Lesson with JediMaster

JediMaster wants to learn how to develop and conceive material for composition.

My first question....

When it comes to music composition, do you understand what a motif is?

yeah. Motive is the building block of a musical composition. I suppose, it can be anything from one note to two measures more or less.

Ok

Here is your first exercise. Actually, this exercise was used for another student of mine in the lesson forum as well but he didn't have time to continue. So, I figure you can get some good use out of it.

I've attached an exercise for you. Its a theme and within that theme I have designated 3 motifs I want to you to focus on. I will give you instructions on what I want you to do.

1) First I want you to combine motif 1 and motif 3 using the rhythm & melodic shape only to create music. Don't worry about so much about preserving the relationship of intervals between the notes. Try your best to not always be suggestive of the key of C Major. Try to create 4 measures of music.

2) Repeat this process combining motifs 1 & 2 as well as combining motifs 2 & 3. Remember that I want you to focus on working with the rhythm and melodic shape for now.

Is the assignment clear?

Here is the exercise. I combined only two motvies at a time, like you instructed me. I hope that's what you meant.

Ok,

The first two combination of motifs are good. But you third combo varies a little. Remember you were to keep the melodic shape. In your 3rd example you did a slight variation by altering the the shape of "motif 1". Its not wrong, but for now try not to do so as we will work on that further on.

For this stage of the exercise you kept each motif complete and followed it by another motif in different ways. What I want you to do this time is to find a way that you can disect the motifs and kind of past various parts of different motifs together. Therefore, when
motif 1 and motif 2 appear together they should not look like two separate motifs as one following the other. But, instead it should look like a hybrid of both motifs almost creating a new motivic idea.


Come up with a good number of 4 measure examples of motif hybrids that you can.


Does this make sense?

That's all I could come up with
it was quite difficult.
I hope I understood you correctly, I tried to mix different parts of the differnet motives.

Ok,

I've downloaded the exercise. Will take a look and make comments by next Monday or Tuesday.

Ok, I took a look and it wasn't a bad start.

I want you to try it again but this time I want you to think about a few things. Don't feel pressured to have the assignemets done quickly. You can take up to a week. I want you to try and get the best out of the assignments for yourself.

Let's take a look at the second exercise that you did. First off, the 4 16th note idea was not really a hybrid idea. It is more of an extension or continuation of the idea of the 1ts motif. I also saw that you combined the ideas of motif 2 and 3 a number of times. And other times you are using continuations of the idea of just one motif.

So here is what I want for you to do:

1) Take a look at the various motifs analyzing what rhythms and melodic shapes make up the different motifs.

2) Next, think about what aspects would you like to "cut" away from any two motifs and "paste" together to form another idea that "seems new".

3) This time When you have created your "hybrid" I want you to label what parts came from what motif.

Remember, its ok to take your time with this.

Let me know if you need further explanation.

Here is a four measure trail. I want to know if I'm on the right path here so I'l lbe very gald to hear your comments about it.

Will take a look and post comments early next week.