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Lesson 2

Musical

Example

Lesson 2

Secret

Score

Lesson 2

Score/

Music

Changing the Patterns and the Harmony (cont.)

Now the music is starting to sound too repetitive. If you remember from Composition 101/Lesson 1, the rule is to never repeat the same musical statement three times in a row. After stating a phrase once, you can repeat it note-for-note or repeat it with slight adjustments. But the third phrase (or statement) should be a slight departure from the first two. So now what? Well let's see what we've done in our last bar:

You can see that we're now playing our pattern around a d minor chord. We arrived at this chord by going down one step in the scale from our previous e minor chord in bar 10:

So, we've now played three minor chords in a row, starting with our a minor chord in bar 9.

Perhaps it's time to go back to Major chords. Referring back to our chart Chords built from the C Major scale, we see that the Major chord most similar to the d minor chord is the F Major chord.

So, let's use the F Major chord in bar 11. And this time, since we are on the third statement of our new pattern, let's also vary the melody a little bit.

That sounds great. We even finished bar 12 by going to the G Major chord. We did this for several reasons. If you look at the chart Chords built from the C Major scale, you'll see that the G Major chord is the next chord up the scale from the F Major chord.

You'll also notice that the F chord is the IV chord and the G chord is the V chord. The IV chord and the V chord are the perfect chords to precede a return to the I chord - in this case, the C Major chord. That means we can go back to the beginning again.