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Top > SongTrellis Site How-Tos > How To Compose A New Melody Upon a Chord Progression using Your Workscore
 
 Once you have even one chord recorded in your Workscore using Workscore Chord Entry or Chord Entry By Grid, you can use the tools provided by Workscore Composer to invent a melody which harmonizes with the chord or chord sequence recorded there.
 On the Workscore Composer page, the controls that help you find new notes for your melody reside in the left panel of the page. Your current Workscore display resides on the right side of the page.
 When you add a new note or rest to the melody you are composing, you need to decide how long it should last. Workscore Composer provides two methods to specify the durations of the notes you enter in your score.
The first control group in the left panel allows you to specify the duration of the next notes you enter into your Workscore.
 The second control group in the left panel, provides an Improvise New Idea button that tells the server to improvise a new melody phrase to add to add to the end of your Workscore and play the score so you can hear how the new idea sounds.
 If you like what you hear, you press Improvise New Idea again and add another new idea to your score. If the entire improvised idea doesn't fit, you press Delete New Idea and try again. If the early part of a phrase fits your melody and then goes astray, you count the number of bad notes at the end of a phrase, delete only those using the Delete button and do Improvise New Idea again.
 The third control group in the left panel specifies what part of the score should be played whenever you do an action that adds or deletes notes from your melody. It's cool to hear the entire score as you add notes, but after awhile it gets tedious to listen to your ever longer score, so the radio button selection here let you restrict the playback to smaller sections at the tail of your score (last idea, last four bars, last eight bars).
 The fourth control group in the left panel provides four different rules for adding pleasing notes to your melody, one note at a time, a type-in box that lets you name the pitches of the next notes that you'll enter (if you are quoting existing music or know tons of music theory), and two transpose controls that let you revise the pitch of the last note you typed if it doesn't sound right to you.
 The fifth and last left panel control group, lets you change your selection so that you can touch notes in the middle of the melody you're composing and revise their pitch, if you decide that's necessary.
Editor: David Luebbert; Updated: 12/11/15; 1995 hits.




Last update: Friday, November 10, 2000 at 12:50 PM.