A metaphor so deep it's hard to see. ## Secret Architecture: Lines within Lines A slightly occult way of looking at lines: **lines only step. They cannot leap. A leap creates a new line. The old line is not over, it just passes into the background, waiting to be picked up later by stepwise motion.** [^5] Beautifully-constructed lines often show care for these background lines, weaving them together at the end, leaving nobody hanging unresolved. For example, this melody has three leaps. ![[CF1.png]] If each leap creates a new line, this melody is really a composite of three lines: ![[CF2.png]] Look how the F in the top line steps to the E in the middle, and the B in the bottom to the C. Because F/E and B/C are stepwise motion, we can consider them as continuations of of those line — at those points, the lines merge together. So the true structure is this, one line separating into 3 lines, and then weaving back together: ![[CF3.png]] Tying up your threads will help you write better lines. You’ll do it naturally if you follow this rule of thumb: use leaps to open up space, and then stepwise motion to fill in the spaces you’ve opened up, (eventually). **Take one of your lines and rewrite it, breaking out all of its composite lines. See if they all eventually close, or if any are left open. Can you close them?** ## Melody Melody is the line that is shaped by the voice. These are typical elements of a melodic line: - More steps than leaps. - Stays in vocal range: \~8ve+3rd. - Single high point per phrase. - Generally observes 'gravity.' - To leap up, you have to bend your legs down first. - Once you've leapt up, you fall. - This 'gravitational force' also works in reverse: prepare and resolve downward leaps with upward motion. - Leaps are generally 'filled in' with stepwise motion sooner or later. - Line generally flows, and doesn't get stuck in one part of its range. For example this first line is nice, it explores different parts of its range: ![[PUBLISH/media/melody-media/image3.png]] The second line feels stuck in narrow spaces, bangs its head on the high A again and again but can't break out, repeated notes breaking the flow. **Using only quarter notes, write a melodic shape.** ## Melodic Archetypes ### 1: The Tumbling Strain  In *The Wellsprings of Music*, Curt Sachs gives examples from around the world to argue that the oldest musics exhibit two melodic archetypes: The Tumbling Strain and the One-Step Melody. "It's character is wild and violent: after a leap up to the highest available note in screaming fortissimo, the voice rattles down by jumps or steps or glides to a pianissimo respite on a couple of the lowest, almost inaudible notes; then, in a mighty leap, it resumes the highest note to repeat this cascade as often as necessary." In more stylized/organized forms, the tumbling notes become notes of a mode or a triad, they are decorated and rhythmicised, and the distance traveled often settles into an octave, as in this song from the Vogul, a Finnish people (from *The Wellsprings of Music):* It's a shape sung everywhere in the world. Here it is in the Blues: *Somewhere Over the Rainbow* is perfect: a leap of an octave, artful descent to the starting point: Schubert String Quintet in C, 4th movement: **Using only quarter notes, write a tumbling strain: decide a distance to leap up, a mode to travel through, and draw a decorated path to the bottom.** ### The One-Step Melody Chant. In its simplest form, recitation on a single tone with one other tone occasionally used for emphasis. "A horizontal zig-zag melody." In more elaborate forms, more notes are used, but the range is limited. Total range of 4 steps is common. The step distance is not necessarily a single step; sometimes thirds are used. Motion is generally stepwise. Lines are unconcerned with creating climaxes. Shape is driven by the text. Whereas the tumbling strain is powered by emotion, the chant melody suggests a calm state of being.  > Eskimo, from *The Wellsprings of Music  > From the Latin Mass **Using only quarter and half notes, write a chant melody. Choose a few pitches close together and a piece of text. Write a zig zag melody through those pitches that supports the natural flow of the words.** ### 3: The Dramatic Arc  This shape is organized around its destination: a climax, somewhere after the midpoint. This is the shape of novels, plays, and movies, and many melodies. Here are some examples:  > Amy Beach *Romance.* Notice the AAAB form. Schubert *Sonata in B (D 960).* **Still using only quarter notes, write a melody in a dramatic arc.** So far we've been practicing in modal pitch space; let's open it up: ## Chromaticism These are the most common uses for chromatic tones. The last one takes you into true atonal music, and is a great way to give your lines a clear identity and color when using all 12 notes.  **Practice Interval limits: Choose two intervals and write a quarter-note line using only them. Octave displacements are OK; notice that they invert your interval.**  > An amazing example of interval limits from György Ligeti\'s piano etude 2: *Cordes à vide.* ## Adding Rhythm **Rewrite any of your lines with some quarter notes turned into half notes (possibly other rhythmic changes too, but keep it simple).** Here are some ideas to get you started:  **Write another version using a different strategy.** ## Adding Meter Now we\'re finally going to add meter. Meter is the dance your body does around the music: the bob in your head, the bend in your knees. When you bob, it\'s a down beat. There are really only two patterns, duple and triple: 2/4 : Down Up 3/4: Down Up Up Everything else is composed of these 4/4: Down Up Down-ish Up (two duples nested in a duple at half speed) 5/4: 3+2 or 2+3 (a duple of mixed lengths) etc. Lines suggest their own Up and Down motions. Beginnings, big arrivals, longer notes, often feel naturally feel like Downs. Rests, short notes, and passing tones often feel like Ups. If you align these features with the Up and Downs of the meter, you are \'in the meter.\' If you do the opposite (ties over the barline, long notes on up beats, passing tones on down beats), you are \'against the meter.\' Both can be good, so we practice both. **Take one of the un-metered lines you\'ve written already. Rewrite it in a meter. Make adjustments as you need to so that it really feels \'in the meter\'.** **Re-write the line, in the same or a different meter, and make adjustments so that it feels very \'against the meter.\'** ## Developing Lines: Structure and Detail ### Adding Structure: Stamps A more organized version of embroidery is to follow a path with a "stamp" --- a small melodic fragment that's reproduced the same every time, but transposed to different starting points.  **Write a path, write a simple stamp, and then write the stamp moving along the path.** ### Adding Structure: Sequences (Along a Scale) When the path is a 'straight line' --- a repeating pattern of intervals, like steps going down, or thirds going up, or fourths going down --- the result is a **sequence.**  > Example: Sequence from Bach C Major Invention: What is the stamp, and what is the path?  **Write a stamp, and then a sequence with that stamp. Label the interval change for each new starting point (should be the same distance each time).** ### Adding Structure: Sequences (Along Itself) Another common type of sequence. Make a scale out of the notes of the figure, and transpose along that, like this:  ### Architecture Example: Taans Taans are a type of fast melodic riff used in Hindustani improvisation. They usually run in an arc up and down the raga with some kind of symmetry and patterning created with 'stamps' (marked out in brackets):  > Example: Taans in Raga Bhimpalasi, taught by Mashkoor Ali Khan. Here are two more examples, one in Yaman and one in Bhimpalasi. The last is structured by the Rule of Threes (ready-aim-fire).  ## Adding Structure: Mosaic Stamps + rotations. Lou Harrison explains it best:  1. **Choose a 5, 6, or 7 toned mode. Write it out. Using Lou's melodicles and rotations (or write your own), write an 8 bar phrase in the mode.** ## Adding Detail: Ornamentation Ornaments are usually 'native' to an instrument (based on what it can do) and a style or tradition. For example, European Baroque music has a wide vocabulary of ornaments: Jazz its own vocabulary: find image ![[jazz-ornaments.webp]] Irish music too:  And an example of Hindustani *alankar*: ![[hindustani-ornaments.webp]] All of these ornaments have some things in common: There is a central note. The ornament is either a way to **approach** that note (like a mordent), **continue** that note (like a trill), or **quit** that note (like a doit). The ornament is usually made from notes **near** that note. Where to put them? There are a few approaches: - On longer-held notes (as in Irish dances to keep the energy moving, or trills in harpsichord music to sustain a held note) - At particular places in a phrase (as in the 'cadential trill' at the ends of phrases in Classical music). - Based on what's natural on an instrument. - Connecting certain ornaments with certain notes of the scale (a raga is not just the notes of the scale, but also a way to approach and ornament each note). **Write an ornamented version of one of your lines.** ### Adding Detail: Embroidery Often the best way to organize a highly detailed musical image is to elaborate around a simple one. This returns us to our idea of a surface and a background. In this example, six notes are used as targets for a winding path that spins around and through them, decorating them with swoops and curlicues. You can see how the original shape is still present 'behind' the decorated one. The line that connects it is written freely with a mix of leaps and steps. **Rewrite one of your melodies, embroidering a decorative line through them.** ![[embroidery-1.webp]] You can also embroider and preserve the meter of the background line: ![[embroidery-2.webp]] Next: [[Music as Text]]