Building Melodies

Like most terms we come across, melody can be defined in a myriad of ways. The dictionary nerds at Merriam-Webster define melody as “a sweet or agreeable succession or arrangement of sounds.” Meanwhile, music nerds will define a melody within the context of a piece of music, using a more descriptive approach. However, most people will colloquially refer to a melody as the main tune of a piece of music. We will mostly be using the last definition for our uses in this module, but we will also be working to develop a more critical understanding of how melodies are created and the purpose they serve in music. First, let’s look at the physical content of melodies.

If you will remember, we described pitch in the first module as how high or low a sound is perceived, and also that these pitches can be strung together to create melodies. As a way to organize these pitches, we can organize them by their aural characteristics into pitch collections. Pitch collections are exactly what they sound like - a collection of pitches. By far the most common way to form a collection of pitches is through diatonic tonal areas or keys. If you’ve ever performed in a music ensemble in college or high school, you’ll at least have a passing knowledge of what I’m referring to. Don’t worry if not, though, we’ll still cover it! To begin, you’ll want to be familiar with pitch letter names, as shown here on this keyboard.

Diatonic melodies are created using a fixed-pitch collection that is based on a single note, also called the tonic. The tonic of a pitch collection can be described as a reference point or “home-base,” and is defined by its function and relationship with other pitches within the collection. To find the pitches within diatonic pitch collections, you can build scales off of the tonic using a specific pattern of pitch distances. By changing the patterns, you change the pitch collection and subsequently the sound. In western music, each pitch is considered to have a function, or a tendency to lead to other notes. For example, the fifth and seventh note of a scale has a dominant function, meaning it has the tendency to resolve to the first note of the scale, the tonic. These tendencies can be used or subverted depending on the context in which they’re used.

You can see the diagrams of two very common patterns that create the major and minor modes below. These two modes make up a significant portion of the music created today. They consist of a series of half steps and whole steps that, when starting at the tonic of G, create their respective modes of G major and G minor. These patterns can be applied to any pitch letter, and this creates these modes with different tonics. Check out the files below to hear these scales played sequentially.

Altered, mixed or chromatic melodies use the diatonic scales we’ve just learned and alter them in some way. As you can imagine, altering the pitch collection will bring new opportunities and functional possibilities. The term mixed comes from the combination of two different kinds of pitch collections that share some notes and thus sharing some functions. The term chromatic is an old term that stems literally from the Greek word chroma because the altered pitches have historically been perceived as creating a more “colorful” collection.

One of the most common alterations comes from the minor scale, where the seventh note of the scale is raised to provide the dominant function found in the major scale. This may not seem like much right now, but when a melody features this dominant function and is supported by an underlying harmony, it creates a very pleasing resolution common in pop music - more on that in a bit. A common mixed pitch collection can be found in the blues scale used extensively in jazz genres and even some pop music. It combines the pitches of the diatonic major scale and the diatonic dorian scale, dorian being just another mode, like major and minor. Check out both of these collections below on both the piano and the audio files.

Note that despite all of the academic-sounding explanations of the above terms, our perception of diatonic and chromatic relationships is completely arbitrary. The only reason you are able to ‘feel’ these relationships in the way I described is because of the cultural supremacy of western-music for the past several centuries and the continued practice of it today. While some western-music purists may try to justify this supremacy with acoustics/sound science, there is no scientific explanation for why we perceive these relationships as ‘pleasing.’ These justifications are further invalidated with modern approaches to pitch perception and composing, but also in the use on non-western functions in use across the world for centuries.

Other constructions of pitches do exist. For example, non-western melodies that utilize different temperaments have been used for centuries to make music in Eastern Asia. Classical Arabic and Indian music feature microtonal pitch inflections regularly - microtonal meaning a pitch interval smaller than the smallest interval in western structures, the half step. These microtonal pitch expressions are actually used all the time in the pop music we’re familiar with through vocal inflections, electronic processing, or bending the pitch of an instrument such as a guitar. In other instances, the 12-tone temperament will be used, but the function of the pitches will differ from what we’re used to. Further still, contemporary musicians are experimenting with new pitch temperaments all the time, with lo-fi hip-hop being a popular one that comes to mind. All of this to say that the world of pitch is not set in stone, and maintaining a broad perspective of this component will ultimately better serve your experiences with music in the future.

 Extrapolating Harmonies

I also mentioned that pitches can be combined with one another to create harmonies. Melody and harmony are inextricably linked to one another within music, and while a piece of music can technically exist without one of these components, they each imply and inform our perceptions about each other. For example, a songwriter will first take the poetry for their new song and sing a melody to it. The songwriter, assuming they’re writing their own music, can then take the notes of this melody, and find other notes that support this melody. The opposite could also be true, where a songwriter takes a series of chords they like, and then sing a melody that “fits” over it. Chords are simply multiple notes sounded at the same time and are intended to be perceived together.

How does a musician choose what chords to use in their song, though? Well, most of the pitches are already chosen for them if they decide they want they are using diatonic pitch collections. In the images below, I have constructed a series of triads using only the notes that exist in the pitch collection of G major, starting on each note of the scale. Triads are just three-note chords, hence the prefix ‘tri.’ The letter names are in the noteheads, with the chord names are presented above on the staff.

As you’re listening to these, you should notice distinct aural differences. The major chords all sound different from one another, but also sound similar in a different way. This is especially evident when compared to the minor chords which also sound similar to one another in a way, but are distinct in their sound when compared to the major chords. If you agree, then congrats! You’ve just completed your first comparative analysis of music. It may not seem like much now, but it’s the first step to more critical listening of your favorite music.

You should have noticed one chord I didn’t even bring up. It’s a funky one that isn’t used too much in mainstream pop music, though it is used every now and then, especially when moving tonalities. That is the diminished chord, and at least one will appear in every diatonic pitch collection. You can listen to it here, and feel free to compare it to the major and minor chords.

The same process of creating triads within a pitch collection can be done with the minor mode as well, which repositions the chords along the scale as seen below. In any case, the single largest reason for creating chords inside a pitch collection is to establish tonality for a piece of music. Just like the individual pitches have certain functions within a key, so too do the chords. In pop music, the common relationships between chords allow us to begin building a song proper through the use of chord progressions. We’ll dive into these in the next module, but for now, we need to move on to our last component, meter.

The idea of meter is so ingrained in our culture that it barely needs an explanation. However, laying this theoretical groundwork will allow us to identify music that subverts our metric observations, as we will see in Module 6. For now, however, let’s get into some real examples of music to make a stronger connection to these components and how they work together.

Did you figure it out? You should have determined that the song has a 3/4 feeling. If you’ve got a really good ear, you will have noticed that the 3/4 example I made earlier mimics the beginning of the verses in Karol G’s song - in both meter and chords. The identification of the meter shouldn’t have been too tricky. Though if you did have trouble, don’t worry too much. There are a lot of factors in this piece that may make it difficult to identify this meter.

The first factor making meter identification difficult is relatively small instrumentation, featuring only guitars, bass guitar, and Karol G’s vocalization. Despite no explicit percussion instrument, the song is able to have a strong sense of meter through the accented beats in the guitars and the interactions of stressed and unstressed syllables in the singing. The second factor making meter identification difficult would be the rhythmic patterns. Unlike the simple quarter note rhythms you heard earlier, this song features sixteenth note strumming patterns and variations in the vocal rhythms. As I referenced earlier, these rhythms do align with and support the meter, but can quickly overwhelm the ear if you’re unfamiliar with the song.

To the right, you’ll see a chart I made up for this song to draft its components. I only asked you to identify the meter for this piece, but let’s see if we can expand our process of identification in the next piece to include tonality, instrumentation, and other aesthetic elements as well!