- Hi, I'm Gareth, and in this video, I'm going to try and answer an issue that's come up quite a bit
recently with composers whom I've been working with one-to-one. And it's really about this topic, how to come up with a motif. Well, first of all, what
do we mean by a motif? Well, a motif is a short musical idea. And the idea of a motif is,
once you've come up with one, it's one that you might using
during the course of a piece. So, for example, if you have
a motif that goes like this, then you might be able to reuse it. So you could repeat it,
you could transpose it. You could do it upside down. Lots of things you could do with it, and it could be the basis
for some counterpoint, in other words, a little bit of interplay between the parts. So you could have one part going. And then, it goes on to do something else while another part copies it. And on we go. So you see, you can build up a texture in two or more parts using a motif. It's a very Baroque way
of looking at things, but it has applications
well beyond the Baroque. Now, the problem that I've
been noticing recently with people working with this is that they got a motif going, but actually, the piece
of music they end up with doesn't hang together. And this is what I'm going to focus on, to help you come up
with a motif that works, that would give you the basis of something in a composition or an
arrangement of something, but just to explore the key issues that you need to think about
when you come up with a motif. Okay, well, here we are. Here's a blank stave, and
we're in the key of F major. And I'm going to start by
thinking about a chord of F. Well, F is the tonic chord in F major. It's quite likely the piece
in F major is going to begin with chord I, the tonic chord, the chord of F, in this case. So, we could do anything with
what we call a harmony note. So, what do I mean by that? Well, the chord of F comprises
three notes, doesn't it? So you've got F, A, and C. So, if I've got some kind of
chord of F sounding somewhere, I could have a motif
that just uses the notes of the chord of F. So, if I put the chord of F down, I'll improvise a motif
that just uses these notes, F, A, and C. Okay, that works all right, doesn't it? But it sounds a bit like
a bugle call or something. Nothing wrong with
bugle calls, by the way, but it may not be what
you're wanting to write. And of course, what happens
is you very quickly get stuck, because you've just got these three notes. And also, it means that the
melody has to jump around a bit. You're jumping around between intervals. So you don't get the chance to write notes that are nextdoor to each other, so you end up with a melodic
idea that's quite disjunct. So, how do we get to a
point where we could include some conjunct movement in the motif? In other words, using
notes that are nextdoor to each other, or scalic. And this is the clue, really. When you write a motif, don't just think of the melodic idea, the motif itself. Think about the harmony. So, start by thinking about
what I've got on the board. We're going to use a chord of F. Now, we can use the harmony notes. So we've got the F, A, and C of the chord. We could also using passing notes. So, those are notes that
pass between harmony notes. So remember, if you use a passing note, it has to move by step between
the notes' either side. So, for example, F and A are
two notes of the F chord, but if I want to go F, G, A,
that will work perfectly well, because G is a passing note. I've got two harmony notes. And G is just passing between them. So I can go F, G, A, or I can
go the other way, A, G, F. But I could do that between the
next two notes of the chord. So, A and C, for example. I could go A, B-flat, C, or C, B-flat, A. I could even run that together, so instead of just going
up the chord, I could go or and that will all work
with a chord of F major. Because all of the notes that I'm playing, in my right hand in this case,
all belong to the chord of F. They're harmony notes, the F, A, C, or they're passing notes. Now, we can also use auxiliary notes. Auxiliary notes are simply
when we take a harmony note, we go up one, and we come back again. That's an upper auxiliary note. We could also use a lower auxiliary note. So, I take a harmony note, I go down one, and I come back again. So, here's my chord of F. If I want to go F, G, F, that G is an upper auxiliary note. Or I could go F, E, F. The E is a lower auxiliary note. Again, it has to go by step. You don't leap with passing
notes or auxiliary notes. But again, I could do that
on any of the other notes of the chord. So, if I take A, I could
do an upper auxiliary or a lower auxiliary. If I take C, I could do an
upper or lower auxiliary. So, you could see, you
could spend a lot of time in a motif just using auxiliary notes. Now, when you combine your passing notes and auxiliary notes, well,
you can develop a motif that will have a nice balance between conjunct and disjunct movement, and that often is something
that defines the identity of a motif. It doesn't have to have that mix, but often, it's quite an effective mix. And you certainly meet a lot
of that in Baroque music. So, let me just jot down
one or two possibilities. Say we had a motif that went like this. I should give this at
time signature really. So, if I do something like that to start, and then maybe we do this. Okay, so, what does this
actually sound like? I'll put my chord of F down, so we can get the context of the harmony. Okay, just missed out a line there. Let's just put that in. Okay, so you see what's happening here. Harmony note, lower
auxiliary note, harmony note, harmony note, harmony
note, lower auxiliary note, harmony note, harmony note. So, you can see all I've done there is to use two auxiliary notes. They're both lower auxiliary notes. It's a very simple way of doing things. And I've got a motif
that works much better than that bugle call thing
that I was doing earlier. So, if I just play it on it's own, the idea is that you've then
got a strong melodic idea. Just using a motif, you could
even say there are motifs within that motif. Here's one. And maybe there's another motif. Doesn't really matter. Sometimes that's how this
motific writing develops. But the other thing is,
once you've got that motif, you can use it going forward. So you can transpose it. But you can modify the intervals. You could do something which identifies with this rhythmically, but does something slightly
different melodically. You could turn it upside down. You can do lots of things with it. So, if we go on to a new chord, so, say, we have a
B-flat major chord next, which would be quite possible, you could think, okay,
what happens if I take this and transpose it up a fourth? That's going to work equally well, because it's going to
bring to the same pattern with a chord of B-flat. So you can begin to see how
you could have a piece of music that's going to go quite nicely. And then, go on to do
something a fourth higher. Or we could start to imitate
that in another part. So that could be happening
with a chord of B-flat up here, while the lower part is doing something independent of it. And then, you start to
write some counterpoint using your motif. So, there's one idea for it. I mean, if you want another idea, so take this as a separate
issue, as you were, if you're thinking, well,
is that the only motif that I could come up
with on my chord of F? Well, no, how about something like this? So you can probably already
see what I'm trying to do here, because I'm using passing notes there. And then, there are various ways in which I can take that forward, but how about something like this? So, at the moment, I'm
thinking about motifs that would fill up a bar, in this case, of 4/4 time, but the motif
could be shorter than this if you wanted it to be. Let's have a think about
what we've done here. This is what this second
example sounds like. So, F is harmony, G is passing, A is harmony, B-flat is passing. Then I've got harmony note,
harmony note, harmony note, upper auxiliary note, harmony note, passing note, harmony note. So that is a more complicated
use of passing notes and auxiliary notes
than the first example. And you may think, well,
that sounds better to me, or you may prefer that. It doesn't really matter. You can be as complex or as
simple as you want to be. It's just establishing the principle that when you write a
motif, you have to justify the presence of every single note. You could even do something else. I mean, let's just have a third example, because the possibilities
are almost endless. So, say, I do something, I'm trying to do something
that's kind of similar in rhythm between these examples, but there are other rhythmic
possibilities, of course. So, we could do that, and then maybe, let's finish off maybe
doing something like that. And that will be the third example. Still, of course, using the chord of F. So, what have I done this time? Well, it sounds like this. So, you see, I get this
quite distinctive scale run. So, what's going on there? Well, F the first note,
that's a harmony note, that's a passing note, and
that's another passing note. It's possible to put two
passing notes next to each other if one is accented and one is unaccented. In other words, if one comes on the beat, or in some cases, the half-beat, which is what's happening here, and then the other comes between the beat. So, there's a sense here
which this is harmony, this feels accented,
it's on the half-beat. So, this is unaccented, because
it's between the half-beats. So I can write harmony, passing, passing, it's just to show how you
can put two passing notes next to each other. But one will be accented,
the other will be unaccented. The C's harmony, the B-flat's passing, the A's harmony, the G's lower auxiliary. Then I'm going harmony, harmony, harmony. And you see this nice
blend of the conjunct and disjunct movement
that I was talking about. You could take any of those motifs. You could devise your own motifs that do something in this similar vein. And then, you can think,
okay, as the chords change, can I roll out this
motif with the new chord so it always fits the harmony? So, be creative, be inventive
in coming up with a motif that's got something
distinct to say musically. Think about the balance of
conjunct and disjunct movement, but essentially, make sure
that everything you write in a motif is going to fit with a chord. Maybe, in this case, I've got
a chord lasting a whole bar. It may be that you're going
to have chords changing quicker than that on the half-bar. Well, you could shorten the motif. For example, you can
think, well, I'll just have these first few notes as a motif. That's okay. Or make sure that the motif can modify to the change of chord. And then, as the other bars unfold, well, you might have to
modify the motif to fit, but you'll find you can
compose a whole piece of music using this motivic approach, as long as all the notes fit the chord or can be justified as inessential notes. So, I hope that helps you
with coming up with a motif and how to do that in the first place. And you can have an awful lot of fun in your composing and
arranging using motifs.
