Why does that feel OK slow and sounds so bad fast?
Oh!
Hey guys, in this video I'm going to write a brand new melody in the sentence form.
After I released the period form video I followed it up with a new melody in the period form,
and so now that I've released the sentence form video I'm going to follow that up with this one.
I'm going to write a brand new melody from scratch,
just going from a blank Sibelius sheet to a finished theme.
If you haven't watched the sentence form video yet, that's where I get into some of
the details explaining the different parts of the form and how they work together.
Today I'm going to be a little more focused
on writing but I will explain what I'm doing as I go along.
The goal for the end of the video is to have an 8 bar theme in sentence form
in lead sheet style, so melody with chord symbols.
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So like I said, I'm starting here with a blank page.
The only thing I know so far is that I want to do eight bars
because that's the textbook, classic, well-structured form for the sentence.
So I have eight blank bars here and other than that
I don't really have a plan of what to do next.
Some things I like to do before I write is make some of the decisions
that can make it easier to get my ideas going.
So some of the things I can do without even thinking about any music is decide on what sort
of key or what sort of mood I want, what sort of tempo, what sort of meter, and all those things.
So for the period form video I did a minor key so I think
just to be different I'll do a major key theme this time.
Because the sentence form has some inherent drama
and some action kind of built into it, I'm leaning towards a faster tempo.
And also just to maybe change the pace I'll do something in a triplet feel, so maybe 3/4 or 6/8.
I'm going to wait to kind of experiment with ideas and see what comes up there.
I'm leaning towards a major key theme at a faster tempo in some sort of triplet meter.
I think just by maybe random selection I'll go with A major.
There's really no reason behind that decision,
it's just I have to pick a key so why not pick the A key.
So here we go with A major.
And then the next thing for me to do is come up with a basic idea.
That's going to be a two bar idea here that is kind of the central,
most important, primary idea that represents the whole theme.
I'm going to then follow that with a repetition of the idea
and then we'll worry about the second half later.
So the first thing I usually do when looking for an idea
is just kind of noodle around at the keyboard.
There are some dangers to doing that because you tend to
kind of fit into the same patterns a lot of times but it usually works for me.
So I said I was gonna do A major and I said I wanted something kind of triplety so...
So I'm just gonna kind of noodle around, looking for some ideas.
I'm gonna play around in a major triad, see what I can come up with that catches my ear,
that just kind of feels interesting and feels like something I can work with.
So into a 4/4 thing, let's try to think a little more 6/8. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
You know what I'm gonna go with that because it's pretty good, it works for me starting.
So like I said, I wanted to go with a 6/8.
I really just found this kind of noodling around.
As I said, I want this to be a faster tempo.
So we'll go with dotted quarter note is, let's try 130, see what happens.
Obviously not what I wanted.
Yeah okay, I think that's pretty good.
It's a little fast.
Add a piano part here.
Something's just kind of grounding the meter down there.
Oh what am I doing here now?
I see the problem. OK. That helped me.
I don't know why I knew it was sounding wrong.
It wasn't what was going on in my head and it just wasn't quite making sense to me.
That was the problem.
I was just shifted by an eighth note.
So that will feel more of what I want.
It's a little fast.
OK, now for the sentence form after you do your basic idea, which you can see revolves
pretty heavily around this A major triad with the exception of the B in two spots,
everything else is in that A major triad.
The basic idea is kind of keeping us, it's giving us some material to work with.
We can see some some shapes and some motives that we can play with.
And it's also just very grounded in that tonic key, that tonic A major space.
So the next thing you do in the sentence form for bars three and four is you repeat your basic idea.
So in this case rather than repeat it exactly I'm going to
take the second half and where the first time I went down second time it went up.
Because if we just do it on its own...
It feels very copy pasty to just do it exactly how it was.
I do think it's okay to copy paste that part of it because then it's very clear
that we are having a repetition and we're coming back to something we've already had.
However I don't want to over do just everything is exactly the same.
I want to feel like it's growing and it's going
somewhere and the simple thing to do there is to just go up.
I mean probably when it went down to an E here it's probably going
to sound pretty good to go up to the E on the other hand.
And I have to decide do I want it to go up to the E or step up through the D?
I think I like going directly to the E, kind of anticipating that E.
Let's just put a phrase mark over that whole thing to mark that as an idea.
And so here's where we are at so far.
Great, and that whole thing is with an A major review out of the way.
So the next thing I need to do after I've laid out my basic idea and the
repeat of the basic idea is move into the continuation.
The continuation is where the action happens.
It's where the movement is and usually the best way to get there is to either have
more of something or to have a harmonic sequence or to do both of those things.
So in this case I'm going to consciously think of doing both of those things.
Some sort of harmonic pattern that's going to lead me towards the cadence
while I'm also going to probably fragment my ideas, use just a snippet of the basic idea
and repeat that through the harmonic sequence.
So the basic idea's main motive is that, so that's what I'm going to drive with.
You know I can repeat that lick four times in the continuation
before landing into some sort of cadential phrase.
Sometimes I actually like to write the cadence
after the continuation and sometimes I like to write it before.
I think in this case I'm ready to just go straight into the continuation.
I think I'm going to go pretty traditional here.
I think I'm going to move into the IV chord which is going to be subdominant harmony.
It's going to feel like we're moving forward harmonically.
We've been stuck on this A and then launching into a D is going to feel like,
you know, something is actually happening.
So we've been here this whole time, now we're gonna go there.
It's gonna feel very bright and uplifting and very satisfying.
So we're up here with the melody at the moment.
Let's do that.
We're gonna do a little pickup.
And now just in my head I'm already hearing...
All right so I know I want to land on that and it's going to be a D.
What I'm trying to decide next is where to continue it, where to roll.
Because I think I want to end up with...
I'm already feeling kind of an E sus thing, and an E here to have a half cadence.
Because I feel like this whole thing could actually be kind of the first half
of a much wider theme, a much larger theme that is 16 bars long.
So this time through it'll be a half cadence, second time through a complete cadence.
Today I'm just doing the half cadence version of the theme but...
I'm thinking I'm going from the D, I want to get to the E7,
but I don't want to get there just through playing diatonic harmony.
I want to get there something a little more interesting.
So I'm saying can I move through some of the kind of related major chords.
In a video I talked about using chords by thirds, thirds a step away.
So third a step away from A we could use F major, might be really nice, or the C major
or maybe both.
So is there a way to kind of step through?
That could be.
So is there a way, that's what I'm saying, is there way to get through the D into the F.
Keep going up a third to the A.
Keep going up to this C.
That could be interesting, or if we're going by minor thirds D to the F to an Ab to a B.
And then that will set us up really nicely for the E7, so let's do that.
That's gonna be nice.
So just to lay out the harmony, harmonic pattern, the sequence we're going here is up a minor third.
And that ended up, just experimenting, I was able to see, like, "Hey,
that leads to the B7 which is a secondary dominant to the E7. It's just a fifth away."
That relationship is going to work out really nicely.
So let's see...
So the melody to fit with that would be.
Ha,
not great.
I'm going to play it here.
Not getting quite the amount of forward movement I want there.
Kind of the melody is telling me to go to that A and it's not quite.
That would be an Fmaj7, which is a thing, you know.
Oh that. All right.
We could, we could do like a suspended kind of thing there, so...
All right this is the trickiest part for sure.
That basic idea and the repeat were pretty easy.
OK, let's see,
Maybe even just do that, actually.
It's not great, that's why I'm getting so stuck here.
Hmm.
All right, I had an idea that will violate some of the rules I first laid out in the beginning
but, you know, what if I went to the D here, the F here, Ab here and the B7, maybe even do a sus.
We'll see what works here.
So I'm stretching that continuation out.
That's actually part of what I like so much about the sentence form is
the fact that you can do that, that you can play with the form.
That you can stretch things and move things and it just
flows and you can keep going and going until you decide to land into that cadence.
What I'm feeling is just that it's not,
I'm not quite getting the melody to do what I want it to do when it's crunched into that space.
So I'm going to experiment a little bit in this space instead.
So wait what did I do.
I do want to end up there, I think.
Yeah, I like that.
So
let's hear it, and I'm just filling that one space.
I just want to match this.
I think
I want to go on that C#, which I guess is okay.
I don't know why you need to be...
Yeah all right, I like that.
I'll just tweak that to say B9.
That is not what I intended.
What was that?
Why did that sound so bad?
Hang on, that did not sound good after listening to it in context.
It's funny that in the micro it worked.
When I was just looking at that one bar I was like "All right, yeah. That's going to work."
And then when I zoomed out and listened to the whole
thing I was like "This is not what I intended."
We're still a hair fast.
Why does that feel okay slow and sounds so bad fast?
Oh! Dumbass.
All right, it's cause I wanted a G# so D#.
I don't love it yet.
I'm going to add a lower part just chunking out the cords and see how I feel about that.
I'm gonna ditch, ditch the seventh here.
Maybe I'll keep it there but...
And just for consistency why don't we make this violin.
All right.
Something is not, you know, my favorite thing going on with this B here.
But I'm pretty happy with it.
And like I said before, I would probably take this and add a second half to it.
I would repeat maybe at least the first four bars, maybe the first five bars,
and then lead towards a new space, towards some sort of perfect cadence.
I think overall it's pretty good for whipping up a quick new theme
following the sentence form, coming from scratch, just having no idea what to write.
I think this is kind of interesting and there's ideas
to play with that could be used further in the piece.
You know this, this lick particularly just has so much potential inside of it to be used and
used and used in development and transitions and B themes and all sorts of other places.
So let me know what you think.
Is this useful to watch me kind of go through my mistakes
and redo things and come up with parts maybe I don't even like?
Would you rather I chop it up and just say "here's my basic idea. chop chop.
Here's a continuation," through to the end in like a five to ten minute video?
Either way I would appreciate you letting me know and I'll see in the next one!