étude no.4 – ‘Go Figure’

This is a GREAT way to really strengthen your understanding of melody (and kickstart a new track idea)

Before you start, here’s a wee refreshetp 1: Complete this refresher on melodies at l earningmusic.ableton.com/make-melodies

step 1: choose a key

go to learningmusic.ableton.com/the-playground
(scroll down to the ‘melody’ area)
Choose a tonic (root note) for the composition
it might be helpful to choose the note ‘G’ so it’s a very ‘neutral’ starting point (using just the white notes) – we think of ‘C major’ as the simplest scale, but actually the major scale uses a ‘sharpened’ seventh which is actually quite a dissonant interval. Choosing ‘G’ as the root note means that if you use only the white notes, you’ll be using the mixolydian mode, which is like the major scale, but eith a ‘natural’ seventh
Choose one of the Western 7-note (heptatonic) scales
to form a key
Note the seven degrees (notes) in your scale

Choose a degree to start on and create a note with the duration of your choosing
Then choose another note – either higher, lower, or the same pitch
Repeat until you’ve created a short melodic shape (aka ‘figure)
This will probably be one bar (or less)

eplain what you just did

Create a new Word or Pages document
Explain, in words, what note durations and degrees were used
1. tonic
2. supertonic
3. mediant
4. subdominant
5. dominant
6. submediant
7. subtonic
Identify the melodic intervals that were created
(e.g. ascending second, descending fifth)
Note the feeling of each of the degrees
e.g. starting on the 7th creates tension that feels like it wants to resolve to the tonic; ending on the dominant creates tension that wants to resolve to the tonic; starting on the tonic creates a feeling of strength and resolution
Save this – you will come back to it later (below)

Open Logic/Ableton
Choose a MIDI instrument with a timbre that suits your melodic figure
Recreate the figure you built (above) in Ableton’s Plaground
Now repeat (duplicate) it to create a ‘riff’
(aka ostinato: a short repeating melody)

Go back to Ableton’s playground and transform your melodic figure
(or do this in logic/ableton if you’re feeling confident – using the scale quantist / fold/collapse function may help!)
- transpose the entire figure up/down in pitch (still using degrees of the chosen scale)
- augment/diminish some of the melodic intervals in the second figure by transposing notes up/down in pitch
- invert (flip upside-down) some or all of the inflections in the figure
  (e.g. if the interval was an ascending third, do the opposite to create descending third – you can also augment/diminsih these intervals too)
- play part/all of the figure backwards (called a retrograde)
- repeat any part of the figure to exend it (aka add notes)
In your Logic/Ableton project, take the second iteration of the riff and replicate what you just did in Ableton’s Playground to create variation between the two phrases
Congratulations, you’ve just created ‘call & response’ – notice how the two phrases should seem to really relate to one another

explain what you just did

list each of the transformations applied to the melody
explain why each new note was chosen – what was the effect (in terms of the tension/resolution created by using the various degrees of the scale)
Identify the new melodic intervals that were created and note the excitement (increase/decrease in energy) created by the asecnding/descending intervals (jumping up a fifth or stepping down one degree)

Create a new track and load a complimentary instrument
Create a figure that can ‘answer’ your lead melody (based on a variation of the main melodic figure)
See if you can ‘answer’ the phrases of the main melody to create call & response between parts
Don’t feel the need to bring this new ‘counter melody’ in until it needs it (often a song might introduce a new countermelody halfway through Verse 1, or even save it for Verse 2)