Motifs and Melodies: The Power of a Single Voice
Intro:
I'll generally try to write these blogs in a way that they are continuations from each other, but some (last week's for example) are strictly for clarifying terms or concepts that will be used quite often. Eventually I may write a linked glossary, but that's for another time. This week we'll be looking at motifs and melodies, and ways to approach them as both a writer and listener. We'll start by establishing some definitions.
Terms and Definitions:
Voice(s): In music theory the word voice is something of an abstract term. It doesn't refer to any particular instrument or even the human voice. Instead it's used to identify a line of music that exists within a certain range. A voice could exist within several octaves, or even be a singular note. This becomes more important later when getting into multiple voices, and understanding how they interact.
Motifs: A lot of times a composer will use small chunks of musical content, and develop them through the course of a piece of music. Many terms have been used by individual composers and theorists to describe the process throughout history, but for our purpose we'll stick with motif as a kind of umbrella term for any kind of short, self contained musical idea/content. The actual content can vary from being melodic phrases to a simple 2-3 notes rhythm. The purpose of a motif is to be a starting point as well as being a kind of glue holding the musical structure together by being an always familiar idea that a listener can grab onto as a piece of music progresses.
Melodies: These can kind of be thought of as extended motifs, but that's not entirely accurate. A single melodic line could easily fill a whole section of a piece, and can determine its structure. A melody on a single voice can make up the entirety of a single piece of music. A well written single voice melody can have just as much harmonic complexity as four voices.
Use Conditions:
Now that we have some distinction between motifs and melodies the next question is, when and how would we use each one? Obviously, there are no hard rules that say that you must use one or the other in certain situations, but each does offer specific advantages/disadvantages.
A Case for Motifs:
Motifs are for speed:
Fast pieces of music can consume melodies in no time, and while there are free form pieces of music that will continuously spit out new idea after new idea it's often an inefficient mode of writing. Motifs, being short, can more easily be developed across iterations while also being combined with other motifs to form complex ideas. A western example of this would be some preludes by Bach, but this type of composition can also be found in Indian music with the use of ragas or African mbira. This type of writing can also be found in most electronic music genres. Motifs allow for a lot of variation by not being, themselves, complete.
Motifs carry meaning:
Even if the primary driving force in a piece of music is a melody, motifs can help carry specific associations through to different sections of the piece or even through to seemingly unrelated songs within a larger body of music. The human ear likes to hear familiar things, and motifs are a great tool for doing that. Let's say you're writing a piece of music for an animation, and earlier you associated a motif with a specific character. If you wanted to foreshadow or imply the presence of that character later in the animation without them being present you could use that motif to queue the viewer to think about that character. It's not something you want to be too 'on the nose' about using since it can come across as patronizing, but it's a useful device for when a certain affect is desired without necessarily being explicit.
Motifs don't require commitment:
Just as they can be easily remembered, a motif can also be easily discarded and forgotten. If you've spent time really hashing out the details of a melody it can feel like a waste to simply discard it. However, motifs don't come with that time investment, and it's not a big deal to do a one off instance of a motif for incidental pieces of music or loose associations that aren't maintained later.
A Case for Melodies:
Melodies are bigger, and have more gravity:
Heavy emotions often take time to develop, and melodies are a great way to allow the listener time to really sit in a moment. Melodies don't typically go through the same developmental processes as motifs, but instead develop the affect through changes in pitch, dynamics, inflections, etc. A good melody isn't just about the notes, but all aspects of the performance that can enhance or subdue certain feelings.
Melodies bring structure:
A strong melody doesn't just carry the emotional weight, but also contains the structure (either explicitly or implicitly) that shapes the rest of the work. It can outline chord and key changes, tempo and meter changes, and even contain references to motifs of other works. Often times, once a melody is finished the rest of the music kind of writes itself. That being said, the context in which a melody occurs can significantly change the effect of its affect, but those are details for a later blog.
Guidelines for writing:
Motifs:
Range- Keeping the range of a motif to about an octave and a half (ie C2 - G3) will make it easier to work with; especially when you start handing it off between voices and instruments. Most instruments have a range of about 2-3 octaves with lower and upper registers having distinct sound qualities so if a motif can fit within one register it will be more straight forward to get predictable results. In electronic music this might not be such an issue since synths can be fairly even across ranges. Even so, you may not want a bass instrument venturing into the upper-mids.
Content- Motifs are meant to be developed over the course of a composition so keeping things simple from the start will allow space for that development to happen. The original basis for the motif may not even be music. On an animation project I worked on there was a character who was anxious about being put in front of classmates to answer a simple math problem (1+1=2), and my initial motif was rhythmically based on that math problem. Because it was such a simple starting point the motif was able to be developed in a near infinite number of ways, and passed between every instrument in the arrangement.
Key- Try to avoid creating motifs with a specific key in mind. Instead, think of motifs as a kind of set that you'll later build key relationships around as you go through the process of development. You may end up with strange combinations of accidentals and rhythms, and that's okay.
Other considerations- While motifs are meant to be used and developed in a larger musical context they should be functional chunks of music on their own. They should be memorable and even sometimes singable. Motifs can be strung together as though they're a melody, but avoid thinking of them as such. Just like Legos, just because you've built up a Lego structure doesn't mean you've built one giant Lego.
Melodies:
Things get more complex with melodies because they contain so much more content, and usually have to be a complete unit before being usable in a finished work. When it comes to melodies you'll likely spend most of your time fine tuning the melody itself while the context and arrangement will generally flow from that initial work.
Range: A melody can span several octaves, and as a result can go through several processes of arrangement such as hocket (distributed across instruments) and octave displacement (shifted up/down an octave to fit within a voices ranges). However, it's still generally good practice to keep a melody to about 3 octaves or less. This is especially important if the plan is to have a lot of layering of instruments, and you don't want to lose clarity.
Content- Melodies are generally fixed in their content, and will not go through the same developmental processes as motifs. Partly because the goal is for melodies to be memorable, and the last thing you want is a bunch of changes occurring that will make this difficult for the listener. Melodies, in themselves, typically have some formal structure, and a good starting point for understanding this is the 8 bar phrase which is usually divided into two 4-bar 'call & response' statements. These statements can follow one of several pattern.
Matching: The second statement acts like a repeat, but can end on a different note in the cases of key change or cadence.
Parallel: The second begins the same as the first, but it deviates after the first or second bar.
Contrasting: The second statement has it's own start and ending, but done in a way to feel like a continuation of the first.
This process can further be broken down into 2-bar sections, but such a fine grained approach isn't entirely necessary and is done using the same methods as the 4-bar sections.
Writing the first four bars- The beginning of a melody will typically be on a tonic or root note of the song. Deviations from this usually involve starting from an off beat, or with some sort of harmonic feature like a cadence to reinforce the tonic/root of the song at a different point. The ending note is usually the root, the fifth scale degree, or the sixth (concepts that will be covered in more detail in later blogs). What happens in the middle of those two notes is generally at the discretion of the composer, but here are some guidelines to get started with.
Try to avoid going more than an octave and a fifth away from the beginning or ending note. In part, because you will still have to get back by the end which could require a lot of awkward leaps.
Try to have only one highest/lowest point (climax) in a single statement to make it easier for a listener to track with the melody
Avoid having leaps that are not outlining/highlighting some chord
While a single leap of an octave is okay, try to avoid having several small leaps going in the same direction that equal more than an interval of a sixth. This isn't to say NEVER do it, but always have a reason for doing it (i.e. moving to a different register on an instrument)
Singable and memorable melodies are a good goal.
Secondary dominance is okay, but reserve key changes for the second statement
Writing the second four bars- The first thing to decide is if you want matching, parallel, or contrasting sections. Matching sections are okay for melodies that don't repeat a lot, or at least repeat in different keys or with some variation. Parallel is good for when you're wanting to change key or do some other move away from the original statement (usually done at the end of a section). Contrasting can be a bit trickier because you're moving towards a free form style of writing, and is preferred in situations where it's okay if the music wanders around for a while before resolving at the end. You'll generally see contrasting done in the more chromatic preludes of the Romantic era (Chopin especially). This second section follows a lot of the same guidelines as the first with the exception of the last note. It's usually based on what a later section of music is going to be doing that determines what note you're going to end on. Such details will be in later blogs.
Conclusion:
This blog has gotten a bit long, and really the goal at this point is to give an idea of the overall "shape" of motifs and melodies. Some of the terminology used here may not make sense yet, and that's expected. By the time we reach the topic of functional harmony, most of this will make sense. For now, understand that most of what is discussed here are guidelines, and it's more important to take away from this blog the general concept, and see how it can be applied in your own music to the degree that you understand it.
