I hear a lot of melodies from student composers that seem to go nowhere.
They just aimlessly revolve around the same pitch center.
They don't have a satisfying contour and basically they just feel stuck.
Today we're going to learn a five-step process for writing a melodic skeleton that will serve
as the guiding line for your melody.
Once you have this skill down your melodies will be more expressive, your form will be
more satisfying, and overall you'll be writing better music.
These steps are based on Chapter 5 from the book 'Harmony through Melody' by Charles Horton
and Lawrence Ritchie where they explain their approach to composing a cantus firmness or
as we're calling it in this video a skeleton.
Step 1 is super easy - choose an opening pitch.
Horton and Richie want you to always start on the I chord which means you're limited
to the root third or fifth of the tonic.
For example in the key of G you can start with G, B, or D.
The authors call these three pitches the principal tones of the mode and describe them as each
having their own characteristic properties.
The root represents stability and resolution.
The fifth expresses a controlled tension - a balanced force, and the third is the least
stable and most mobile.
Honestly, I think it's easy to overthink it and which opening pitch you choose doesn't
really matter that much.
Just pick one of the three notes and let's move on to step two.
Step two is to choose your melodic cadence.
This just means your last two notes.
In their very traditional approach the choices are either II-I or VII-VIII both of which
come from the V chord of the key.
So even melodically we're also implying a harmonic cadence.
So, notice how we went from setting up the beginning all the way to immediately establishing
the ending.
This is important.
A lot of those aimless wandering melodies never reach a goal because they don't have
a goal to reach.
And again whether you choose II-I or VII-VIII is not a life or death decision.
For our example I'll start on the root and end with a II-I cadence.
Pick a Cadence and then let's go to step three.
Step three is to outline the melody's contour.
Now, I do know that music is sound but the visual metaphors of curves and shapes really
are helpful for writing a melody that develops in an interesting way.
Horton and Richie have a unique way to come up with this contour which is to draw it in
the air with your hand.
So maybe you start high and you work your way down with some bumps along the way.
Or you start low and progressively make bigger climbs until settling back down at the end.
Then you lightly draw that contour you came up with on the staff between your opening
and closing pitches.
This reminds me of a video by David William Hearn demonstrating staff pad where he plotted
out the main gestures of his composition with these sketches before going back and filling
in the actual notes.
This might be the most important of all the steps because the whole point of this skeleton
is that we're trying to avoid those flat lines that go nowhere.
So by plotting out a curve you are being very conscious of giving your line direction.
And just like the first two steps the specific choice is not terribly important it's just
a guideline.
You don't have to follow it literally but you are guaranteeing that you're being intentional
with your writing.
So to continue our example let's plan for a shape like this.
Step four is to use that contour and compose the middle.
Horton and Richie recommend you aim for a length of around 9 to 16 notes and that you
write four or five notes at a time.
Try out different things until you find something you like.
Otherwise, if you decide on one note and then decide on the next note your line can end
up feeling clunky and disjointed.
So using your contour to guide you, try to carve out the shape using a balance of steps
and leaps.
Wide leaps, meaning leaps of a fifth or more, need special treatment.
The author's rules are a bit over complicated but basically they advise preparing and resolving
the wide leap preparing means stepping into the first note before leaping in the opposite
direction, like this
and resolving means to step away from the second note of the leap in the opposite direction,
like this
Like I said it's a bit complicated because they have a bunch of situations where it's
okay to prepare and not resolve, or the opposite.
If you prepare a leap of a fourth you don't need to resolve it, if you have two leaps
in a row one of them has to be a third, and so on.
For practical purposes getting started just be aware that wide leaps do tend to stick
out that doesn't mean don't use them it just means you should treat them with care.
Also avoid leaps of a tritone and avoid a line with notes all going in the same direction
where the lowest and highest notes outline a tritone no tone should appear more than
three times in the whole line.
This is a major point because often if you analyze those melodies that feel aimless and
weak you'll find that they keep revolving around or coming back to the same exact note.
So limiting any 1 tone to only happening three times will help you break that habit.
The last consideration for the middle part and a pretty important one is to make sure
your line hits a single highest and lowest point.
The highest pitch they call the apogee and they recommend that you do not approach and
leave it by leap or it will sound too isolated.
The lowest pitch they call the perigee and that one they say is okay to approach and
leave by leap.
What's critical for both the apogee and perigee is that you only reach them once.
I've actually talked about this before in a video about phrases and if you look at many
successful melodies you will notice that the highest and lowest pitches only ever happen
one time in the phrase.
And the last tip is to sing your melody as you write it because a melody that is singable
is more likely to be strong and memorable.
Okay so there was a lot more to take in for this step.
I'll start by working out my first four or five notes which in the case of this curve
will include the perigee.
Next let's follow the curve up toward an apogee
and finally we will bring it back home to our cadence
So here is our completed skeleton
Step five is to actually use the skeleton!
Figuration, non-chord tones, etc., etc., are a whole other topic I'm not going to get into
right now.
The quick and dirty version is that you're going to use each note of your skeleton as
an anchor.
Any motific ideas scales arpeggios are going to latch on to that point.
So here's an example of taking the full skeleton we've come up with in this video making it
more active and interesting more like an actual melody, while still respecting that underlying
skeleton.
I think I've said it enough that using a hidden skeleton to guide your melody will vastly
improve your lines, but it's still possible to mess it up with too many ideas or inconsistencies.
Which is why you really can't afford to miss this video here where I explain a simple technique
that will build on what you learned here and instantly make your melodies twice as good!
Thanks for watching, I'll see you in the next one.