Melody Practice Advent Calendar

In today's, I should probably have added more articulations to the notation, but I think it's enough to get the idea.

 

Yesterday's is a day late. I did actually write it yesterday; all sketches start with pencil & paper (usually away from the piano). However, while I'm getting faster at this, I didn't have the time to do anything with the computer.



This one is a little different because it's the same 4-bar figure repeated over and over:



There is a second voice to accompany it, also usually repeated:



And finally, here's a more or less complete sketch including chords:



It's a little different from the approaches I've been taking so far and I have no idea if this one actually works or not. As always, comments and criticism are most welcome!

 

And just under the wire (in my timezone anyway) is today's. This is a very simple minor melody that I didn't post with chords; I'm interested in how well it truly stands on its own.

 

Today's piece is also posted without accompaniment. I think the implied harmony here is fairly obvious, but obviously I can't tell very easily. I'm also interested in whether or not the root is communicated well enough - jumping from the tonic to the subdominant right away is pretty rare; it's much more common to jump from the dominant to the tonic.



I've decided to let NotePerformer have a crack at rendering this one, which I think it does reasonably well:

 

One more without accompaniment. One thing that's nice about performing these myself (which I didn't do here) is that I don't need to write all of the desired articulations into the score - at least, not for these purposes.

 

Every time I post one of these, I'm always afraid I've ripped something off wholesale and just don't realize it. I've also been thinking a lot about whether or not melodies can indeed stand on their own and what it would mean for them to do so. While I haven't finished thinking it through, I'll post here when I have, in case anyone is still paying attention.

Anyway, here is today's attempt:

 

We're travelling so I'm behind on these, but should be able to catch up. Monday's is attached as a PDF since Dorico apparently publishes transparent PNGs and my laptop isn't large enough to take the usual screenshot.

The mockup is NotePerformer again (and will be for the rest of these):

 

Unaccompanied again today (and still behind by a couple of days).





(There's a place called Mars...)

 

Slowly catching up! Here's December 19th:

 

Still behind; it's cool get the flu on your vacation.



This one is rather slow and plodding, but with more interesting instrumentation and articulations I think it would feel less so. Maybe it should also be faster?

 

I find this one dreadfully boring and don't think it came out well, but here goes:

 

And here's yesterday's (kind of caught up!), with apologies to Chopin:

 

Not much to say about this one, but I think quite a bit to say about all of them once I post the last one.

 

And finally, here's my attempt for the 24th:

 

Now that I've had some time away, I thought I'd post about what I've learned. I had several goals with this exercise, but the main ones were to challenge myself to write every day and to practice writing "good" melodies.

What I've learned is that context is everything.

We often hear that the best melodies stand on their own, citing examples from Williams or the Beatles, nodding our heads and remembering the whole song from the melody alone. While a truly great melody can allow us to perform that kind of recall, when we say that it stands on its own, I think we put the cart before the horse. In fact, I would say it is impossible to consider a melody purely on its own.

The first time we hear a melody, the way we hear it becomes its home context. Even if that context is really sparse (e.g. a pure sine wave with no accompanying harmony), the melody suggests its harmonic context automatically in the listener: we wouldn't hear it as music otherwise. At a bare minimum, we have to know what the root is so that we can understand what the melodic sequence is doing from a tension/resolution perspective. There's no story otherwise. If the melody is unclear, we can't place it and it becomes emotionally confusing.

@Dmitry Egorov also said as much:

Similarly, the absolute pitch and rhythmic expression of a melody also suggest a richer context (instrumentation, tempo, mood, etc), though these are more subjective and likely to vary from person to person. But even reharmonizing or recontextualizing is best understood in terms of its relationship to the home context.

So what's the point?

For me, it's that you can't just write a melody on its own; you are also making decisions about the other elements of music when you write one. It's automatic on the part of the listener, so the better you understand the implied context and its relationship to what you've written, the stronger and more successful your melodies will be.

Really, this is the same advice Mike has been giving all along: know the musical context and develop the control to be able to use it intentionally.

But I think I understand much better now what people mean when they say that the best melodies stand on their own. They mean that the best melodies are so well-suited to the emotional/narrative situation the first time you hear them that later on, when you remember them, they carry the rest of the context with them.

 

Good question! First let me reiterate that my main goals here were to keep the discipline of doing it and to explore/practice writing "good" melodies.

As far as the discipline goes, I think it was successful - I managed to stick with it, despite falling behind a bit at the end. As far as the "good" melodies part goes though, I'd change some things.

Part of what I learned is that the format I chose didn't really accommodate the kind of exploration or feedback I was hoping to get. I honestly expected more folks to chime in, and while got some at the beginning (which was great), it died off pretty quickly. I suspect it's because there really isn't much to say about a bunch of 16-32 bar pieces that don't go anywhere.

The other thing I'd say is that to really dig into melodic writing, you have to state the melody (twice) and then actually develop it. What I ended up doing was more akin to something like musical idea generation. There's nothing wrong with that, but it was different from my stated goal, so I think I missed an opportunity there.

I don't think I could have known that without trying, so I certainly don't regret it, but next time I'll go with something that allows for longer and deeper exploration (and therefore hopefully more interest and feedback).

 

Thanks for the feedback George! Do you specifically want it to be bolder in the A or B section in particular? or just overall? I personally get bored at the B section.