It’s the musical element that organizes consecutive sound pitches. It is along with the rhythm the most remarkable element of the musical language. If the idea of rhythm is linked to movement, the idea of melody is related to expression and emotion.
There is no formula to make good melodies; they are created in part by instinct but there are some general rules for organizing melodies that a good musician must know.
We are going to consider 3 different levels to organize melody:
5.1 The musical scales
To have a better idea of what scales are and what they are used for, watch this videos before reading the unit.
Escalas: notas y octavas.
Escalas:
- Notes
As you have seen, to make music you need to define some concrete pitches. These are the notes. In a pino keyboard there are nearly 90 notes that are the ones that are going to be used generally in music.
Some of these notes are cosely related, which makes possible the simplification of the system in order to rationalise it. This relation is due to an effect called "harmonics"
Al escuchar la vibración de una cuerda o un tubo, se escucha la frecuencia fundamental de la nota a la que corresponde pero también, de forma secundaria, la nota que corresponde al doble de esa vibración. A la distancia (intervalo) entre esas dos notas se le llama octava.
When listening the vibration of a string or a tube, we hear the base frecuency of te note and also, behind it, the note thar correspond to the double of this vibration. The distance between them is called octave.
Behind a note X that vibrates (for example) at 440Hz you can hear the note X' that vibrates at 880Hz. X and X' are at a distance of octave.
Those notes are called the same and, in many aspects, we can work with them as if they were the same.
This way all the notes of the keyboard can be reduce to very few of them.
Between the notes of an octave there are 12 different notes, all of them at the same distance. But most music dont use all of them, but sets of 7 notes chosen among them. You can see it in a piano keyboard. White notes are the most used and they recive names (C D E F G A B ).
The black notes of the keyboard are called in relation to the white notes behind them.
- Scales and modes
The sets of notes that are used to make music are called scales.
The notes of the scales are organized from lower to higher pitch. Musical scale is not a
universal concept. Different musical cultures use different sets of notes. Even
inside a musical tradition usually there are different kinds of scales. When a musical system uses different scales they are called modes.
The first step to make a melody is choosing a scale. The scale that you choose determines the sound of the melodies that are made with it.
We can differentiate scales by two means.
· The number of notes that they have.
· The distances or intervals between two correlated notes.
When a musical system has different scales each of them are called mode.
- Modes in western music
Modes are each one of the scales than we can use in a musical tradition. In the context of western classical music (and many others western music styles) there are two different modes. They have different feelings.
· Mayor mode: It expresses happy and strong feelings. Its reference scale is C mayor
· Minor mode: It expresses sad, melancholic and soft feelings. Its reference scale is A minor.
To better appreciate the differencies between both scales listen to the following video from 2:28 on. They are going to play the initial melodie of the 40th Mozart's Symphony in the original minor mode and in the mayor mode afterwards.
Of course scales are not the only way for expressing feelings in music, but they play a big role in achieving it.
Look at this video it is called "Dislexia emocional". In it the happy lyrics are in conection with happy music and the sad ones are conected with sad music producing a comical effect. A big deal of the sad feelings in the music is generated by the minor scale.
In this other example you'll see the use of effects that produce emotions but in different directions. Lennon composed this song in mayor scale, but using soft timbers and slow tempo. The effect is neither definitely happy nor sad. It's is like sadness with hope or something like that.
- Historic modes
The expressivity of Ancient Greek music and medieval music rely only on melody. These music styles don’t have the complex harmonic system that we use today.
They use 8 different modes associated to very accurate feelings. They were easy to recognise for contemporary listeners because each one of them was also associated to some particular melodic movements.
From the scale point of view different modes had different intervals between their notes.
Here you have, as an example, the relation of medieval modes.
Each of these modes was use to express very different feelings. For example Dorian mode was linked with feelings such as nobility, temperance, virility…, Phrygian was supposed to transmit anger, agitation and enthusiasm….and so on.
These modes are used today in jazz music but
they have lost their expressive connotations. In this video you can listen to a little example of every one of the medieval modes on guitar improvisations.
- Other usual scales
Occasionally our music uses other scales originated in traditional music styles. Some of the most popular ones are:
· Andalusian scale: it is a scale originated in Southern Spain traditional music. It is used in flamenco music, and it was used in nationalism Spanish music. Currently it is very popular in flamenco- pop and flamenco-rock music.
Spanish nationalist composers in the 19th and 20th centuries also used this scale to get the sound they were looking for
· Blues scale: It is an African scale that was used in blues. Today it is very used in rock music and related styles. It is very used in guitar solos.
Here you have B.B. King playing "The Thrill is Gone" a clear exaple of the use of the blues scale in the context of blues music.
Rock and roll music, especially in the '50s uses this scale above the rest of them.
Pentatonic scale: this is a scale that is used in many different music styles and that we tend to inmediately associate with the sound of east Asian music.
This scale is used all along the world because of its simplicity and nice sound. It's very used in Irish and Scottish music.
· Mixolydian scale: It is one of the more typical modes used in Irish and Scottish music. It is very usual in folk-rock music.
5. 2 Melodic phrasing
Melodies are not formed by a non-stop set of notes. They are organised in a very similar way than the speech language. Melodies are formed by phrases, which are melodic periods with some kind of sense. These periods are set apart by gaps, longer notes, differences in the stress etc.
In the Rolling Stone's song "Angie" the melodic phrases are separated by long gaps.
The sense of the phrase is given by how it finish. According with that there are two kinds of phrases:
· Open ending phrase: It is an unstable ending and asks for being completed by another phrase. It works as a question.
· Close ending phrase: It gives a good sensation of ending. It’s generally said that behaves as an answer.
Usually the melodic “speech” is made as a sort of dialogue between open and closed ending phrases in an ask-answer dynamic.
You can see this kind of dialogue in the riff of "Smoke on the Water"
5.3 Tonality
Different notes of the scale have different importance. Each note plays a different role. Some of them act as an axis that organizes the distribution of the others. This idea of different notes with different roles is called tonality.
The most important notes in a scale from the tonality point of view are:
· Tonic: It’s the first note of a given scale. Tonic is generally the first and the last note of a melody. It provides the stronger feeling of close ending.
· Dominant. In the tonal system it’s the 5th note. It gives the stronger feeling of instability with a very open ending. When a melodic phrase ends with the dominant it has the feeling of a question. It is used to generate tension against the tonic. This effect provides interest to melodic development.
As we will see these functions are reinforced
by the use of harmony. Therefor we will see tonality from the point of view of harmony in the next unit.
