Hi everyone, my name is Jacinta Clusellas, and I am a composer and a
Teaching Artist at the New York Philharmonic. Today we will explore
different ways of developing a melody. For this activity you will need: pencil
and paper, any instruments that you have at home, including your own voice, and any
recording device that you have with you, such as a phone, a tablet, or a computer.
Once we come up with a melodic idea, there is so many things that we can do
to develop it. Today I will walk you through different ways of developing
your melody, and at the end of this video, you will have a melody, several
variations, and you will start thinking of your own ways of developing a melody.
Here we go! Don't overthink it; just try singing or
playing a melody, and once you find one you like, make sure to record it or
notate it right away. If you need a little bit more time for this, you may
pause the video now. So here is my melody:
Okay, so now we will look at six different things that we can do with our
melodies. Make sure to record each one of these ideas. The first one is very simple;
we will just repeat our melody twice.
Try doing this with your melody!
Great! Next, I will try playing my melody backwards:
Now, I will try adding rests to my melody. I will add one rest after the first note
in my melody, and another rest after the second note.
You can try adding the two rests after the first two notes, or anywhere else in the melody. Next, I will
go back to my original melody, and I will try to develop it by changing its
texture. There are so many ways of doing this. Today, I will try to change the
texture by adding my voice and singing and playing my melody at the same time.
What other ways of changing your texture can you think of? If you'd like, you may
pause the video and try to find options. Now, I will try adding harmony to my
melody. The way I would do this is singing my melody while I play different
chords with my guitar to see how my melody sounds over different chord
progressions.
If you don't have a harmonic instrument with you, such as a guitar or a keyboard,
what you can do instead is changing the rhythm in your melody. For example, like
this:
Once I started adding harmony and changing the rhythm in my melody, I felt
like I also wanted to change some of the notes in my melody. This is what I will
do next: I will repeat my melody several times
and I will change some of the notes each time I play it.
Now, there is one more thing that we can do, and this is throwing our melody away!
Sometimes if we get tired of our melodies, the best choice can be to let
it go and start again with a brand new idea.
Thank you for exploring all these different variations with me. Now it's your
turn to think of other things that you can do with a musical idea. Make sure to
write your ideas down and record any melodies and variations that you come up
with. If you like the melody and variations that you created today, you
can continue to develop this into a new composition. Have fun!