ESSENTIAL 1: NON-TRADITIONAL MELODIC NOTATION*
QUIZ on Non-Traditional Notation
After you have viewed the video, take this quiz to demonstrate your mastery of the subject.
ttps://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=ten-essentials-for-musicians-1a
*NON-TRADITIONAL MELODIC NOTATION
(PITCH CLASS AND RHYTHM)
Before we can really talk about melodies, we have to have some universal way of being able to describe a tune. How do you say it without just singing it? There are various systems that work to describe a melody, and all of them are some form of NOTATION.
We’re going to cover traditional music notation in the next couple of lessons, but first I want to try something more intuitive. How else might we be able to describe dit-dit-dit-dah?
1. Pitch letters. G-G-G-Eb (8th-8th-8th-dotted quarter with fermata)
4. Solfege. (sol sol sol me)
2. Scale degree numbers. (5-5-5-3. In minor)
3. MIDI events. (Contains everything needed. But not as universally familiar to traditional musicians).
5. Traditional notation. (example. Accurate. But requires training.)
We’re going to cover the first three on that list today. Pitch letters. Scale degree numbers. And shorthand midi.
Pitch letters
The musical alphabet begins with A and goes to G. When you get to H, it sounds just like A, only an octave higher. So we repeat. Only 7 letters. Great advantage. Accurate. Like these building blocks, each level goes alphabetically, and the melody steps or skips from one layer to another. “Mary Had a Little Lamb” would be C-B-A-B-C-C-C. B-B-B. C-E-E. C-B-A-B-C-C-C-C-B-B-C-B-A.
So why not use it? There’s a problem that not every song is in the key of A. So A doesn’t always “sound” like “home” to us. So it is accurate, but not as helpful as we might think. In this example, the C needs to be sharp every time. That requires a better understanding.
Solfege
Many people have traditionally fixed the problem of letters by using solfege or Kodaly signals. Have you heard the famous Do-Re-Mi song from “Sound of Music?” “Do a deer a female deer, Re a drop of golden sun. Mi a name I call myself. And so forth. Do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do.
Great song. Many people know it. But the problem is, learning those names for notes only adds a set of Latin words to learn in addition to the notes themselves. I’d rather not add another language to have to memorize, especially when the pitches are altered to minor or something.
Pitch Class Numbers
So let’s try to use numbers. So if Rogers and Hammerstein had used a number system, it might have gone like this:
when you read you begin with ABC when you sing you begin with 1-2-3. The first three notes just happen to be 1-2-3. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.”
ONE is I, for I am one.
TWO for you are like me, too.
THREE whose branch I climb upon.
FOUR a thing they yell in golf.
FIVE as in five golden rings.
SIX a note that’s more than five.
SEVEN Up is a drink with fizz.
Which will bring us back to ONE. Which is this: ONE.
Are you with me so far? 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. That’s “Joy to the World.” 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. And Three Blind Mice is 3-2-1, 3-2-1, 5-4-4-3 and so forth. Most every simple tune you know can be sung using numbers like this.
Let’s use our building blocks again. But this time, let’s use numbers on them. Or steps, which is what they are actually called in music. Start on 1 and go up a step, and you are on 2. Step up again, and you are on three. Step down twice and you are back on 1 again. Got it? Good.
Common tunes often start on 3 or 5 and work their way down to 1. Nice and simple.
3 blind mice 3-2-1, 3-2-1
Mary Had 3-2-1-2-3-3-3-3-2-2-3-2-1.
Swannee River 3-2-1-3-2-1
Alluette 1-2-3-3-2-1-2-3-1.
Those are all what I call 3-patterns. Start on step 3 and work back down to 1, which feels like home.
Other melodies use a slightly bigger range, maybe starting on 5 and going down to 1. Here are some 5-patterns:
He Shall Feed his Flock 5-5-4-3-2-1
Jesus Loves Me 5-3-3-2-3-5-5…6-5-1-3-2-1
Star-Spangled 5-3-1-3-5-8…1-2-3-4-5. 1-2-3-4-2-1
Why do we finish on 1? Because 1 is the note that has no tension in it. Think of it like this rubber band. When the band is not stretched out, it is at rest. Almost always, a tune ends on this melodic note.
Some of you might ask, “Why 1? Why not 0?” For now, the answer is, because that is musical math! It gets more confusing before it gets better. But consider 1 to be the musical equivalency of 0. There simply is no 0 in music. How’s that? So 1 is the resting place.
We saw that Joy to the World is an 8-pattern. Here are some more:
Here’s the whole one: 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. 5-6-6-7-7-8. …. Here’s the end of the tune: 321-8. 6-5-43-4-3.2.1. (Notice the use of hyphens, dots with spaces, and no space at all? That helps to show the rhythm. But you don’t have to know that system until lesson 3.)
Here’s another 8-pattern: A mighty Fortress. 8-8-8-567-876-5-8-7-6-5-6-432-1.
The First Noel. 321. 2345. 678-7-6-5.
I gave you 3 patterns, 5 patterns and 8 patterns. All three of those melodic patterns are like a set of steps. When you get to the bottom, you have arrived home. Like with the rubber band sitting on a table top. But some melodies stretch the band both up and down before coming back to rest. If the other patterns are a 3-1, or a 5-1 or an 8-1 pattern, this one might be called a 5-5 pattern.
Away in a Manger 5-5. 43-3-2-1-1-7-6-5. 5-7. 43-2-3-2-1-2-6-7-8. (on rubber band)
Maybe instead of using building blocks, we could use a staircase with a landing, where you can go both above and below the resting place of 1.
Doxology 1-1-7-6-5-1-2-3. 3-3-3-2-1-4-3-2. 1-2-3-2-1-6-7-1. 5-3-1-2-4-3-2-1.
We Wish You a Merry 5-1-12176-6-6-2-23217-5-5-3-34321-6-556-2-7-1.
Notice the ups and downs of each melody. Mostly the motion is stepwise, or one step at a time, but sometimes the melody skips. The most common pattern of skips and steps is to skip up and then step back down. And the wider the range of the tune, the more complex the CONTOUR of the melody tends to become. See that new word, CONTOUR? Think of a melody as a mountain range. Some jump a lot; other stay pretty level.
Use the laser ball tracing into a staff for these:
How would you describe Jingle Bells? 3-3-3. 3-3-3. 3-5-1-2-3. 4-4-4-44-3-3-335-5-4-2-1. Just 3 skips, and something like 14 repeated notes, with 6 stepwise movements.
Compare that to Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart: 1.51. 515135. 4. 24. 242725. Entirely made up of 17 leaps, and no steps at all. That’s a mountainous terrain!
Okay, that the subject of MELODIC CONTOUR! Move on to the quiz to see if you have mastered the subject before moving on