How to develop a
MeLody
What next?
There are lots of different things that
you can do to your four-bar melody to
make it more interesting
Here are some of those ideas and how
they can be used
Develop =
change and
improve your
ideas
Retrograde
Retrograde means ‘backwards’
You can sometimes play a melody backwards
and it will still sound good
Here is the
original
bar 1
Here is the
retrograde
version
Develop =
change and
improve your
ideas
Retrograde
Here is the full retrograde version of my example
Bar 4 is now bar 1- and everything (all the rhythm
and the notes) are back to front
Develop =
change and
improve your
ideas
Retrograde =
backwards
Using Sibelius re-write out your 4 bar-long
melody and retrograde it.
Listen to it, and when you are happy with it,
print it off and put it in your folder
There is a shortcut to doing this in Sibelius in
the plug-in menu!
Modulation
You can develop the melody by modulating to
another key
In my example I have moved the whole phrase
down so that the whole phrase starts on a G and is
in the key of G major.
Using Sibelius re-write out your 4 bar-long
melody and modulate it.
Listen to it, and when you are happy with it,
print it off and put it in your folder
There is a shortcut to doing this in Sibelius in
the transpose menu!
Develop =
change and
improve your
ideas
Modulation =
change key
(make it
higher or
lower)
Phrase = a
musical
sentence
Decoration
You can develop the melody by decorating it
In my example you can see I have added extra notes. I have had to
shorten other notes to make them fit, because each bar must still add
up to 4 beats even with all the extra notes in it!
original
decorated
Using Sibelius re-write out your 4 bar-long
melody and decorate it.
Listen to it, and when you are happy with it,
print it off and put it in your folder
Develop =
change and
improve your
ideas
Decoration =
adding extra
notes to your
melody to
make it sound
prettier
Phrase = a
musical
sentence
All together… so far
If we put all our ideas so far one after the other we would
have 12 bar section of music!
This is what my example would look like
Original – Retrograde – Modulation - Decoration
Retrograde =
backwards
Decoration =
adding extra
notes to your
melody
Modulation =
change key
Phrase = a
musical
sentence