Haddad transforms the ephemeral art of melody into a rigorous, architectural discipline through a masterfully structured framework. This deep dive replaces vague inspiration with precise technical logic, making it an indispensable resource for the serious contemporary composer.
Install our extension to search inside any video instantly.
97 Minute Melody Composition Masterclass
Added:Two years ago today, I filmed this exact video for the composers that I personally mentor. And it was never meant to go public. But after so many of you shared how helpful my recent 41minute breakdown of my entire composition framework has been, I realized that I had something else you needed to see. So here it is. But fair warning, this is a more lecture style video than I normally post. But if you like those kinds of videos, you're going to get a lot out of this. But before we get started, if you want a framework that pulls everything in this video together, grab my free guide to composing any piece in four steps from the link in the description below. What this will do is show you the exact process I use to write melodies, harmonies, rhythms, and all the other parts of my music. Go grab that, then come back and watch this to make everything you're about to see come together. All right, take it away, me from two years ago.
Oftenimes we as composers put a lot of pressure on ourselves to write what I call a catchy or memorable melody. And in this video, I just want to show you that it's not necessarily the case that you have to create these kind of really memorable or catchy melodies for your piece to have legs and for it to be a strong piece of music that variates over time, develops over time, etc. So, in this video, we're going to dive right into these key concepts. So, here's what we're going to cover when it comes to melody. The very first thing is we're going to go to our friend Leonard Bernstein and he has a very specific way of talking about melody which is a way that I think about melody all the time. So we're going to introduce this video with a little clip of Mr. Leonard Bernstein. The next thing is the melodic pyramid. And this is a kind of hierarchy that I created over the years where we take basically a idea of what our melody is and we just kind of dump it in shreds. Okay. There is a specific way that I think about melody that will put less pressure on ourselves on what to actually create in terms of a succession of notes and help us identify exactly what are we trying to do in this particular moment in our music. That will be the melodic pyramid. Next is we're going to talk more specifically about how to create these sets of notes.
And the one of the ways that I love to do this is by using a tone row. Now, these things get a bad rap, okay?
There's a lot of baggage tied to these toad runes, but I want to show you uh a way that I use them so that you don't feel so overwhelmed when you're writing uh these sets of notes. Next, we're going to talk about sequences. Now, sequences is also something that's been around for hundreds of years, okay? But I oftentimes when we're in the thick of writing, we forget that these things are at our disposal. And they can be a really simple way for you to just take something you already have and immediately variate it without doing much to the original uh set of notes that you uh created as part of your melody. The next thing is intervalic variation. And so like what else can you do within that set of notes that you designated as your melody to variate it throughout a piece of music? We'll be talking about that a little bit later.
Then we're going to be talking about embellishments. Now, not every melody need needs this, but it's good to know like what your options are and where they might uh be best suited when you're composing a specific melody. And then we're going to talk about dynamics. Now, dynamics. It's might seem like an obvious thing to talk about, but you have no idea how many times I've seen uh students scores where they would be writing something and they don't really know what to do with that melody. And I and I simply just ask them, well, have you tried repeating it softer? They look at me like I'm crazy. And then they try doing it. Say, actually, that's all it needed. So sometimes these simple simple things of just changing the dynamics uh changing what happens when it repeats is actually all you need uh to create a melody that sustains over a longer period of time and then we're going to do our summary at the very very end. So let's go first to Mr. Leonard Bernstein who talks really succinctly about melody and melody's role in a piece of music.
So take it away Leonard Bernstein.
My dear young friends, on our last program, we devoted so much time to introducing our new philarmonic hall to you and to introducing you to the new science of acoustics that uh we didn't get to talk very much about music. So today we're going to make up for lost time and talk about the meat and potatoes of music, the main course, which is melody.
Now, uh, to some people, music and melody are the same thing. It's, uh, the whole meal, so to speak. When you think of music, you think of melody right away. And they're right in a way, because what is music anyway, except sounds that change and move along in time. And that's practically a definition of melody, too. A series of notes that move along in time, one after another. Well, if that's true, then it's almost impossible to write music that doesn't have melody in it. I mean, if a melody is simply one note coming after another, how can a composer avoid writing melodies if he just writes notes?
He must write melodies all the time. For example, he writes one note, then he writes another. Well, that's already a sort of melody. It's a two note melody sort of. Then we add another note.
Well, it's already a little more melodious, isn't it? But if he then adds a few more, well, you've got Mendelson's wedding march.
See how simple it is? Where there's there's music, there's melody. Can't have one without the other. Well, then why do so many people complain about music that has no melody? Some people say they don't like Bach fuges because they don't find them melodic and others say the same thing about Vagner operas and others about modern music and others about jazz. What do you suppose they mean when they say it's not melodic?
What are they talking about? Isn't any string of notes a melody? Well, I think the answer is in the fact that melody can be a lot of different things. It can be a tune or it can be a theme or a motive or a long melodic line or a baseline or an inner voice. All those things and the minute we understand the difference among all those kinds of melody then I think we'll be able to understand the whole problem. You see people usually think of melody as a tune something you can go out whistling that's easy to remember that sticks in your mind. What's more, a tune almost never goes out of the range of the normal human singing voice, that is too high or too low. Nor should a tune have phrases that last longer than the normal breath can sing them. After all, melody is the singing side of music, just as rhythm is the dancing side. But the most important thing about a tune, is usually that it's complete in itself. It seems to have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and it leaves you feeling satisfied. In other words, it's a song like Gershwin's Summertime or Schubert's Serenade or your favorite Elvis Presley number.
>> All right. So, I really like a few of the things that he mentioned. Now, the first thing is this idea of differentiating between a melody, a tune, and a motive. We'll be talking about that on the next slide. And this idea that a melody is not just something on the top line, right? Not not something just on the surface. It can be an inner line, right? something that's hidden within the texture. It also could be a baseline, okay, which is right on the bottom of the texture. Okay, so these two things are really what encompasses, I think, this two sets of parameters that encompass really any kind of melody that you're writing, not just like the tune that you hear at the forefront of a piece of music. Okay, but before me from the past gets too carried away, I want to remind you to grab my free guide to composing any piece in four steps from the link in the description below so you can get the most out of this video. Now, this leads us directly into the melodic pyramid.
Now, here's my melodic pyramid right here. And it's actually quite simple what this encompasses. The very first thing is this motive at the very very top. Now motive is a very very small set of notes like for example you know the Jaws theme or the or the Beethoven five something like this right etc like we we understand what motive is okay just a small little fragment that recurs in a piece of music so that will be the smallest kind of melody that we have now the next thing is tune now tune is usually what we think of when we think of a melo melody and a tune is singable complete in itself with a beginning, middle and end. Okay? Now, not all melodies need to be a tune, right? We can have inner lines, we can have baselines, okay? We can even have melodic gestures that don't need to necessarily be singable, complete in itself, or have a beginning, middle, and end to work in a piece of music you write. And on the very bottom of this melodic pyramid is what I call a melody.
Okay. Now, a melody and look at this definition here. It's very very simple actually. It's any number of successive pitches occurring in time. So, no matter how long that set of pitches is, no matter how short that set of pitches is, no matter how singable it is, no matter if it sounds complete or not, whether it has a beginning, middle, and an end, any number of successive pitches in time can be construed as a melody. And when you think of a melody in terms of this kind of hierarchy, right, it actually becomes a lot more simpler for you to figure out like actually what am I what am I doing in this moment here? Or what are the gestures that I'm trying to do? Am I trying to do something that's emotive, right? Something small that recurs over time that I can use kind of like as a memory piece, right? Is that what I'm trying to do? Am I actually trying to write a tune like an 8, 12 bar, 16 bar tune, something like that? uh that defines like a larger portion of my piece, right? Or am I just writing a melody? I'm just trying to write something uh that connects between uh different parts of my piece, but doesn't necessarily need to be something that grabs all the attention, right? Or can it be something that's in the inner voice or in the bottom voice, right? Or is there some combination of all these things that you're trying to do in the piece? And when you have it set up like this with the with your melodic pyramid, a lot of clarity starts to happen when you're writing your piece of music. So I want to start we I want to like broaden our scope here first of what a melody is, right before we can get into how to actually formulate a melody. All right, so that's the melodic pyramid right in there. Now, the very next thing I want to talk about is tone rows. All right.
Now, if you've ever heard of a tone row, okay, uh you probably don't have much uh you know uh sympathy for the tone row.
Okay. It has a lot to do with docaponic music or 12 tone serialist music, but we're going to kind of demystify a lot of those things as we're going through uh this video lesson. So, tone rows, these get a bad rap. They are usually associated with docophonic music. In other words, 12 tone music. But tone rows can be applied to any aesthetic that you may want to compose in. Okay.
So, let me show you what I mean by this.
So, I prepared for you uh a tone row.
Okay.
Uh and you know, this tone row here is just something that I composed uh earlier today. It's nothing uh that uh uh mindbending, okay? Uh but here it is right here on my iPad here. I'll just play it for you. So, it's just a short set of notes here.
Okay. And in composing this tone row, there's nothing like extravagant I was trying to do with this. To be very honest with you, I wanted it to be in this. First of all, I I thought of a scale. So, the first thing I thought of was like I wanted to write something that starts on C and I want it to be like kind of in the C minor land. So, I did choose a scale uh to start with. And this uh F sharp here by the way is the sharp four uh in C minor. It's a very very common uh accidental to put in the key of C minor. Okay. And then I thought like when I was writing this tone row like I want to include uh a lot of seconds. Okay. So I included like this major second here. Uh these minor seconds here, this major second here.
Okay. And then I thought to myself, well, you know, I also want to include um you know, some big leaps. So, I included this minor 6th that's here. And then I included this uh minor 7th here.
Uh and that's about it. Then there's like this this uh minor third also here.
I'll put this in a different color for you. Uh here there's this minor third that's here. So, I was trying to create something that had uh a set of intervals that were kind of balanced. I have a lot of seconds. I have 1/3. Uh I have a couple of these big leaps. And that's my tone row. I didn't think of anything that was memorable really in any way and I also wanted something a little longer than a motive. Okay. And with this I can really play around with it and we'll we will uh explore that as we get along.
But but you could have done this with really any aesthetic. So this aesthetic just so you know this is a very kind of tonal aesthetic.
But I could have easily easily made this into something that was a bit more uh like a uh little little uh less tonal if I did something like this. Uh one way I could have done it is just to start off like this and just include more notes that were out of that scale. So I just if I go like this uh let's see that was G Fsharp and then let's say I don't want to go back to G, right? I want to go to Gsharp. Okay.
Okay. So I don't have to so I don't use the same pitch twice. Then I'll go to F and then I'll go to E flat. So in this way I kind of made it less tonal. I made it more in an A tonal context in case that's the kind of aesthetic you're looking for.
Okay. So that is a lot more out, right?
A lot more out of the key of C minor.
Remember here is my original version.
which we can really tell is in that key of C minor. Okay. So again, you can use this in the aesthetic. You can use this with micro tones, right? Uh you can use this uh in a jazz aesthetic. You can use this in a baroque aesthetic. You can use it in a classical romantic. It doesn't really matter, right? The thing is that we have to do first is create a set of notes like this that we're happy with that we can build off of. That way really the thinking phase, right? The really just happens here in terms of not the thinking phase rather, but the inspiration phase. The inspiration phase happens here. This is the inspiration phase. Figuring out what these notes are. There was not really a rule for me to figure out these pitches, right? I wanted a a certain set of intervals, but that was basically it. Uh there was nothing really else that I was thinking of when I was thinking of these sets of notes. But the next phase that we're going to deal with, right, the next phase is the composer's brain, right?
That's really the next phase and really what the rest of this video is about. So this is really the one when I talk about 1% inspiration, that's it. That initial tone row is the 1% inspiration. The rest of this video is perspiration. So let's get right to it. Okay. Now, uh, for our purposes, we're going to talk about the prime form. Okay. But we're going to define this as the main melodic idea that you come up with. Now, if you want a more robust explanation in regards to docophonic music, please refer to Alan Fort's book, The Structure of Atonal Music. Now, when Alan Fort talks about the prime form, what he's really referring to is whittling everything down to numbers. Now, we're not going to do that here in this video. I don't think it's that important, but if in case you want like to know how to do that as well, uh the way you would do that is just figure out what kind of intervals you'd like to have in terms of numbers. So, uh if we're starting from the note C, that would be zero. He designates that first pitch as zero. The C sharp would be one. Okay? And then if he wanted, let's say an an E, that would be four. So that would be the number four. So 0 1 2 3 4 and it goes up like that and so on. So a 014 prime 4 sounds like that. Uh which you would write just like this. Okay. And then you would play around with it from there.
We're not going to worry about numbers and all that kind of stuff. We're just going to stick to pitches because I feel like uh complicating this any further is not necessary. But if you want to learn more about that, you can learn more about that in the Allen for book, the structure of a tonal music. So, let me erase that down here. And let me actually erase these purple uh notes here because we're going to stick with our idea of the prime form based off of what I created here. And we're going to use this set of notes actually for the rest of the video. So, you can see like what I do after creating that initial uh melodic idea. So, for the purposes of this video, we're going to call this here the prime form. So, this is our prime form. Okay? We're not going to worry about numbers or anything like that. We're just going to say that that is our prime form. Period. Okay? Now, after coming up with the prime form, what I really like to do is try to offload as many of the mental operations that we have as composers when it comes to figuring out what to do with the melodic idea. And one of my favorites is the use of transposition. Now, this is the process of shifting pitches up or down to a different key while keeping the same intervals and melodic shape.
And now, what I like uh my composers to do is let's say you have this thing in C minor, right? Now, it's really hard to like sit there and come up with, okay, what does this sound like in F#? What does it sound like in in A? What does this sound like in B? What does this sound like in uh E? and all these kind of things, right? What I prefer uh that you do is once you have this and you're happy with this, start writing down by hand. By hand is important. Or you can also write it in Selius or Doro, etc., and then print it out. That's another thing you can do. But like literally start writing by hand. And I want to show you what I mean here. By hand the transpositions so that you have them in front of you and you can access them without having to think about it. So let's say that we're in this key of C, right? And maybe the most obvious thing to do next is just to go up uh in in minor seconds. So the very very next one would be uh Csharp. Okay. Then we have Dsharp. Then we have B natural, Gsharp, uh G natural. Okay. And I'm not spelling these exactly how I want them for now, but I'm just trying to do it quick and dirty uh so that we can get some pitches down. So that's that's the one in C sharp. Okay, let me just keep going up so we can have a another set of notes.
Let's do uh one in D. So D. And I can just go up from here. I don't have to look at the prime form. D, E, C, A, G sharp, A, G, and then uh F. And that's it. Okay. So now I can just play these back and maybe, just maybe, uh, something peaks my ear. I say, "Oh, maybe there's a connection between this scale and this scale." So let me show you what I mean. So let's say I'm playing the original.
Now I'm just going to play the next one.
And notice how I didn't have to expune much brain power to do that second scale, right? I wrote it down. It's right there. next.
And now already I might I might be building some connections. I might be saying, "Okay, well I have this da maybe I want to move somewhere from there that I didn't think about before.
Now I wonder if there's any common tones from that B flat. Is there anywhere where I see B flat in these two scales?
Right. So I'm going to try and look if I see B flat in any of these two scales.
Okay, I might not see B flat. So that first one, no, I don't see any B flats.
That second one, I don't see any B flats. How about G? Okay, so this is this is like the composer's brain process. I'm not necessarily taking I'm not necessarily coming up with something from scratch. I'm seeing the things that are already here and trying to find connections. So uh I'm going to play this again. D G. So maybe instead of going maybe I want to resume from another spot here that has that G. Okay. So if I look really carefully here, I'm going to use my highlighter here. If I look very carefully, this here is starts with G and then it continues onwards there. And in that second line, I don't see a G.
Actually, there is a G up here. So I have two spots to like change on a dime.
Okay, if I wanted to. So I have two different options here that I might have not thought about before but because I created these transpositions the nice thing is that these things are related right they are related even though there might not be something that we thought of first. So let me show you this. So prime form and what I'm going to do is I'm going to stop at this initial G. So I want you to really take a look at this. I'm going to stop at this G and then I'm going to go to this G. Okay?
and we're gonna just see what that sounds like.
Okay? And whether you like that or not, it it might spark something in you and it will be related to what you already created before. Okay? So, that's option number one. I actually like that one. Uh it sounded sounded pretty decent to me.
Um, let me go back now and I'm going to go stop at that same G, but instead I'm going to go here. Okay, I'm going to go here. Now, you'll see it's an octave apart, so I'll have to do some octave transposition, but that's okay.
G F.
So, that way I truncated the melody. You see? So now my melody ends uh in the spot where this the second transposition ended. You see that? So I actually kind of created like a little motive out of that by using this tool transposition. So let me show you again.
The first one uh I'll I'll do it in purple. This first one that we did, right? Sounded like this.
Excuse my singing, but that's usually what I like to do when I'm composing. And then let's try the second one in red.
Wow. So already, and by the way, this is just with two transpositions. I didn't even go all the way up, right? I had a bunch more I could have done, but just by using this transposition uh technique, we can create uh uh melodies, new melodies, right, that are based off of the thing that we already found in our initial tone row. Really, really, really helpful uh when you're shaping a melody in a piece that, you know, extends over a long period of time.
Let's go to the next one, and that's going to be retrograde. Now this is a technique where a melody is played backwards starting from the end and going to the beginning. The pitches remain the same but are in the reverse order giving a mirrored version of the original melody.
Now if I go back to our iPad here and I'm just going to erase a bunch of stuff here because we don't need this anymore.
Okay, we have our prime form and this is a very very simple one. Okay, in terms of uh thinking about what are the different relationships that we can have in a in a melodic phrase, right? And I can just take that prime form and put it backwards. So E flat, F, G, F sharp, G, B flat, D, and C. Okay. So let me play for you that retrograde uh melody.
Okay.
So, this one, right, the most obvious thing, at least with this specific tone row, is that the shape completely changes. So, instead of going up like what this original one does, the retrograde, the shape goes down. So there might be a moment in your piece where you say, "Hey, I actually want the shape of the piece to go down somehow."
But how am I going to do that? Am I going to create a brand new melody or am I just going to take what I already have and put it backwards? Now, in this particular case, we can do that because this particular tone row has an upwards kind of shape so that when we go in retrograde, it has a downwards kind of shape. And these are the kind of relationships, by the way, when you're composing that the more you compose, the more you'll see them. Okay? You might not see them immediately, but I promise you, the more that you compose, right?
And I always recommend trying to compose, especially if you're just starting out composing, at least a couple hours a day, right? Choose a part of the day. And that way, you're building these synapses, right? You're you're you're learning about these tone rows and the way that they work, and then you're building these synapses so that you can identify these things faster. Okay? because we want to get away from this 1% p uh uh inspiration thing as fast as we can. Really the point of composition to me is get beyond this 1% that happens at the very beginning so that we can get to this part. Okay? And you can still write very highly emotionally charged music uh doing this method. By the way, that's a very very simple one uh going in retrograde. Okay. Again, when we're doing this, right, you don't need to use the entire prime form, right? Uh you might like a part of this retrograde uh and not the entire thing. So, like for example, if we played de I might just really like the last three notes and that's it, right? or I just might really like uh the second note to the fourth note F G F sharp and actually that might be all I want to use in that particular part of the piece. So you see there there's no like fixed and hard rule. It's all about creating these situations where your brain can recognize things that you didn't see before. And that to me really is the heart of uh composition. Now let's move on here to another way that you can uh play around with the prime form and that is a technique called inversion where a melody is flipped upside down meaning that the direction of each interval is reversed. So for example if the original melody goes up by a minor second the inversion will go down by a minor second creating a mirrored version of the original melody's contour. Then let me show you exactly how we're going to do this with our prime form of our melody. Now we're going to start with C, okay? Just like our prime form does. And normally in our prime form, we go up from C to D, which is a major second. Now, when we're doing the inversion, what we're going to do is actually take that same exact interval and go the opposite way. So instead of going C D, we're going to go C B flat. Okay. So here we go. C B flat. So instead of going up, we're going down. Da. So immediately it's it's much different uh than it was uh before.
Okay. Now we now we have to look at the next interval. And our next interval was D B flat.
D B flat, which is a minor 6th. Okay.
Now, instead of going up a minor 6th, right, we're going to go down a minor 6.
So, if we have B flat, we're going to go down a minor 6 to D.
And this is where again our bass cleft really comes in handy. So, now we have these first three pitches, D, which is very different than D.
Okay. But it has kind of similar quality to it. It's different, but there's some similar there's something about it that's still similar, right? And that's the beauty of using these techniques, cuz it still kind of sounds similar even though it's not. Now, the next one, uh, B flat to G.
Now, this is down a minor third. So, that means we want to go up a minor third uh, to invert it. So, D to F natural. So, now we have Good. And let's just keep going. The next one, G to F sharp, is down a minor second. So, we want to go up a minor second to G flat. Then we go just back to the same note, right? Then we go G to F. D.
That's a minor 7th. So, we go down a minor 7th. So, from F down a minor 7th is going to be a G.
Okay. So again, we're going way in the baseline here, way in the bass cliff.
And then the last one, F E flat, is down a major second. So you guessed it, we're going to go up a major second from G to A.
Okay, so now we have our complete inverted tone row. Here is what it sounds like.
And just to remind you the original.
And then I'm going to I'm going to actually land back on C and do the inversion just because I feel like it.
And now I kind of feel like it should go to B flat.
And then if I remember the transposition from the earlier exercises, we can start it all over again from B flat D.
You see what I'm saying here? So I just like used a couple of them there. So and this was all just done ad hoc, right?
using the composer's brain is that I went from here just to show you what I did. I went from here, started here, right? Then I went here and then I thought to myself when I got to the end of this retrograde, I said, "Huh, it would really I really hear in my head that this A wants to go to B flat. So let me let me just start the prime form again, right? But transposed."
Okay.
transpose starting on B flat and and so it'll just be B flat C. Then I go up a minor 6 to A flat. Okay. Then I go down a minor 3rd to F. Then down a minor 2 to E natural. Then F. Then I go up a minor 7th to E flat, which I'm running out of space here. Uh but you get the point. So if I play that again, it would sound like this from the very beginning. C D B flat G F sharp G F E flat and then uh C B flat E D G A B flat. Now we start over the transpose D and then maybe after this D flat I go back to C which is how we started. So this becomes almost like an improvisational flow state kind of thing. Once you know some of these things, right? And once you know that they're options, your mind just starts to become an uh what I call the flow state. You start to get into this freef fall. Uh and if you're sticking to one thing, right, which in this case is the melodic parameter and not anything else. I'm not even thinking about rhythm or harmony uh or tambber even at this time. My mind starts to get into this flow state where I'm really just jing with the pitches that I'm selecting because they all happen to be related uh intrinsically uh with these specific uh methods that we're exploring here today. So really really really great uh in terms of like going back and forth. As you can tell, we're going back and forth between inspiration and perspiration as well because going from G, A, B flat, like that was inspiration, right? That B flat that I selected had nothing to do with uh any of these methods that I that we highlighted. I I was just inspired at that moment to go to the to the B flat, but it could have been any other note.
Just that moment triggered the B flat which triggered for me to use the transposed version of the prime form.
Right? So don't skimp on these techniques, right? They can be used in any sort of aesthetic. Moving on, retrograde inversion. Okay. Now this is a technique where a melody is both flipped upside down inversion and played backwards retrograde. This means that the direction of each interval is reversed and the entire sequence is played in reverse order creating a mirrored and inverted version of the original melody. So we can just do that right here with what we have. And uh this one is quite simple. Okay, but uh and quite uh straightforward. But if we just took like the uh inverted version, right? This is remember the inverted version that we did. Uh all we would have to do is just reverse it. So we're starting to combine uh different techniques here. Uh when we're uh coming up with uh new melody. So here it would be very simple. I will just start on the A. Um and I'm going to do this uh of course we have to do this in bass cleft for now. Then we'll switch cliffs. We start on A, G, F, G flat, F, D. Uh, and then I'm just going to, uh, go here to B flat and then we end on our C. So that's about it. So this is the inverted, right? This is going to be our retrograde inversion.
And that's it. So that one is quite simple once you already figured out how to invert it. So here we go.
de and that one already that one sounds very far away right from right sounds farther away probably the most far away from the original prime form and again you can take this and then at a certain point jump to another form transpose it and so on and before you know it you have many seconds many minutes of music that use just these sets of techniques. Okay, so that's retrograde inversion. Now the next one is modified. Okay, now this combines tenants from a combination of the above techniques. It doesn't adhere to any strict procedures. Now uh modified uh is really any combination of the things that we talked about and I think even more importantly uh flipping on a dime in the middle of one of these uh uh forms. So like for example uh there was one that I even showed from before where we started off C D uh B flat and then um we changed to something else midway through. And I really like this because it it creates more variety. So like for example uh we can modify this by saying hey I just want to have the first three notes of the prime form and then I want to just um uh start again from there. So C D B flat da da. Now I want to start again. So I'm going to go B flat C another major second and then and then a minor uh six just like I had. So minor 6 here would be a flat. Okay. So that's that's kind of like a modified version of it. And modified meaning you can do anything you want based on the rules that we uh set up before. So here is the a modified version of the prime form. Da da da.
And that's one of them. And then I can do a retrograde of that. Right? So now I can go uh you know start from a flat then go down a C. Uh then I'm going to use my red here. go down a B flat, D, then C, and that's it. Now there's a retrograde version of that. So it's it's modified in many ways. So now I have A flat, C, B flat, D, C.
And there you go. There's another one right there. And it's up to you really to figure out what your like experience is, right? Aesthetically, what you like, what you dislike. It's up to you to figure out which of these uh things here in terms of tone roads gravitate towards you. And you'd be surprised. There might be things that you come up with using the composer's brain that you didn't quite realize that were there. And that's really what we want to do with these tone rows. So the the the moral of the story with these tone rows is don't just think that they're forecaponic, please. They could be used for dodcaponic music absolutely but you can use them for more uh tonal music. You can use them for media music. Uh you can use them for romantic classical baroque uh kind of music. Uh really neocclassical music. Really anything under the sun can use these kind of tone rows to create what I call synapses between melodic ideas and fragments that you can use to push along a piece of music. really really important that you start to internalize these things so that when you're writing uh you're not thinking oh what what is inversion again oh what is a retrograde what is you already kind of already internalize these things and the only way to internalize them is if you're practicing composing I suggest in the very beginning if you're just kind of starting uh a couple hours a day if you're a little bit more advanced you can get away with not composing for a week or two or few weeks I would say as because when you get backed into it.
It's like riding a bicycle. But if you've never ridden a bicycle before, right? You can't just bike bike uh for an hour and then not bike for a month and then bike for an hour and assume that you're going to improve, right? So, it's a little bit different uh depending on your experience level with composition, how how well you can get into thinking in this kind of way in terms of melodies. Uh it's not going to come easily if you're not doing at least a couple hours a day in the very beginning. Okay. So, just that's my little PSA when it comes to using these like very specific techniques uh to create melodies um for your for your pieces of music. All right. The next thing that I want to talk about here are sequences. Okay. Now, uh there are a couple of sequences I want to talk specifically about. The first one is the exact sequence. This is a technique where a melodic pattern is repeated at a different pitch level maintaining the exact intervalic relationships between the notes of the original pattern and the subsequent repetitions. Now when it comes to an exact sequence, right? Uh these are things that we normally see in uh Baroque music. Okay. Um but what I want to show you exactly here is that we can use them in any aesthetic. And we're going to start with my own uh prime form. So, uh, we see my own prime form right here. We've seen this a bunch of times already this video, but I want to show you what we mean by using exact sequences. So, let me start from not the beginning, but just, you know, the middle part of this prime form. Again, we don't need to start from the beginning of the melodic idea. So, here is a uh this is this is this part here starting on B flat, the third note. So, B flat uh G, Fsharp, G. Okay. And I chose this particular part because I like this little turn that happens.
I can see that being um sequenced. Okay.
So, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to decide, okay, what do I want this to be repeated at? Like which uh which pitch do I want it to be repeated at? So, what I'm going to do is actually kind of play them all together so I can get the sound world in my head.
And now I'm like thinking in my head, where do I want that to go? I kind of wanted to go to D.
Oh, I kind of like that. Okay, so notice how I kind of in my inner ear.
Oh, I kind of want that top note next to be D.
So, I'm going to do that. Right. And this is all just like we're just in in a flow here by the way. Like I'm not writing any I'm not like writing anything in Selius or Muscore Doro, right? I'm like still in the sketching phase here uh with these melodic ideas.
And it's so important to do this to like go through this phase of exploration, right? using the composer's brain so that when you do sit down to write, you know, bar lines and things like that and actually put stuff to paper, like it's not so difficult like you actually have a crap ton of notes on the on the on the page that you can choose from and it will be more of like solving a puzzle than actually writing something from scratch and that's really the power of uh of knowing these kind of specific techniques. So uh here is uh the here is one uh sequence here. is starting on D, right? So we go up a minor third basically uh or rather major third major third da. Okay. So that means from G to B natural, Fsharp to A sharp and G to B.
Okay.
So that means D right and I might want to go up again.
And now I have to make the decision. Do I want to go up another major third to F sharp or do I want to go up a minor third or do I want to go up a major second or a minor 2? Or do I want to go down? Right? And these are all different kind of sequences that you can do. So for the purposes of this lesson, I'm just going to go up another major third to F#.
So Fsharp, uh, another Dsharp, D natural, and then D#sharp. Right? I would have spelled that a little different, but, uh, it will sound exactly the same. So here we go.
Okay. And then we land on E flat. And now I start to make this connection that we ended on E flat or D sharp which is a perfect fourth away from B flat. And I want to like keep that in the back of my mind that we end on this fourth. Okay.
So let's play that again.
And then from there and now you can start thinking in terms of these other techniques that we thought of, right? We added on this D sharp E flat which reminds me right of the last oops erase that of the last note of the uh prime form. So now I'm thinking maybe I I I now I ended on that E flat. Maybe now I can do a retrograde in the prime form. So let me try that.
Da da da dee da ya de and that's like you know that really is connecting like some uh synapses right of getting these se these sequences that are ramping up in in like tension and we wanted to resolve but how were we going to resolve and now we're resolving right so these sequences are really good in terms of like creating motion and uh nobody does this better than JS Bach, right? But we're doing it in in our own uh various aesthetics and one way that we're doing it of course is with this idea of exact sequences taking a part of the prime form or really any uh version of that prime form then creating a exact transposition and then doing it again. And uh the magic number usually with sequences, right, is three. So usually I don't do more than three of these in a row. Okay, you can do more, but what ends up happening is you kind of get in this in this like merry ground of sequences that's really hard to get off. Like imagine being on a merry ground uh right and uh you got the thing moving and after you've gone through four or five rotations, like it's really hard to stop. It really is hard to get off that merry ground. So, I like this idea of just having three and then getting off like getting on an off ramp. Uh, and you'll see that like composers like JS Boach uh do this a lot. They kind of stick to three maximum when it comes to these exact sequences and they then they have an offramp. Uh, in this case, our offramp was like going back to the prime form uh in retrograde because there was a common tone, right?
That E flat uh which we spell D# sharp, but it's the same note, right? It's the same thing there. So this is another way of thinking about uh what to do with the initial inspiration uh melodic idea you come up with. Okay, that's exact sequences. Next, modified sequences. Now this is a technique where the original melodic pattern is repeated at a new pitch level, but some of the intervals or rhythmic patterns are altered slightly.
Unlike an exact sequence, a modified sequence is more flexible and allows for small changes, making it sound more natural in certain musical context. Now, let me show you what uh what we mean by this. Okay, so this here was an exact sequence that we did. So, let me just erase all that uh for you here so we can restart with what we mean by a a modified sequence. Okay. Now, um, when we're coming up with a sequence, uh, really it's up to kind of that that 1% inspiration to come up with the original set of notes, right? So, here we have our prime form, but uh, I'm going to I'm going to choose just any uh, set of notes here. And, uh, I'm going to choose the first uh, let's see the first uh, four notes. Let's go back to the original. So, I'm going to choose the first uh, four notes here. Uh, and that's going to be, let's see, C, D, B flat, and G. Okay, C, D, B flat, G. D.
Okay. And I have to decide on an interval, right? So, um, instead of going up, I'm going to go down this time. D.
And I'm going to go down by a major second because I want to have one of those notes uh be the same, right?
Because if I go down a major uh let me choose a different color here. If I go down a major second, the nice thing is I have that B flat, right? As a common tone. So I want to keep the common tone some common tones here as much as possible. So now I have Da D.
And if I go exactly, it would be Da minor 6th, A flat, and then a minor 3rd, F. Okay?
And and so on. Okay? And let's do one more just to have three. We'll go down again. Maybe I'll go down to I want another common tone.
Um, let's let's hold off on that common tone actually because I want to show you what I mean by modified sequence. So, if we're kind of sticking right to uh the key of C minor, right?
Da like listening to this, I'm thinking, you know, I really would have liked to have it be in more of a melodic minor mode. So, instead of having it in this de I kind of want to have it be more dee da dee da dee da dee da da da da da da da da. In other words, my going up we have a raise sixth and seventh. Going down we have a flattened sixth and seventh. So now I'm thinking I I kind of want to apply that here. Okay, but using an exact sequence I can't really do that, right? because we have this uh B flat the B flat uh becomes a little bit problematic, right? So what do we do?
Right? Do we just say oh you know we it's a exact sequence, you know, we can't we can't modify it. No, we say well if I I'm hearing that melodic minor sound in my head, uh why don't I just change that note, right? Why don't we just change it? So I'm going to change that B flat, okay, to B natural.
And in melodic minor, remember in melodic minor we have a flat 6 on the way down. So this a flat here actually I can keep it in that case because it's going down. So I'm not going to change that note to to a natural. So we're good there. So now I can reset here and I can uh play this with the B natural instead of the B flat. So let's hear what that sounds like.
And now we're kind of in business when it comes to thinking about this prime form in the key of C melodic minor. So you see when we're sequencing like we don't have to stick to this exact sequence if it doesn't fit our overall uh idea of where we want this melody to go. And uh initially remember I wanted that B flat to be a common tone. Did you see that? So that was my initial thought like I chose that B flat because I wanted it uh I wanted there to be the same note. But now I changed my mind. I said oh I want that to be in melodic minor. So now we have this interesting kind of crunch happening in the melody where I have B flat at the top and B natural at the bottom which is really cool. You know it adds a little bit of tension. So let me play that for you again. de.
So you can hear there's a bit of tension there that we created just by using this idea of a modified sequence. And we can keep going, right? Like I don't have to keep going down. I can I can go back up, right? So let's let's go back up. So B uh B natural C A flat F.
And now maybe I want to go down to E flat. Okay, because E flat is in the key of uh C uh C minor there. So let's do that. Let's go to E flat.
And let's keep the same intervalic relationship, right? E flat, F uh and then we go up a minor 6 to uh uh to D flat. Okay. And then we go down a minor third uh to uh to B flat. Okay. And now we really starting to see that we're getting pitches outside the key of C minor because we see C melodic minor. Uh so we're going to have to fix that, right? We can already see that with the D flat and the and the and the B flat there potentially with the B flat. So let's play this again. D.
So I can I can change this instead of having D flat, I can change both of them, right? I'll change both of them to uh D natural and uh actually I want to end on the tonic. So I'm going to move that B flat to C. And that's it. So I want to change those last two and that'll be the end of my phrase. So let's play that.
D.
And now I have a complete uh melodic phrase there that has a beginning, middle, and end. You can even say once you assign it rhythms to it that it could be possibly a tune, right? And we created that using a modified sequence.
Okay? really really cool and something that I use constantly when I'm writing uh my own music uh which is of course in a very different aesthetic than the music that you're writing. All right.
Now the next thing that we want to think about is intervalic variation. And a lot of this is actually going to be quite related to what we've been doing but we want to just like define these things so that uh they're top of mind while we're composing uh melodic ideas. Okay. Now the first kind of melodic uh intervalic variation rather is expanding intervals.
Now this technique involves creating larger gaps between certain segments of a melody. So if we take our prime form, right, we're going to go always back to our prime form and try to see like where exactly can we have uh certain segments of the prime form be expanded. Right?
Now, there are already by just analyzing, right? There's already intervals that are quite large, right?
We have this one. Okay.
And then it rests here and then we have another big one here.
So now I'm thinking like, okay, if I want to change this, like what would be one way of of doing that while keeping the integrity of the form, right? And one thing I'm thinking about just off the bat is like what if I as a thought experiment, what if I kept the small intervals? So the C to the to the D, the G, F sharp, G, and then the F and the E flat. Like what if I kept those, right?
But then made the large intervals even larger, right? Like what would that be like? So I'm going to do that. That's my thought experiment. I don't I don't know for sure what it will sound like, but I I'm curious to hear it. Okay, so I'm going to try that. Okay, so uh I'm going to go ahead with my purple here and do that. So C D. So instead of going to Da D, I'm going to go to B natural, I'm going to go up a minor second there.
D.
Okay. And then I'm going to keep the other notes to keep the integrity of it. And then instead of going to F, I'm going to go to I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to expand it by a minor 2 to F sharp. So I'm really changing what this prime form is. Actually, I'm like completely changing it. And then we're going to keep the the uh the E flat there. Okay. So really what I did uh is I expanded just two intervals based off of my initial thought okay of keeping the integrity of the smaller intervals but expans expanding by actually expanding the big intervals right and that was just that was my thought experiment in this particular case do I know if it's something I like I have no idea right but uh at least I'm moving a little bit farther away from the initial prime form so I can figure out ways of developing the melody throughout my piece. That's what's what we're really trying to do here, right? So, let me play the prime form again.
Okay. And now let's play the uh expanded interval form.
Mhm. And as you can tell, it has a lot of similar qualities. Uh, but there are some major differences now that I have this thing. I have a major third here which gets revealed. We never had a major third before.
So that's something when our our composer brain starts to can I have a major third there. And then uh the next thing that happens is that we have we have this minor third that shows up at the very top. It's not spelled that way, but it it basically is a minor third which has its own sort of quality. It makes it makes me think that we're kind of like going into E flat.
Kind of makes me think we're going into E flat minor. So now my brain is going there. You see? So by doing these kind of operations which there are many of our brain can start to think of uh we start to get into this again I can't say this enough we start to get into this flow state where we started here and we did an operation now we're here we did another operation then we did here and notice how like I've been I've been talking for over an hour by now something like this and I haven't got a second of writers's block okay this uh prime form right um that uh I came up with like just before uh doing this video, right? Uh was was my 1% inspiration. Everything else I'm doing here is perspiration, right? And I and I guarantee you that when you're doing this, okay, it actually will be fun.
Believe it or not, because when you're getting into that flow state as a human being, especially as us, we're artists, right? It's so much fun because you're you're unlocking parts of your brain that you cannot unlock in a normal everyday environment, right? Like if you're doing your normal everyday your day job, let's say, right? Like we we're not usually unlocking these parts of our brain, right? And that's part of why we like composing is that we can unlock these parts of our brain that we didn't think were there, right? So, I really want to impart this on you as you're going through this video. It's not just a bunch of techniques that we have to memorize. There are literally things that will help you uh get literally from point A to point B to point C to point D in your writing process. And you will start to feel really good uh as you're going through this. And you'll start to see improvement. Okay? Uh as you're going through the weeks, months, uh years of uh of your composing journey.
And that's all literally there is to it.
Okay? Now uh let's move on to the next thing here and that's contracting intervals. Now as you might have guessed uh this is exactly like expanding intervals except that this technique involves creating smaller gaps between certain segments of a melody. Okay. Now uh to do this right uh we are going to take our prime form. Okay. And uh we are we're going to try to uh contract uh some intervals. And uh just for fun, we're going to contract the the small intervals. So we're going to we're going to take uh the C and the D and contract them. Okay? Then we're going to take the G F#arp G and contract it. And then we're going to take the F and the E flat and contract it. And then keep the big intervals. So we're going to do the opposite uh situation here. So, from C to D, my my task is uh to contract them uh using a language that's closer to my aesthetic just for fun. Uh we're going to try doing this. So, uh I'm going to go over to uh my piano tech here and actually start playing around here. So, uh C to D. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to lower uh D by a quarter step. All right. I'm going to go down and do that.
All right. That's what I'm going to do.
That's going to be my task. So C, then this D, uh, half flat. Okay.
All right. I made a mistake here. Let me just get rid of that. Da da.
Okay, that's fun. Now, I want to keep the same interval. So the D, the D B flat minor 6, I want to keep it. So that means I need to take that B flat and turn it down a quarter tone as well to keep the integrity of that interval. All right. So it's going to be around uh me keep it at around 50 cents. Doesn't have to be exact. So that's a minor 6. That's minor 6. So okay, good.
Uh so there we go. There's our uh it's going to be a little bit lower like that. Then I want to go to the G, right?
But we want a minor third. So to get to that minor third, obviously that's not a minor third anymore. We're going to have to take that G and lower it by uh 50 cents there.
Okay.
So that's G half flat. Hope you guys are staying sticking with me here. So again we are this is really the only interval we contracted. Okay. Everything else is the same. Every other interval is the same just to recap. So that that G half flat. Now we got to go down a minor second. Uh so that F sharp will have to be um down a minor second as well. Uh quarter tone.
So that sounds like a minor second, right? So that's an F sharp.
That would be this note. Okay. And then we have the same note there. Uh and here is where I made a mistake, right? And uh we want to catch our mistake. So remember how I said that I wanted the small intervals to contract. So I made a little boo boo there. So we we catch our boo boo. We erase it and we say, okay, I wanted that G half flat to we I wanted this initial this this one here to be smaller. So G Fsharp G. Okay. Uh, now I want that has to that if it's G to F sharp, it's a minor second. So that means we have to go G to F34 sharp which is a quarter step. So we have to apply that to that G half flat. So that G half flat uh is is 50 cents lower than G natural. So that means we need to go to F sharp, right? cuz those two notes are separated by one quarter step which is smaller than the minor 2 which was the original one. So we we're able to contract the intervals that way. So why don't we go ahead and do that? So we want F sharp here then G half flat and remember these are the contracting uh intervals.
Then we uh jump our minor 7th. So G half flat to F half flat. That's a easy one to do.
So F half flat and then uh we go down a major second.
And in this case we have uh E flat. We got to go down quarter step.
That sounds like a major second, right?
So that's E flat down. Okay. And now we have our uh prime form with contracting intervals on the small intervals. So this is what it sounds like. Okay, let's let's see.
Okay, that's interesting. So you can definitely hear it's different there.
You got that little turn and then it kind of sounds the same as the prime form at the end. So you see you can even do this in a microonal language and it's still like not that far removed from the original uh prime form. So, let me play you again the kind of the contracted microonal version and then I'm going to play for you the original version.
So you see in this case it was kind of a little bit of a almost like a shadow like what we created here is a shadow right of this kind of interesting and the only way that we were able to do that right is to use uh this idea of contracting intervals right I wouldn't have been able to kind of like internalize this melody without doing this operation first so again another really uh powerful technique that you can loose um while you're like figuring out what to do uh with your melodic idea. The next thing are embellishments.
Now, not every single piece of music you write is going to have embellishments, okay? But it's important to kind of have them in the back of your mind in case there's something you'd like to uh to use in a piece of music. Okay? So, what do I mean by embellishments? There there are lots of embellishments, okay? Well, we're going to just we're just going to, you know, distill them down to the basic basic ones. Okay. The very first one is a trill. Now, this these are rapid alternations between two adjacent notes, usually a step apart for a specified duration.
Trails are often indicated in music notation with the abbreviation TR placed above the note or with a wavy line extending from the note. The speed and manner of execution can vary depending on the style, context, and era of the music. Now, going back to our prime form here, you know, we don't need this, but there might be a part of the piece where you think like, oh, I really would like to have this kind of like trill on one or more of the notes, and that would be kind of like a characteristic of that passage, right? So again, playing my prime form.
There might be areas of this where I think that I'd like a trill maybe.
So I kind of like that, right? And I used the the 1% inspiration to come up with that, right? Uh I kind of like that. So I'm going to write that down.
So DM and I'm going to put a little B flat and then a little TR there for trill then G F sharp G then I went up to F put a trill there again and then E flat and that's it and in this way I kind of create this uh embellishment on the high notes of the melodic phrase.
Now with these trills you don't necessarily need to have them by step.
You can have them in a larger kind of configuration. So like for example, if you like this, what I can do is go C D B flat and trill with a D. You see? Like this. And then we continue G Fsharp G F trill with an A natural, let's say.
And then we land on our E flat. And that's another way that you can do a trill. So it's not necessarily the step is the most common like the minor second or the major second but you can have trills with really any interval and it creates a nice um kind of juxiposition right between these fast embellishments and like the kind of the normal course of the melodic idea that you have. So here is the uh the original trill that I have.
Okay. Okay. And then here's the the kind of more uh modified one where I have a larger interval.
Okay. And I can also go down, right? I can go down. I don't have to go up. I can go down. I can go uh C D B flat G, right? Go the other way. And then G, Fsharp, G, F. Let's go down to D. And you see when you write by hand, it's so much faster. That's the other thing. It's just so much faster to get your ideas down. So you go Da, right? And that creates a different kind of flavor, right? So it's really important like you don't have to use these trills all the time. Like this is this is not something you should overuse. Uh but it's just something to keep in mind because you can you can trilify let's say your your entire uh melodic uh idea as well like the entire thing can be a bunch of trills and then that could also morph into a harmony right because when you do that you're you're creating harmonic implications when you're doing that. So trills can help morph the melody into a harmony or into a texture and vice versa. So uh this is a tool that I use personally a lot and uh I think it could be used in all sorts of aesthetics because it's been it's been done since the Baroque aesthetic and even earlier than that. Okay. Next embellishment is the grace note. The grace note is one of the most common embellishments. These are very fast notes that occur either right before or right on the beat. If you want the greystone on the beat, it will need to be specified in the music though. So let me show you uh an example of this uh type of uh uh embellishment.
Now if again we take our original prime form here and we write it out. Um we need to assign a grace note. Again, you don't need to put grace notes uh everywhere. Like this is just kind of extra if you feel like your melody needs this. But let's say that you want a grace note to happen uh before before the beat. In other words, before uh landing on that pitch uh in the music in the meter that you're choosing, uh all you would have to do, let's say we want that grace note D.
Yeah, maybe we do that. You know, we put a G.
And I'll put this in a different color here. We put the G here. Grace note.
And that's how you notate a grace note, by the way. put a little tiny uh eighth note and you put a little slash. Some people like to do this kind of thing. Uh uh rather they like to they like to use like a uh 16th note slash or even a triple uh 32nd note slash. I I like the good oldfashioned single line because it's clearer. It's easier to read. And we all know that this means as fast as possible. So 16th notes or 32nd notes. I mean, it's kind of redundant because this already means as fast as possible.
That's just a little side note. Uh, a little pro tip right over there. Uh, but I do see that often in a lot of music as well. Um, so like this is a really nice type of embellishment because it's a very quick turn. Uh, and uh, it's not as pronounced as say a trill trill for example. Let me play that again.
Right. So that's that's one way of doing that. Now, this is going to be harder to show uh without a meter. So, we're going to assign a meter to this so that you can see what I'm saying. So, I'm going to just make this very very basic. D I'm just going to put in two four eighth notes. Very very basic. Okay. Uh just to demonstrate what I mean by uh knowing how to place these grace notes uh in a in a melodic uh line. So here is the prime form uh with eighth notes right in two four and I'll play that for you here and that's it. Now I'll put the grace note before the beat here. So if I have it before the beat, what I mean is that you hear that grace note literally before that second beat of the two four.
Okay, that's one type of grace note.
Another type of grace note that you can do and I'll just take this off here is a grace note that's on the beat. And if you want on the beat, you just remove that line. Okay? So you don't have a slash and uh you put it right before the note. And you'll also I do this a lot. I put a little asterk and I say, you know, uh, grace notes without, um, a slash equal on the beat.
And I would make sure to specify that in my music just to be 100% sure they understand that. So that that way we would hear this D.
So it's it's a very slightly different feel. Uh but if that's what you want, you need to make sure that you notate that. So here's uh again these these embellishments, they're just added things. You don't need to do it, but if there are moments in your music that you think need these um these are the kind of grace notes that you can put and u it's really good to like I said have that prime form, right? Because then you can kind of internalize in your head where do I hear the grace notes? You're not like coming up from it. You're not coming out of it from scratch. And by the way, you can attach these grace notes or any of these embellishments to any of the other forms, the transposed forms, the inverted forms, the retrograde forms, the the sequences, right? I'm just doing it on the prime form here just to demonstrate it for you, but uh you can apply these really to any of the different kind of forms that we discussed in this video lesson.
Moving on to gissando. Now this is a technique characterized by a smooth and continuous glide from one pitch to another creating a seamless sliding effect. Now uh the gissando again with all these embellishments there they're not something I think about constantly uh when I'm writing music but uh there are certain melodies that lend themselves nicely to gissand and I think this is one of them. So if I write down the prime form once again, um just looking at this, right, I can I can see a couple places where I feel like a gissando would uh add a lot of like humanistic characteristics, right? This kind of like singing quality um or even like uh if a violin was playing, I can imagine uh this happening quite easily.
And that's that's between these large intervals. I could see a a gissando happening. And the way I would notate that is just to put a line like this.
So if I were going to play this with a gissando uh and uh it it has more of like like I said a humanistic quality. Uh it adds a little bit more emphasis again on this on this high note, right? And uh it just adds a just adds a different flavor, right? And you can and you can make a big thing out of this in your piece. Now you have gissando introduced in your piece and you can start incorporating that in the harmony or in any other forms of the melody. You can put it in the inner voices in the baseline. And uh I think that applying this to a melodic fragment like this that you already had in a piece for example could do a lot of good and and adding variation uh to the melodic idea uh that you have chosen.
Okay. Okay. So, again, you don't need to do this for every melodic idea. It can go overboard. Uh, but I've seen this done to create kind of a uh more humanistic variation of a melody that you have chosen because if it's just plunking out notes like this, it can get very robotic very quickly.
and adding things like trills, adding things like grace notes, adding things like landi, uh they really help to what I call humanize uh the music that you're writing, especially if it's music that you would like to get played by a a real player at some point down the line, right? So uh those are that's the gissando effect. Okay, the last one I want to talk about here is vado. This is a technique involving a slight and rapid oscillation in pitch used by vocalists and instrumentalists to add warmth, expression, and richness to a sustained note. Now, uh, VBR is not one of those things that we think about right away when we think about a melody, but I feel like it's especially important to think about as you're composing because when you're behind the computers like I am with behind the paper, even behind a keyboard, like VBR is easily something that could be forgotten because that's something that is usually added at the very last step by a performer. But if you're thinking about VBR as you're writing your piece of music, it could it could uh present situations for you where you're thinking, "Oh, maybe I would like to have more VBR, or maybe I would like to have less VBR, or maybe I would like to have wider VBR. Maybe I would like to have more narrow VBR." And I categorize this as part of melody rather than tambber because VBR, what it's doing is really affecting the pitch of the instrument. And that's really what we're talking about when we're thinking about melodies. So, if we go back to our prime form here, and I want to just focus on not the entire phrase here, but like let's say the first uh uh or even just like let's say the last three notes here. Uh I'm I'm going to erase this gissando. So if we have these three notes G, uh, F and B flat, uh, E flat rather D, you know, I might think D.
I might want a slight vbrto on that last note. And notice how by doing that, I naturally made it longer as well. So I'm going to put a half note there. And I want to put this little like wavy thing.
And that signifies my like fast verb.
And uh I like notating these things because it shows the player like what uh what I wanted something different than what they would have played. Da that would have been what they would normally play. But this is going to be something a little more than what they would normally do.
Now, um, if you're writing for a string instrument, for example, they're going to do, uh, their own kind of VBR. That's just what they do, right? But if you want something a little more than what they would normally do, then I would notate it as such. Uh, you can notate it like that. You can write things like uh, molto vra, right? That's something you can do. Uh, you can write poco vat, right? And so on. Those are things that you can do. And to to cancel out VBR, you just write ordinario o r d. And that will cancel out the vibra. Now I've written pieces where I have like very intense uh vbrto where I have uh things that kind of look like this and then it goes like that and then it does that.
And this is the this is a fluctuation of vbrto where I'm going very wide.
I'm I'm I have a very wide oscillation of pitch and then it gets narrower over time and then I have let's say an ordinary note there. So, uh again this is another type of embellishment. Uh don't overuse it especially if it's not in your aesthetic. Um but there's something about like having in mind the the not just the pitches you're choosing but the fluctuation of the pitch that depending on your aesthetic will really help uh variate the music that you're writing. So you can you can again in summary you can you can notate VR by using words multival pco v uh ordinario or or even the you can even not have vbrto if you just want a straight tone non vbr you know straight tone no vbr you can even notate non vbrto right and all those cancel out by the way with the notation or o r d or ordinario. Okay, you can notate it that way. You can notate it again uh with these kind of picture things where you could just write a squiggly line. You can even do it by hand. And there are also programs out there uh like Adobe Illustrator uh that create these kind of graphics and then you can import them uh into your uh notation software as well.
really really interesting tool to use especially when you're thinking about pitch in a micro perspective like like literally just thinking especially if you write music with very little pitch uh like the composer Jachinto Chelsea he's very much into this I'll just write the name down here Jachinto uh Chelsea uh this becomes very very important in your compositional uh toolbox okay so that's a vbrat okay the very next thing I want to talk about here is dynamics. Now you might be thinking dynamics like what does it have to do with melody? Um it has very little to do with melody in terms of the succession of pitches that occur in time, right?
Dynamics have nothing to do with that.
But often times what uh happens is I have students that wonder like what do I do with this melody? And I and I and I literally ask them, have you tried doing it again louder? And they look at me like I'm crazy. Uh or have you tried doing it again softer? And again they look at me like I'm crazy. Or have you ever or even another another thing that happens is have you thought of the the dynamic level at all and often times uh I get a blank stare said no I I I do the dynamics at the end right I think this is a crucial crucial crucial mistake so let's get into dynamics so what are the different things that you should be doing with dynamics right you can repeat them right you can repeat melodies at different volumes and what this does really is it also shows like the emotional uh intensity of the piece of music that you're writing, right? Like are you keeping track of how many loud parts are there, how many soft melodies are there, right? How many metho melodies are there? Are you keeping track of that? Right? Because if you put that all at the end, you're you are not helping yourself in determining the structure of the piece of music. How loud or soft something is is a very like uh uh visceral thing that we we as humans we immediately perceive that just like how we perceive rhythm in the previous lesson. We immediately perceive uh the loudness of something, right? Our ears say, "Oh, that's too loud." Or if it's too soft, what happens is you get get to the edge of your seat here, you say, "Oh, I can't hear that. Let me let me get a little closer." Right? There is a perception uh situation happening uh when uh you're repeating melodies, right, at different volumes. Okay? Very very crucial that you that you have this at the top of your mind uh when you're composing. Okay? The second thing with dynamics is to use subito dynamics which means a sudden change in volume and this can be written using the word subito. So let me give you an example here. If we go back to our uh our handy dandy uh iPad here I want to actually just play you right the uh the prime form again right C D B flat. Hopefully uh we're we're not getting sick of this yet, but uh just important to have like one example to go off of. And let's say like I didn't put a dynamic for this at all this entire time. But let's say we want to assign a dynamic. Uh let's say that this is uh I'm going to put it in blue.
Let's say that this whole thing is a piano. So it's very soft.
But let's say that I want to put subtoforte you know so right there on that F# I I want it there right I don't have a particular reason but I want it there and the way I would notate that is F su period and this in your notation software is going to be an italics just so you know it's not a normal uh kind of font so I would play this And then and I'm I'm even going back to piano here. So see I'm I'm really re relegating the dynamics and it changes, right? If the whole thing is mezzoforte, it's very flat, right? But if if I start doing these little slight things, I'm adding emphasis, right? and it's changing the character of the melody completely. Right? So don't discount repeating things, right? Repeating things at different dynamics. So if I just do the whole thing uh in piano, right? And then maybe the second time we do it in forte um don't discount it piano then forte.
It completely changes the character of the music. Okay. The last one I want to talk about is gradual change. In other words, incremental increase or decrease in volume throughout a passage. Uh we use hair pins or if it's a very long passage, you can notate rando poco poco or diminuendo poco poco. And I would I would write it like that as well in italics just like subito. Now if we go to our prime form here, right? Uh we can we can do the same thing. Um I can do I can go crescendo poco poco.
Okay, we can do a few things, right?
Let's do the first crescendo poco poco to forte, right? And you can also just write that uh if the passage is very very long, you use the crescendo poco poco. But in this case, it's a short passage. So the hairpin is probably the best. So right, so that's very different than if I just had the whole thing in meforte.
Right now this might sound obvious to you, right? And I hope it does. Right?
The key thing is that each one of these things that I'm showing you by themselves is obvious. The main thing is that when you're composing, they become top of mind. And you remember that it's literally 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. This needs to be top of mind to avoid the the writer's block.
Okay. So, let's uh delete all this stuff again. Let's let's do let's do something else. Let's do a different kind of hair pin. What if I want to go to forte here?
then immediately subie to a piano and then go back to forte. So now what I what I created here was a very a fast increase in dynamic and then a shorter uh uh or or rather a more gradual increase in dynamic. So that's what I'm thinking about doing now. So let's try it.
And this is a different character, right, than the other two that I that that we mentioned. And by the way, I only did it in the prime form. I didn't do it in any other form. Right? So again, uh it's important that you uh have this top of mind, these dynamics, right? Um it's so crucial because it changes the character of the piece and it changes your immediate perception, right? That do you want to back off when you hear it, right? It's too loud. Or do you want to get a little closer, right?
Because you're on the edge of your seat, right? And dynamics really help in establishing that uh in your piece of music. All right? So to summarize all of this, right, tone rows, we don't want to underestimate these. And often times I start with a tone row uh when I'm creating a piece of music. And you can uh if you don't know where to start, right, you can start from a scale, right? You can start from a scale and then build off uh the tone row there. Or you can start from a piece of music, right, with uh with my uh score study video. You can start from a piece of music and choose a tone row uh based on a part of a piece of music that you really like. Right? So, don't underestimate the use of these tone rows. They're so so crucial to get out of that initial step of generating a melodic idea. The next thing are sequences. Now, these are your friends.
Use them, but don't abuse them. Three is usually the magic number. And you can use them in either an exact way or again in a modified way. Right? Uh the next one is innervalic variation. Don't be afraid to change the innervalic structure of your melodies. Changing a few of them here and there, even if you didn't initially hear them that way, may surprise you. And remember, we can uh we can expand some of the intervals in our melodic ideas. We can contract some of the intervals in our melodic ideas. And again, you might be surprised by what you get when you do this. And you might even come up with a brand new prime form. You might like delete the prime form you had originally because you liked the one that you created with innervalic variation. All right. The very next thing we talked about are embellishments. And while not absolutely needed for every aesthetic, in some places they can enhance your melodies. There are many kinds of embellishments that can be studied especially from recordings of composers like Vivaldi and Bach. And again, you know, don't overuse these unless it's a piece of music where you're literally thinking about embellishments top of mind. I just feel like sometimes um trills, gissandi, grace notes, vibra, for whatever reason when we're thinking about melody, they're not usually things that are discussed, but they can be things that really elevate a melodic idea depending on the aesthetic uh that you're going for. All right. Now, dynamics. These are not an afterthought.
Okay. And let me say that again for those in the back, dynamics are not an afterthought. Please, please think of dynamics, okay? Because it could save you a lot of headache uh later on uh when you're trying to decipher the character of the melody that you're writing. Not all melodies are meforte, okay? Uh some are forte, some are pianos, some require gradual crescendos and day crescendos, right? Uh some require subto uh changes in dynamics.
Okay, you need to give dynamics a chance here and do it early on the process so that it can affect later decisions that you make while you're creating your particular piece of music. And I want to end here with a quote by Fanny Mendelson Hansel. Melody is the soul of music and it is through melody that I convey my deepest emotions. Now um during this time like the romantic uh period right melody was a big big big thing. I mean, melody was the thing, right? A melody closely followed by harmony. Uh nowadays, depending on the aesthetic you're writing, melody is not not really the most most crucial thing, right? Uh but it is true. I believe it is the soul of music because uh we as human beings gravitate towards these single successive pitches and even today you know we we grab on to tunes that are catchy uh or even just uh uh lines individual lines that are happening in a piece of music when we're singing right uh we can't really sing harmonies right we have to kind of arpeggiate them in other words we're we're singing melodies right so uh in this way it really is the soul of the music when you really think about it because when we're singing as human beings, we can really only sing melodies, right? That's the best approximation we can do of our own music by ourselves without using an instrument. Okay? And she's saying that through through the melody that she's conveying her deepest emotions. And I would even argue that, you know, uh your emotion comes from that first 1% inspiration of putting down the notes.
But, uh, you know, your brain also has, uh, you know, your brain is where all your emotions are housed anyway. So using the composer's brain, we are creating another set of emotions, right?
It's just you're you're doing it with a set of parameters uh that at the end of the day, we want to convey a set of emotions from. So um again, make sure uh to to use these things one at a time, right? And the these parameters, don't try to do them all in one session. Do them gradually over time. And I promise you over time the the creation and the development of your melodic ideas will get easier and easier and easier as you start uh incorporating these methods and they start becoming more and more top of mind for you. They'll become a lot more natural for you and then you'll get into that really really great zone which is the flow state and then you'll really be cooking. So let's go out there and compose.
Now, at this point, you have the exact tools I use to build melodies, then develop them over time. But here's the thing. Melody is only one piece of the composing puzzle along with rhythm, harmony, and tambber. So, if you want a complete framework for how to work with all the elements of music when you're composing, check out this video next where I'll walk you through my exact four-step process for composing by writing a new piece for you live on camera. I'll be sitting somewhere over here on my composing desk. Go ahead, click that video.
Related Videos
0:30
Music Theory
We Turned to War - Epic Orchestral Metal - For Broken Bonds and Final Battles
WaveEchoes-universe
226 views•2026-04-21
56:17
Music Theory
Speaking of Music David Hush
RoyalSocNSW
132 views•2020-04-28
13:08
Music Theory
How to Identify Chords Written on Sheet Music
LessonsOnTheWeb
202K views•2016-10-28
9:05
Music Theory
Essential II-7 V7 I Lines/Progressions you must know
JazzDuets
24K views•2021-04-06
28:55
Music Theory
Barry Cooper speaks for Beethoven 10th Symphony
tommyvichev
10K views•2011-10-08
3:40
Music Theory
THEME & VARIATIONS
ecai
820 views•2020-05-17
3:34
Music Theory
MUS 2702 - 03 - Elided and Overlapping Phrases
bfuhrman
268 views•2019-08-02
3:44
Music Theory
Gloria - Act 1 for Alto
Whatchdis1
3K views•2013-02-07
Trending
13:25
Business
Playstation NO DISC/NO BUY Fight Is Over...
DavidJaffeGames
4K views•2026-07-23
22:40
Business
Steam and Xbox Just Dropped The Hammer On PlayStation
OhNoItsAlexx
9K views•2026-07-23
16:52
Anthropology
Americans Confused in Australia for 17 Minutes Straight
IWrocker
17K views•2026-07-23
20:36
Business
SuperBike Factory Has Gone... What's Next for the Motorcycle Industry?
thatbikersimon
11K views•2026-07-22