dissecting music

Welcome to the first step into the fascinating world of Melody. The following introduction is ment to provide a solid overview of what melody means, so that the reader can better relate to the concepts I will elaborate on when it comes to the actual making of music. As melody and harmony go hand in hand, I would suggest reading up on harmony first if you havent already. I brought a few really useful concepts to paper and most of the melody stuff will be built upon the harmony music theory. These articles will also heavily rely on additional ones that provide in depth information about specific topics. Just like in my elaborations on harmony, I will use a lot of handdrawn pictograms, that will make the concepts easier to grasp.

What does Melody mean?

Melody, just like harmony, is the interaction of two or more different pitches. Therefore, any rules that apply for harmony are applicable to melody as well. It is important to understand that these two have an interdependant relationship and that melody on top of harmony must itself be considered harmony, and treated as such. If there is a harmonic context provided, melodic ideas that fit into the same context should be used. The same is true vice versa: If one starts with a melody and wants to add chords, one has to make sure they complement the melody. In the first case, the melody can go beyond the implications of the initial harmonic context and by doing so define it, in somewhat of a “higher resolution”. The latter case is called a harmonization: finding chords that fit to a melody. Here there is a lot of freedom to be taken as many chords will work for the same melodies. We’ll tackle this process, once we worked through the introductory articles.  Let’s now discuss the basics of melody playing/writing.

First we have to take a look on how melody can be used in compliance with already established harmony. From there we can explore what the key differences between harmony and melody are and whether those bring any new rules we have to keep in mind.

The melodic application of a chord is called an arpeggio. The only difference between a chord and an arpeggio is, that the notes of the latter are not played at the same time. For instance, a C Major Arpeggio has the same notes as a C Major chord, but the notes are played one after the other or in any other order. You may think of an arpeggio as a scattered chord. Generally melodies should contain notes of the chords being played, which make Arpeggios a logical starting point.

Check out Arpeggios I to learn how to play them on the guitar. I will eventually write some basic guide to the piano that will also incorporate arpeggios but I don’t feel competent to explain fingerings and technical stuff. The concepts I’ll talk about now will be universally applicable. Whenever techniques are discussed I will provide a link to articles going further in depth. Some of those articles have yet to be added, but they’ll be up soon.

First of all, lets take a look on all the possible cases of how melody could be used. Let’s go through them.

• An interval-based melody with harmonic context

• An arpeggio-based melody with harmonic context

• A scale-based melody with harmonic context

• A melody with chromaticisms and harmonic context

Whenever we have underlying chords, it is much easier to make sense out of melody. The way to do this, is to see if the notes in the melody are part of the chord that is being played at the moment. If they are, it may be useful to know which exact chord tones are being played. Is it the root, the third, the fifth, the seventh? If the note isnt contained in the chord, keep stacking thirds on top of the chord until you find the right one. If you still don’t find it, it means that the melody deviates from standard minor & major note material. In the case of an interval- or arpeggio-based melody this process is pretty straight forward. If the melody is scale based or if it has chromaticisms in it (notes that arent part of the diatonic scale you’re in), you have to analyse it in terms of strong beats and weak beats. We’ll get to that soon. Now, what if we don’t have an underlying harmonic context?

• An interval-based melody without harmonic context

• An arpeggio-based melody without harmonic context

• A scale-based melody without harmonic context

• A melody with chromaticisms without harmonic context

Now we have only a melody to work with. If it is based on arpeggios we can easily determine what the underlying chords could be. Of course the exact chords that correspond to the arpeggios would work, or they might have more or less density. So, if tetrad arpeggios are being played, the chords could be either triads or tetrads. Similarly, if triad arpeggios are being played, the chords may either be triads or tetrads.  They could also be of even higher or lesser complexity. We could also use some substitutions or superimposition, once we understand those concepts. In most cases the harmony tends to remain rather simple though, so that the composer or improviser has more freedom in his melodic expression.

If the melody is intervallic, it is much harder to find the right chords. Sometimes they don’t even exist. Imagine the melody alternating between the root and the fifth. Since there is no third, we don’t know the primary nature of the underlying chord. Actually, nobody knows – and we can use this ambiguity to our advantage. We could play one measure of major followed by one measure of minor. Works like a charm, and sounds cool! There are much more possibilities that you’ll pick up gradually.

When it comes to scale-based melodies, whether they have chromaticisms or not, we have to resort to the strong/weak beat analysis again. This will give us clarity, which notes outline the potential chords. Outline is actually a good keyword, as there is a technique of that name, that is absurdly useful for those purposes. Article upcoming. Use the one you’re reading right now as a guide, whenever you’re confronted with those types of situation. If there are unclarities, which I suppose there are since this is complicated stuff if you’re new to music theory, don’t hesitate asking in the comment section – I’d be glad to help! In the next installment we’ll talk about strong and weak beats.