Jump to content

Beginner's lesson in melody writing


Papageno

Recommended Posts

15 minutes ago, Luis Hernández said:

It's curious to note that melody can be understood from different angles. I always run away from "square" melodies:

836764243_Capturadepantalla2021-08-02alas21_29_45.thumb.png.d9e75c7e7532b02aac96892546e1c2c3.png

 

True, however this exercise had absolute beginners in mind such as Dailyduo, he wrote the, 'three pieces in the style of Beethoven', in the piano forum.

Beginning with a two bar question and a two bar answer is a good place to start in melody writing. In fact its a good exercise in composition fluency and musical imagination to see how many answers you can compose to a single question.  

From there you can move on to 4 bar antecedent and 4 bar continuation phrase that make up the 8 bars of the A section of a minuet. 

Over Mozart's career he wrote around 340 minuets, they are a staple of the classical style and its from this form that Mozart learnt the basics and the form he taught his students. Its the form I began with and continue to use to learn the basics.

You can introduce schema theory, 2 and 3 voice harmony, keyboard composition technique and other topics that help in composing minuets authentic to the style. In time it can lead to a beginning in improvising in the classical style. 

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...