The_Complete_Idiot%27s_Guide_To_Music_Theory

104
Part 3: Tunes
Simplifying a rhythmically complex melody.
Stay in Time
A melody that doesn’t follow the normal bar-line breaks.
Note
More-experienced composers
are capable of
changing time signatures
within a melody, thus
accommodating lines that
don’t fit within a steady
time signature flow.
It’s also possible, especially when you’re first starting out, to create a melody that
doesn’t strictly follow the pattern of your chosen time signature. For example,
you could create a six-beat melody, which doesn’t fit well in a four-beat 4/4 world.
You want to pace your melody so that it fits within your chosen time signature.
That means creating a melody that can easily be divided into measures, without
having extra beats left over. In fact, it’s a good exercise to write out your melody
without bar lines, and then make sure you can easily figure out where to draw
the bars to create your measures. If you can’t easily fit your melody into measures,
think about rephrasing your rhythms, or changing the rest periods between
sections of your melody.
Along the same lines, make sure you can easily tell where the first beat of the
measure is throughout your melody—especially in the first and last measures.
You don’t want your melody to feel “offbeat,” in the strictest sense of the
phrase. You want your melody to end on a beat that feels right; otherwise your
listeners will find themselves stumbling in place when “one” isn’t where it’s supposed
to be.
Set Up—and Resolve—Tension
One of the most common melodic techniques is to divide your melody into two
parts, and set up a harmonic tension in the first part that is then resolved in the
second part. This gives your melody a distinct form, and its own internal logic;
it also helps to propel the melody from the first part to the second.
One way to create tension is to end the first part of your melody on something
other than the tonic of the scale. (When you’re factoring in the chord structure—
which you’ll learn in Chapter 10—you’ll find that tension is achieved by ending
the first part of the melody on a IV or V chord.) Practically, you can create tension
by ending a phrase with the second, fifth, or seventh notes of the scale—
which correspond to the notes in the scale’s V chord, if you’re reading ahead.