Lesson with Mark

Good! I was of course speaking about music in general ; there are no definite answers to my questions, but you should be thinking through your new harmonies that way.

In response to your first question about the melodies, regarding why F is the most important note in the first bar:

• It is the first note, and appears on every beat of the bar.
• It's the most commonly occuring note, appears 5 times as opposed to one G and two Es.
• It's in the centre of the range of that bar.
• There is an ornament on F, second beat.
• You said to ignore harmony, so the fact it's the tonic doesn't apply.

After my exam tomorrow I will be starting serious work on the rest of the exercises and should have something to show you soon

My first successful (I hope ) melody:



B Minor, range from the B below middle C to the F# a perfect 5th higher. The first bar centres on the tonic note, second bar has a bit more interest, and the climax is on the 3rd beat of it. From there we descend down the scale to B before ascending to our final note, and the tonic of the new key, D.

I really can't believe that it took me about an hour and countless failiures to come up with even this

Mark

Forgot to mention, I finished my Sarabande!

I was planning on using a neopolitan chord in the final cadence at some point, but it didn't seem to fit, so instead I went for iv - It6 - V - I for my final phrase I know we haven't covered augmented 6th chords yet, but I jus
t couldn't resist the urge to use one, and it seemed to fit...

Thank you for inspiring me to finish my longest composition to date! (even if it's only 24 bars )

About that original question on the F... it was a very simple question, but it might tie into our next lesson. I do want to add to your list that that F is also accented in the example by duration. Remember that a long note is not necessarily placed on a strong beat.

Your first melody is perfect! Well, it might not win any awards but it is exactly what I wanted. I can tell you are carefully considering each individual note and all the intervals they form; after all it did take an hour to write. That may seem like a bad thing, but consider this: a simple melody like this is still a challenge for you (and me too, quite honestly). Now take that melody and multiply it by fifty in writing a small polyphonic composition like that invention you wrote a while ago. Clearly if you intend to write a long and complex composition, you will not feel in total control of the music; if even melody requires creative effort certainly the counterpoint and harmony will suffer. So facing the challenges of melody alerts you to the immensity of the task ahead, but also offers a solution. You know that once you can not only write nice melodies at reasonable speed but also combine them with accompaniment or in counterpoint, your music will be that much better.

This is melody at its "purest," but in other contexts different melodic styles emerge. The sort of melodies that work well in counterpoint present their own challenges which we will consider soon. But you really must finish these simple melodies; I think you see how beneficial they will be. So don't be discouraged if they take a long time; it is time very well spent!


And I like how the sarabande turned out. Your augmented sixth works well; most importantly, however, the whole piece has a neat dark character and flows nicely.

My second melody - starting and ending in E minor, the range is between B on the bass clef and B above the bass clef - the climax is on the first beat of the fourth bar.

Here is (I think) my Sarabande, finally completed, and recorded . I apologise for the crappy sound in the recording, I only had webcam mic to work with, and the strings on my guitar are in need of a change .

The pdf of the finished score is attached, and here is the mp3: RapidShare: 1-Click Webhosting

I can't write too much now other than to say that you should post that sarabande for everyone's comments! It certainly deserves to be proudly displayed. Of course you must guard against the fairly modern habit of judging a work by its length; you have poured plenty of learning into the piece.

Also I don't like your second melody exercise quite as much as the first ... but I will discuss more later. Keep up the good work!

I think I shall post it, I wasn't planning on, but if you think I should then I shall

I agree about the second melody, it doesn't work quite as well - this is perhaps because I didn't spend as much time on it, I shall try and write another one to that brief and shall spend as much time on it as I did the first

Originally Posted by Mark

this is perhaps because I didn't spend as much time on it

I could tell right away .