SongTrellis
Music and Musical Know-how For You

Author:  David Luebbert Posted:  9/9/07; 9:30:51 AM Topic:  Changes in the Wind Msg#:  5313 (in response to 5312) Prev/Next:  5312/5314 Reads:  942

Daniel, now that we have this nice harmony in hand, I'd try to find out what kind of melodies we could invent on top of it.

An easy way to start your investigation, would be to load this progression into your Workscore on SongTrellis, and use the melody creation operators that are available there to scribble out a melody that fits this.

Here's how to do the Workscore load: On your Changes in the Wind page, click on the "SongTrellis Excerpt Service" page that shows up toward the bottom of that page.

In the form on the "Play Excerpt from Changes in The Wind" page that launches for you, change the "Last Bar" setting from 4 bars to 16 bars since you have a 16 measure long setting here. That will cause your entire progression to be played and displayed.

Now press the "Add Excerpt Chords" button which will add your porgression to your Workscore on the site, which should be empty if you've never used it before. The Workscore Composer page will launch for you, showing your progrssion in a score image in the panel on the right. The panel on the left is full of operators that can help you invent a new melody for yourself.

Here's how you can use this Workscore Composer page to scribble out an initial melody for yourself.

At the top of the left panel are controls which let you choose the rhythm that will be given to the next notes you enter into your Workscore. The choice here are to use a Fixed Duration or to use durations that are drawn from a pre-programmed rhytm pattern. It defaults to using the "Fixed Duration" choice.

For your first try at a melody, I would suggest choosing "eighth", "eighth triplet" or "quarter" "Fixed Duration" settings, which means that the next notes, rests, or chords that you enter into your score will be given this duration untill you decide to change this setting.

In the fourth group of controls down in the left panel, there are two lines of "up" and "Down" buttons labelled "Enter Next Chord Tone" and "Enter Next Scale Tone". You can make a melody for yourself, by pressing "Up" or "Down" in the "Enter Next Chord Tone" line several times. This will assign pitches to new notes that spell out the chord tone from the chord that accompanies this note that is closest to the previous note up or down from the previous note.

Press the "Play" button to hear what you've played. If you don't like anything that shows up, use the "Delete last note" control which appears in the second group of the left panel.

You can continue by pressing the "Up" or "Down" buttons in the "Enter Next Scale Tone" line. Analagous to the Chord Tone controls these buttons these controls choose the closest pitch up or down from the previously entered note from a scale that fits the chord that would accompany this note.

I would go serval chord or scale steps in one direction before changing direction. Oscillating between two pitches can sound kind of pointless for the rhythm duration we've chosen.

Every so often when it sounds like you've chosen a pitch which naturally ends your last idea, rest for awhile. Press the "Insert Rest At End" button in the second control group. When you feel like you've rested enough, resume pressing "up" or "down" in different patterns.

Continue this till you reach the end of your 16 bar chorus and you will have your first composition on these changes.

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