...........................................................................................................................................

Lesson 1

Musical

Example

Lesson 1

Secret

Score

Lesson 1

Score/

Music

Further melodic development

Let's move on to the next bar. Maybe we should try that technique again and move all the notes from bar 2 up one more step in the scale:

That's becoming a little too repetitive, isn't it? We've just stumbled upon one of those compositional "rules" that tend to be true: never repeat the same musical statement three times in a row. You can state something once, and then repeat it or adjust it slightly. But the third phrase (or statement) should be a slight departure from the first two.

So where can we go in the third bar? Well let's look at the first two bars again:

We've discovered that bar 1 is built around a C Major chord. For bar 2, we've moved all of bar 1 up one step in the C Major scale. So the next step up the scale from a C major chord is a d minor chord. How do we know this? The same way we discovered that bar 1 was built around a C Major chord - by looking at the notes of the melody. If we look at the notes in bar 2, we see that the left hand is playing the note D.

When we look at the right hand, we see the notes move from F to G, then to A and D before returning to A.

We can find every one of those notes, except the G, in the d minor chord. Therefore, the melody basically spells out a d minor chord.