- Hi. We've had another film
on YouTube for some time that covers this whole
topic of composing a melody, which is one the things
that you have to do for grade five theory, though, of course, it has a wider application because there are plenty of people who would like to learn something
about composing a melody. But by popular demand we're
making this new film now to cover one or two of the things that maybe we didn't quite cover last time and just to reinforce what
we did in the other film. And if you watch this
alongside the other film that should help just
tidy up a few loose ends and give you a bit more
confidence in melody writing. And, of course, if you're
preparing for grade five theory or for any other theory exam we've got a whole package
of films on the website that cover everything you need to know for each of the grades. So feel free to have a
little look at all of that. Now, what we've got on the board is a typical kind of opening
that you might be given in a grade five theory exam. But I've tried to make as many
things different on this one as we've got in relation
to the other film. The other film we did a
melody in the bass clef. So we're now going to do a
melody in the treble clef. The other film was a melody in sharps. We're now going to do one in flats. In the other film the melody
was in simple time, in 4/4. This time we're going to be
in compound time, in 6/8. In the other film the melody started on the first beat of the bar. In this film we're going
to look at a melody that doesn't start on the
first beat of the bar. So, you can see why this is going to be a little bit different. There's another change that
I'm going to come back to very shortly as well. But first of all, let me just talk about this business of not starting
on the first beat of the bar. Lots of pieces of music do begin on the first beat of the bar. But sometimes you have a kind of lift before the first bar actually begins. And this little lift like we've got here, just a single note, but it may
be two notes or three notes. If you have something
that's not a complete bar but a note or a group of notes
before the first bar begins, this is called an anacrusis. Anacrusis. And we'll be talking about
how to deal with anacrusis as we go. Anyway, let's see what we're
going to make of this melody. And this is the sort of thing that might well be given to you
in a grade five theory exam. And you'll be asked to extend this to a melody that lasts eight bars. Now, because of the anacrusis, this note here is not bar one. Bar one is the first complete bar. And it's not a bad idea
to number your bars, because it's amazing
how many people set out to write an eight-bar melody and end up writing a nine-bar melody or a seven-bar melody or
some other possibility. So you need to be sure that really you've ended
up with eight bars. So this is not bar one. Anything that belongs to the
anacrusis comes before bar one. So there's bar one. And you can see we've
been given bar one there. And we've been given bar two. Now, one thing to notice about bar two is that you've been given all
these notes, but actually, bar two is not quite complete. And lots of people get
in a pickle with that because they think that
bar two is complete, so they just leave it as it
is and carry on to bar three. And then if they use this bar again later they repeat the same problem. So make sure that your
second bar is complete. And if you're given a melodic opening which has an anacrusis, usually the second bar
will not be complete. So watch out for that. You see we're in 6/8 time, so just to remind us what that
means, six is the top number, so that's telling us that
there are six somethings in the bar. Eight is the bottom number, and that's telling us what kind of things those six things are. Eight at the bottom means quavers. So there are six quavers in the bar. But this is what we call
a compound duple time. And we organise things
into groups of three when we're in compound time. So if we've got six quavers in a bar we organise them into two
groups of three quavers. Just to give you the idea, we would have one group of
three quavers looking like this. And a second group of three
quavers looking like this. So you can see I've got six quavers, but they're organised
in two groups of three. And each group of three
provides us with a beat. So three quavers totals
one dotted crotchet. Three halves, if you like,
equal one and a half. And, of course, I need
a dotted crotchet here. So, in 6/8 time I've got six quavers. I organised them into two groups of three. Each group of three has a
total value that is this, a dotted crotchet. So in 6/8 there are two
dotted crotchet beats per bar. Now, if simple and compound time is something that confuses you, then there's another film on YouTube that explains exactly
how all of this works. So, if you have a look at that you'll be much clearer about it. And from now on I'm
going to kind of assume that you're happy working in
compound time, in 6/8 time. Okay. Now, let's have a look at this second bar and see what's missing. If we just count the six
quavers, what have we got? We've got one quaver here. Then we've got two semiquavers, so they add up to another one quaver. Then we've got another quaver. So that's three quavers, isn't it? Then we've got a crotchet, so
that's quavers four and five. So we're missing a quaver
at the end of bar two. And we mustn't forget that we
need to put a note in there. Now, we might not yet be ready to decide what that note's going to be. But you could do something
in pencil like this, just to remind you that before
we finish writing this melody we're going to have to
come back to bar two and finish it off. Okay, now we've got to write eight bars, so it's not a bad idea to
get the bar lines in place so we know what we're dealing with. We know that's bar one
after the anacrusis. This is bar two that we need to finish. So leave a bit of space to finish the bar. Then we're going to need bar three and a bar line at the end of that. This will be bar four. And obviously again we're
going to need a bar line at the end of that. Then, let's go on to the next line. It's quite handy, actually, if you can organise this so
you've got four bars on one line and the next four bars on the next line for reasons that will become obvious. When we come to the second line we obviously need to repeat the clef. And so here's the treble clef. We also need to repeat the key signature. So here are the three flats. But what you don't need to
repeat is the time signature. So unless the time signature
changes for some reason, which you probably don't want to do in this kind of exercise, just put the time
signature at the beginning, but don't put it here. But you always need a
clef and a key signature at the beginning of the next line. Okay, so we've got four bars. And then we're going to have bar five, which is sort of going to finish here. And then we need bar six. And then we need bar seven. Then we need bar eight to finish off. And always remember at the
end of a piece of music, we don't just want a single bar line, we want a double bar line. That's the kind of musical
way of saying the end. So we now at least can see
what we're dealing with. Anacrusis again. One thing we need to remember is this. Whatever is in this anacrusis must add up with the very final bar of the
piece to be one complete bar. What do I mean by that? We've already said we need
to get six quaver's worth of rhythm into each bar. But when we come to the last bar we don't want six quavers,
we want five quavers. Why do we want five quavers? Because the anacrusis
provides the sixth quaver. So when we get to bar eight, don't have a full bar of six quavers, have a bar of five quavers to
balance up with the anacrusis. So that's an important thing that we're going to have to come back to. Okay. Now, as for the other film, there's a little blueprint
that we might follow that will just help writing the melody. And let's go through it. In bar one you've got some notes that we're going to copy into bar five. Now this may seem a
bit of a cheat in a way because you might think, "Well, I'm not really actually
writing anything in bar five, "all I'm doing is copying bar one." But if you look at the
works of great composers and you look at the great
songs that have been written, quite often you'll find that this happens. You have a phrase that
starts in a particular way and goes off in one direction. And then the next phrase
starts in the same way and goes off in a new direction. It's quite a nice balanced way
of writing a pair of phrases. And, in fact, sometimes, if
you don't repeat that material the whole thing can ramble a bit and lose its sense of
direction and identity. So, here's the first
bit of this little plan. We're going to copy bar one into bar five. Don't worry about the anacrusis just yet. Just look at bar one,
copy it into bar five. So here we go. I'm just going to put those notes in here. And remember, when you
copy these things across to copy them precisely. It's very easy just to miss
out on something like this, turning this note into a semiquaver. And then before you know where you are it's a quaver instead of a semiquaver and you've got the wrong
number of beats in the bar. Okay, and then we've got this note, and then we've got this note. So, we've copied bar one into bar five. Next thing we're going to do
is copy bar two into bar six. So, here we go with that. And again, remember to
put all the detail in so you don't miss out the
accidentals, for example. And when you do these accidentals make sure they really belong
to the space or to the line that is the note that follows them. Make sure you've got your stem direction going in the right way as well. Okay, so we've copied
bar one into bar five. And we've copied bar two into bar six. You might need to remember as well that because bar two is short of a quaver, bar six is also currently
short of a quaver. So a little arrow there might just help to remind you about that. Before we go any further, I
want to deal with the anacrusis. Because we have an
anacrusis before bar one, this anacrusis will need
also to come before bar five. In other words, it's going to
come at the end of bar four. So, let's just put this G
in at the end of bar four. Then we've got the same anacrusis in the second phrase as we
had in the first phrase. And at this point you might
want to put in the phrase marks, because bars one to four is one phrase, five to eight is another phrase. I'm going to start the first
phrase mark with the anacrusis. I'm going to take it across here. And it's going to finish just before we repeat the anacrusis. Because we started the first phrase a quaver ahead of bar one, the
second phrase, to balance it, will also need to start a
quaver ahead of bar five. So the second phrase actually begins here. And then you can extend your phrase mark so that we just continue with
it to the end of bar eighth. So that's how the phrase marks work in relation to the anacrusis. So, so far so good. Now we're going to do what
we've done on the other film in terms of melody writing and think about maybe
outlining some chords in bars three and four and
in bars seven and eight so that the melody belongs to what would be appropriate chords if you were accompanying it. Because if the melody
doesn't really belong to chords that are sensible,
the melody won't sound right. So, we'll come back to that in a moment. But before we decide anything else we need to be sure which key we're in. Now, if we've got three flats you might know your keys really well, or you might want to look
at the circle of fifths. And again, if you don't know
about the circle of fifths, we've got another film out there that explains how the
circle of fifths works. And that's the whole system
that explains all the keys. When you look at a circle of fifths, three flats tells you that
you're either in E-flat major or you're in C minor. Now, before we go any
further we've got to decide whether we're in E-flat
major or in C minor. Because if this piece of
music is in E-flat major and then you start
writing things in C minor it may sound a bit strange or vice versa. So how do we know if we're in
E-flat major or in C minor? Well, the big clues are in bar two. Because in bar two you
can see some accidentals. Now if you were in E-flat major you wouldn't really
need those accidentals. But because we're in C minor,
when we're in a minor key we sometimes have to do things to certain degrees of the scale. If you know about your minor scales, you know in the harmonic minor scale we raise the seventh degree of the scale by a semitone going up the
scale and coming down the scale. When we're in a melodic minor scale we raise the sixth and the
seventh degrees of the scale when we're going up, and we just follow the key
signature when we're coming down. So I wonder what's going on here. What's this A-natural and
B-natural about in bar two? Well, if you think about
it, A-natural, B-natural would not belong to E-flat major. So you can be pretty sure
you're not in E-flat major. You're probably in C minor. Well, the sixth degree of
the scale of C minor is A. Actually, it's not A, it's A-flat. So if I take the sixth degree of A-flat and I raise it by a
semitone, I get A-natural. B-flat is the seventh degree of the scale. If I raise that by a
semitone, I get B-natural. So I've raised the sixth and
the seventh degree of the scale in a passage that's going
up, using, therefore, the melodic minor. Why are we using the melodic minor? Because we're writing a melody. And the melodic minor in a
melody always works better than the harmonic minor. Because at the top of
the harmonic minor scale you get a strange interval. Here's the harmonic scale. So if you use the harmonic minor scale when you're writing a melody
it can sound a bit strange. So that's why we tend to
use the melodic minor scale. Because it just evens
out that strange interval at the top of the harmonic minor scale. So we need to know we're in C minor, otherwise this isn't going to work. And we're going to have to think carefully about writing in a minor scale as we go. Okay, if we're in C minor,
then the first thing we can do is fill up the last bar
with the tonic note. So, if we're in C minor,
well, the tonic note is C. Remember what we said
about the anacrusis though. We don't want to fill it up with six quaver's worth of stuff. We want to fill it up with
five quaver's worth of stuff. So I'm going to put a C in the last bar. We may decide to put this
C in a different octave in the fullness of time,
that doesn't matter. But for now, let's put it there. Now, I'm going to write
C for a dotted crotchet, because that fills up the
first beat in 6/8 time. Remember those first three quavers give us a dotted crotchet beat. So there's the first beat. But I only need five quavers. So I'm then going to have a
crotchet that's not dotted. And I'm going to tie those together. So if I wanted to fill up the
last bar with the tonic note, there's the tonic note C,
because we're in C minor that's how I would write it. Because we're in 6/8 I
need a dotted crotchet for the first beat, and I'm going to tie that to a
crotchet for the second beat. Now, you may decide when
you finish this melody that that's rather a long
time to sit on a tonic note. In which case you could use any notes that belong to the tonic chord. So the tonic chord is that, chord I. If you're not happy about chords, again, we've got another film that explains all about chords, so you could have a look at that. But basically, to get the chords sorted you could write out a scale of C minor. And above each note you can
put a third and a fifth. So C, E-flat, G is chord
I, or the tonic chord. This is chord II. Chord III. Chord IV. Chord V. Chord VI. Chord VII. So you could write those
out if you wanted to. Now we want to get a cadence working at the end of our piece. So it's not a bad idea
to have V followed by I. Or you could have IV followed by I. Why is this? Because V followed by I
creates a perfect cadence. IV followed by I creates a plagal cadence. We want to finish on I because that will make
the melody feel as if it's gone home to the
tonic note at the end. Well, for now we could decide
we're going to use chord V. You could use chord IV,
that's absolutely fine. So discover what the notes are in chord V. In C minor the fifth degree is G. And chord V is G, B, and D. Be very careful that the
middle note of that chord is not B-flat from the key
signature, but is B-natural. When you're thinking about chords, think in the harmonic minor
scale if you're in a minor key. Because harmonic minor is about
harmony, it's about chords. Melodic minor is about melody. So it's not G, B-flat, D. It's G, B-natural, D. And what we want to be able to do here is to use any notes that
belong to that chord. And work them out across the bar. So we could, for example, just do something that
goes G, B-natural, D. That could be, say, the
first half of that bar. And then we could maybe
come up to a top G. And then maybe we could
come back to a B-natural. And up to a D. Do you see, I'm just trying to use notes that belong to that chord V,
that G, B-natural, D, chord. So, that last but one bar. And on to that C at the end. I could decide to make the
rhythm a bit more interesting. We've had this dotted rhythm here. So we could say dot the first thing. That would make it a
little bit more interesting than just having six quavers
running through the bar. So we could do that, for example. Okay, well, we've sort of
sketched in the opening, and the end of the piece quite happily. What are we going to do here? Because we're going to
have another cadence here. And we're going to have
notes that belong to chord V at the beginning of bar four because we want to have
an imperfect cadence. And we've got a film
out there about cadences if you want to be clear
about cadences as well. But an imperfect cadence
is basically any chord followed by V. It tends to be I to V,
II to V, or IV to V. Doesn't really matter
which one you go for. But we might go, in this
case, IV followed by V. Why not? And when we get to bar four,
if we're using chord V, well, probably we just want
to use the root of that chord. The bottom of chord V is G, so let's stick in a G for the time being. Remember as well to
think about the 6/8 time. We're going to use a dotted crotchet G. And then we're going to have to tie it, so we get the grouping of these
notes correct for 6/8 time. So you can see now how this works, because this takes up
one dotted crotchet beat. I've tied it into something that starts the second
dotted crotchet beat. And this quaver, the anacrusis
to the second phrase, completes that second beat. In bar three I'm looking for notes that belong to chord IV. Now, in C minor chord IV,
one, two, three, four, is going to be built on F. So it's F, A-flat, and C. Remember, we're working
in the harmonic minor, so F, A-flat, and C. So I really want to use notes in bar three that belong to that chord IV. So, let's see what we might use. Well, I kind of came up the chord there, so maybe here we could
come down the chord. Something like this possibly. And then maybe, so we don't have too much kind of jumping around doing
arpeggios all the time, we could do something
that goes by step here. And I'm going to use
that dotted rhythm again. This time I'm going to use it
in the second half of the bar instead of in the first half of the bar. Just so we're using the same rhythm, but we're doing something
that varies it a little bit. So you see what I've done there, I'm just using those notes of chord IV. You notice here I've used a passing note. Remember, a passing note is
just one of those little notes that passes by step between two notes that belong to a chord. So F and A-flat belong to chord IV. G is just tucked in in
between as a passing note. So then I've got. I may decide I want to
make the passing notes more interesting still. Whenever I've got a third in the melody there's the potential to put
another passing note in there. I could even put another one in there. Now we're really getting carried away with the passing notes, aren't we? But I could decide, for example, to make that a group of semiquavers there. Just gone a bit too far with that. Because, obviously, the last one will need to be a quaver there. So you see what I've done now. I started off with. Now I've got. So it just makes this
a bit more interesting. And you see how quickly
we've come on with this. Now what are we missing? We're missing this last
note of bar two aren't we? Even if you can't hear this melody, I wonder if you've got some idea of a note that you think might fit there. Just try to imagine
roughly how this sounds. And then see if you can think of a note that would fit there. And it may just be that going by step is the answer. Don't make life too complicated, we just go up one note
there and come back. It will probably sound
all right, won't it? And then we could do the same thing here, or we could make a different
decision in bar six. But remember, we need to
deal with the end of bar six in the same way as the end of bar two. Maybe we'll do something
different this time. And, just for argument's
sake, let's come down to an A. I'm going to make it an A-flat there. We had an A-natural going up. But melodic minor says if going down use the key signature, doesn't it? So that's why I've made that an A-flat. Now, what does this sound like? Let's put it together. So, if you wrote that as a melody it will be perfectly presentable, and that would quite easily pass. You may decide at the end
you want to do something slightly more exciting than just holding onto this
note forever and a day. So, without making life too complicated, you could, for example,
do something like this. Maybe just come down the arpeggio. And finish on this bottom C. That might just be
slightly more interesting than what we were doing before. Interesting what happens, isn't it, when you get into stem direction. Having done that, I now
need to have the stems going the other way, don't I? So, now I'm going to write this. Why does the stem go the other way? Because these two notes
fall below the central line, and I've only got one note that's above. So, really these two win, two one, and we end up with the
stems on balance going up. So instead of just
finishing on that tonic note as we did before, which you could do, what we've done now is come down the arpeggio. And it sort of carries on this little broken chord idea here. Makes the end of it just a
little bit more interesting. You could spruce it up even further with some passing notes if you wanted to. You could put an F there
between the G and the E. You could put a D here
between the E-flat and the C. So we just add a couple of passing notes to make it a little bit more interesting. And, of course, that then sort of matches what we did with the passing notes there. So now we've got this. Suddenly the last bar has really kind of livened up, hasn't it? The other thing you may
want to do at this point is to go back to bars five and six and ask yourself if you're quite happy for them to be the same
as they were before. I mean, we've already
made a different decision at the end of bar two
to the end of bar six. Or what if there's anything
you want to do to spruce it up. You can make life a bit too complicated with these things sometimes. But if you wanted to do something else you could maybe do something with the length of this crotchet. You could put a passing note in here. For example, just put a G in there, because that would pass between the F and the A-flat, wouldn't it? So we could possibly
do something like that. It's very slightly different. The first time. The second time. Very small difference, isn't it? But just makes a slight variation. You could do a bit more if you wanted to. And then, of course, don't forget, when you've got the
melody where you want it you can carry on tweaking
with passing notes and thinking about whether
you've got enough variety in the rhythm and so on until
you're happy with your melody. By the way, did you spot the
deliberate mistake at the end? I put a dotted crotchet at the end. But of course, we've got an anacrusis. So that will have to be
a crotchet, won't it? Because we only want five
quaver's worth of notes in the last bar. That's the easiest mistake in
the world to make, isn't it? So watch out for that one. Don't forget we now need to
get some expression into it. And so, not a bad idea just to write something like moderato. Because moderato just means that it goes at a moderate speed. Not too fast, not too slow. So nobody can take offence at something that's written moderato. Then, possibly some dynamics would be a good idea just to add to that. And maybe to have a melody
that starts mp or mf. Why not? And then have a bit of
a crescendo, possibly, going up to the first cadence. And then maybe we could start forte at the beginning of the
second phrase there. In fact, because of the anacrusis, it's probably a better idea to put that forte over
the anacrusis note there. And then, in the last but
one bar, in bar seven, if you want to impress the examiners by writing an Italian
sentence, dim. e rall. Dim means getting quieter. E means and. Rall means slowing down to the end. So that just gives us a bit
of expression there as well. You may want to have a bit of
phrasing inside the phrases. Where you might decide that you're going to
have some staccato notes. You could, for example,
have a staccato here followed by some legato notes. Another staccato. So you could elaborate the
melody in that sort of way if you wanted to. Don't get too over fussy. But if you wanted to put a
little bit of phrasing detail inside the phrases, you
certainly could do that. And then don't forget if you're doing grade five theory question that you'll be asked to choose
between two instruments. So it will say, "Write a
melody for oboe or violin," or something. So you have to choose one
of those two instruments. And then, you know, have
a good look at your melody and think, "Does that really
feel like a violin melody, "or like an oboe melody?" If you're not a string
player you may decide you want to go for a non-string option because then you don't really
have to worry about bowing and things that you might not know about. But, if you are a string player you may be very happy to
go for a string option and to mark in some of that bowing. But I think what you end up with is a perfectly respectable melody that now sounds something like this. You can carry on elaborating
it in any way that you see fit. But I hope that's given you an idea as to how to go about writing a melody that would fit the brief
for grade five theory. And alongside the other film you can see some of the
differences that we've explored. You can see the other
one was in a major key, this one's in a minor key. Writing in a minor key
presents particular challenges. The other one was in simple time, in 4/4. This one's in 6/8 time. You've got to be very careful that you beam all of your notes to fit in with those two
dotted crotchet beats. And if you look at all the beaming here you see these three notes fit
into one dotted crotchet beat, this group of notes all fitting into one dotted crotchet beat. So we're showing those
dotted crotchet beats all the way through. You've seen how in 6/8 we
have slightly longer bars in a way than we do in,
say, 3/4 or 4/4 time. So maybe, instead of just
holding on to long notes, we could do something using an arpeggio that you could then elaborate
with some passing notes. You may decide you don't want
to have this long G here, that you could do something
similar to this here. That would be easy to do. Though don't be afraid of the occasional long note somewhere. Hopefully you are now happy about dealing with the melodic minor, but dealing with the harmonic minor when you're choosing your chords. Hopefully you're happy
about having a perfect or a plagal cadence at the end. And, or having an imperfect cadence between bars three and four. And hopefully we've also demonstrated how you know it's in a minor
key, not in a major key. And we've also demonstrated
how to deal with the anacrusis. How that affects life at the
beginning of the second phrase, and how it affects life in the last bar. So I hope that's helpful. And if you're doing grade
five theory sometime soon, the very best of luck with
the melody writing question, and, indeed, with the rest of the paper.
