to get paid to create music.  Not many of us have people beating down our doors to write checks for the tunes we create.  But all of us have occasions for which a unique piece of music would be a special gift.  Weddings, births, anniversaries, birthdays, funerals, all kinds of events call for music. 

This course seeks to build a skill set that includes:

• writing melody from words
• creating melody from contour waves
• creating melody from motives
• creating melody by varying existing themes

Technique 4 examines how to create a melody from a commission. 

Example One describes the creation of theme music for the website Accomac Roots. 
To read the discussion Click Here.

Example Two describes the creation of a melody to celebrate the opening of a Sundial Books. 
To read the discussion Click Here.

Lead Sheets for music examples:

Accomac Roots

Sundial

Technique 5
From Motive to Melody
 

To turn a motive into a melody requires answers to three questions:

1.  What form will this composition take?
2.  What shape will the composition have?
3.  How will the composition hold the listener’s interest?

Those are the big three ideas for a melody:  form, shape and interest.

Form has to do with the purpose of and audience for the music.  A symphonic composition is dominated by form.  These master works are chocked full of intricacies and complexities.  There are three or four long movements to a symphony.   Within each movement there is a unique form and often two themes.  A three minute pop tune often has verse and chorus form.   But the form is just as important.

Music derived from folk traditions (blues, ballads, jigs, reels, etc.) are usually two part compositions.  Three part melodies are common in rag time, such as Maple Leaf and some dance tunes, such as Gallopade.  These third parts, the C part, are often in a different key than the A and B parts.  Nearly always the C part is a completely new musical idea.  

Shape has to do with the aural contour of the music.  

Interest has to do with how the composer works the motive throughout the composition. For the moment our center of attention is on melodic interest.  There are, of course, techniques for stimulating listener interest through rhythm, harmony and counterpoint and orchestration.  But it all starts with melodic interest.  Melodic interest is generated by introducing a motive or series of motives and then varying them to cause interest, surprise and (we hope) delight in the listener.

What is a Motive?

Most composers say that they begin work with bits and pieces, fragments, random flashes and elements of nature they stumble upon.  Their job is to form these chunks of creativity in to a coherent whole.  In music, these little chunks of creativity are called “motives.”  The French version is “motif” and you’ll hear classically trained music use that term.  No matter what we called it, the motive is the smallest complete musical thought that can be formed. The key word is “complete”.  Think of a motive in the same way you think of a phrase in the English language.

Click here to read more and see motives within familiar music.

Fifteen Techniques for Varying the Motive

Melody is created from a sequence of motives.  Applying one or more of these fifteen techniques to a motive will keep the melody interesting. Click here to read descriptions and see examples of the fifteen techniques for varying motives.
 

Lead Sheets for music examples:

South Wind

Liberty

Ook Pick

Midnight on the Water