If you ever studied music formally, maybe you had a teacher tell you that the rhythm is the most important aspect. Even if you don't believe that, it's still a big part of the equation and for me it's always the first order of business.
When writing melodic rhythms we're trying to balance the two forces of repetition and variety. Most popular melodies are rhythmically simple yet this simplicity often hides sophistication that goes unnoticed by the uneducated listener.
In fact it's much more difficult and takes a lot more time to write something which is both simple and effective. So, for beginners its often helpful to start with something a bit more complex and work down towards simplicity.
With that in mind lets talk about melodic rhythm. One of the most basic melodic rhythms is a series of eighth notes. But normally, if you just perform a series of eighth notes, it will be boring at least rhythmically. How can we make a plan to insert some variety?
One way, which was recommended to me by my music composition professor, is to base the variety that you put in on an organized plan and not just randomly.
There are many plans but one common and effective plan is to base your insertion of variety and surprise on the golden mean which can also be thought of as the Fibonacci series but you do it in a special way.
If you're rolling your eyes because you've already heard about that, I'm not only going to talk about that so please stay with us. Don't worry, if you haven't heard about it before, I'm not going to get mathematical on you.
It's not difficult at all if you think about it as the 75% rule. Of course, in music there are no rules per se, only recommendations and guidelines. In the 75% rule, you compose an even rhythm such as straight eight notes starting from the beginning of the measure for arguments sake.
If you then determine where 75% of the distance from the beginning to the end of the measure is, you'll see it land on the "+of 3". So, instead of just going 1+2+3+4+, we want to change the "+ of 3" somehow. There are several different ways.
One is to perform it early, another is to perform it late, yet another is to not perform it or some combination of these. If we add further subdivisions of the beat, we could use 3e+a, 3e.., 3..a, 3e.a, 3... or a triplet. In this first measure that we're talking about my preference is to perform it late.
Now we have /1.+.2.+.3..a4.+.//
Continuing in this way for the second measure we would determine where 75% is, not from the beginning of the second measure but from the beginning of the first measure through the second measure.
If you do that, you'll see that the75% point of the span of 2 measures comes on beat 3 of the second measure and all of beat 3's off beats. So, how can we create variety on beat 3 of the 2nd measure?
One way is to tie the previous eighth note over to beat 3 as in /1.+.2.+..+.4.+.// I'll talk more about this in a moment. Another is to drop the "+ of 3" as in 1.+.2.+.3...4.+.//, or both. We can also place rhythmic events on the "e's" and "a's" whether or not the 3 or its "+" are present.
We could also play a triplet or tie over to the triplet instead of subdividing beat 3 into 16ths. I prefer 1.+.2.+.e+a4.+.//. Next, we continue applying the 75% rule but over the span of the first three measures which includes the first two we've already finished. This is what I meant when I said we'd apply the 75% rule in a special way.
As you can see, we didn't just find the 75% position of 4 measures. We are doing it at simultaneous levels of 1ms, 2mss, 3mss 4mss, etc... Over the span of the first 3 measures, the 75% region falls on beat 2 of the third measure and all of its off beats.
The variation we use here should probably be a repeat of one of the variations we've already used to help create unity. Which one to use is up to you. I choose to repeat the first one we created previously (a dotted eighth with a sixteenth) because we haven't heard it in a while.
Over the course of 4 ms, the 75% position is beat 1 and all of its off beats in the fourth measure. It's probably best to introduce a rhythm we haven't used yet to give it something fresh again.
One of the reasons why the 75% rule works is because the variety has been inserted at a different rhythmic position in each measure which is another way of approaching the need to insert variety and interest.
There are not many pop phrases proceeding from the down beat of the first measure to the last off beat of the last measure. Its filling up too much space and doesn't breathe. Pop phrases tend to be shorter with pauses between the phrases. The kind of process we've been talking about is much better for folk and classical styles.
Classical melody in particularly is often about the long phrase of 8 and 16 measures. Before we talk about making shorter phrases, there are other consideration that you may or may not want to implement. One concern is that sometimes it can sound too abrupt just jumping into the flow of the melody cold turkey.
You can work into the flow by starting with a few longer notes which also may get progressively shorter until arriving at the appropriate level of subdivisions. It also helps you not blow all your cookies at once right from the start.
In this case you can either add a few pick up notes in a pick up measure (also called an anacrussis) +.....4.../1.+.2.+.3..a4.+.//or rhythmically displace all the rhythms we've written to the right so we can insert a few longer note values at the beginning of the section //..+.....3...4.+./1.+.2..a3.+.4.+./1.+.2.+..e+a etc..
I want to talk about that tie from the "+ of 2". We might want to think about rhythmically displacing the phrase to set that tie over the bar line since having a rhythmic event falling on the downbeat of every measure sounds square and flat footed.
The kind of accompaniment rhythms you plan to use will influence your decision to include the warm up notes at all, or to place them before, on, or after the downbeat of the first measure. In jazz the bass and drums are often playing on the down beat already, so the pianist will often play on the up beat after the down beat so people can hear what the piano is playing.
If you want people to hear the entrance of the melody, you probably should avoid starting on the downbeat in that case or the up beat which is the "+ of 1". Unless it's an intimate setting such as only accompanied by solo guitar. Also, if any of the parts are busy such as if there are a lot of loud electric guitar strumming in that section of music, it will be hard for people to hear the entrance of the melody no matter where it starts in the section.
This consideration gives the composer more of a reason to start before the first beat with a few pick up notes. Also, for balance, if there is going to be a guitar or other improvisational instrument in the bridge that steps on the toes of the singer or melodic instrument, meaning its coming in before the actual start of the bridge, then the technique of starting ahead of the beginning of the section as in pick up notes, has already been used and will no longer be as much of a surprise and therefore less interesting if it has already been done.
This will give more impetus to start the melody after the downbeat in those earlier sections for varieties sake. Another thing to think aboutis that if you want to have short phrase lengths, starting after the beat is more conducive to that. An excellent example of short phrase lengths that breath is U2s tune "Where the Streets Have No Name" It starts; I want to run..................I want to hide.................
We've been honing things down making our melodic ability seemingly more simple but secretly more sophisticated. Lastly, I wanted to talk about 4 kinds of phrases or at least motifs; ones which start on the beat and end on the beat. Start off and end off. Start on and end off. Start off and end on.
Phrases or motifs that start on the beat are more conducive for beginning a chorus. Phrases that end on the beat are better for ending choruses. Phrases that start off the beat are better for starting verses. Phrases that end off the beat are better for ending verses.
Exemplary Choruses;
1+2+3+../1+2+3+4.//
On......OffOn.........On
1+2+3+../.+2+3+4.//
On......OffOff........On
1+2+3+4./1+2+3+4.//
On.......On.On........On
1+2+3+4./.+2+3+4.//
On.......OnOff.........On
Exemplary Verses
.+2+3+4./.+2+3+..//
Off.......OnOff......Off
.+2+3+4./1+2+3+..//
Off.......OnOn.......Off
.+2+3+../.+2+3+..//
Off......OffOff......Off
.+2+3+../1+2+3+..//
Off......OffOn......Off
Another example of short phrases or motifs depending on how you analyze them is Sting's song Fields of Gold; You'll remember me.........When the west wind moves...... Just straight eighth notes except for the last rhythmic event. Perhaps he decided that putting rhythnmic variety in on that first repeat would have been premature especially since the pitch changes on the last rhythmic event giving enough variety for those beginning moments of the song.
Achieving this kind of simplicity is something to strive for but is often quite elusive so if we climb back up the complexity ladder just a bit by breaking out of the flow of straight eighth notes a bit more than the 75% rule, at least the way we've been applying it, can give, then, it will be easier for beginners and amateur composers to come up with something viable.
A basic musical concept is repetition. If you've got some rhythmic cell at the level of the beat such as 1e+./1e.a/or 1.+a/ etc...we can call it "a". If you want to put another rhythmic cell on the next beat, there are only two options; repeat it as in "aa", or put a new one as in "ab." If we still need to fill up another beat we can get "aaa, abb, aba, or aab."
A return to previous material is another basic musical idea which "aba" provides. If we wanted to include a return to previous material in the other examples we'd minimally need "aaa b aaa", "aab a", or "abb a". Another concept to be aware of is the rhythmic rhyme scheme such as aaaa/aabb/abab/aaba/ or abcb. These last ideas of rhythmic rhyme scheme and return are good places for beginners to start because they're fairly simple but not so restrictive as the very short phrases like Sting and U2 are capable.
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