How do you use intervals when coming up with themes?

[Stamped Records]

It depends on what kind of music you are aiming to do.

Sometimes it needs production, sometimes it needs a countermelody, sometimes it needs padding, and it goes without saying, there's as much emotion/attitude in the rhythm as there is in the intervals.

But also, something that is very easily overlooked for a beginner, speaking from personal experience, is step-wise movement i.e. passing tones and neighbouring tones.

My thought process as a beginner allowed me to think that step-wise movement was standard and that leaps of intervals were "creative". There's a hell of a lot of emotion in step-wise movement and when you become more practised, step-wise movements allow you to more easily consider harmony while you write.

Finally, I think a lot of factors of music require some form of brain activity while you are "working" unless you are an extremely practised musician, but melody is not something to be really thought about too hard in my opinion, beyond the scale/mode you are using and which note is your tonic - perhaps if you are writing to a specific chord progression this would include some thought about your "current" chord.

Practise and experience are really the best teacher but I would beware not to overlook the simple things. Stepwise movement is much easier to feel and if you feel you need a leap, I think you will know that a lot better than trying to leap around the place all of the time.

It's also worth remembering that the melody likes to reach it's goal. Everything you do in between is cool, but if you don't reach the goal then it makes no sense.

I would suggest practising falling or rising an octave in a random pattern to get the sense of how it's pulling to the tonic as the "full stop" of the melody.

EDIT: Repeating the same note is another thing that I personally overlooked as a beginner writing melodies.

[Vurniks]

When polyphony faded away, in favor of accompanied melody (with the triumph of the Opera) those rules vanished with it, because the musical logic they served also disappeared.

The rules of voice-leading stem from the rules of counterpoint. It didn't vanish completely.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

As to the rigidness of rules. The big devil referred to is often Fux with the examples of the parallel fifths and octaves as implied in is first rule in my sig. However, his general take on rules shows at a passage in the three part writingcsection where his alias, Aloy, corrects the fictional student, Joseph, by breaking his own third rule, namely that movements from an imperfect consonant (e.g. a third) to a perfect (e.g. a fifth) must proceed in contrary or obligue motion. He proceeds in parallel. Of course Joseph protests and tells Aloy that he has not observed his own rule, to which Aloy explains that it is the lesser evil and if no other way possible, you may occasionally depart from the strict rules of counterpoint. Hysteria beyond that must be on people's own accounts.

[fmr]

When polyphony faded away, in favor of accompanied melody (with the triumph of the Opera) those rules vanished with it, because the musical logic they served also disappeared.

The rules of voice-leading stem from the rules of counterpoint. It didn't vanish completely.

First, that quotation belongs to me, not jancivil.

And what "voice leading" are you talking about? When there is only one voice (the melody) it may go pretty much anywhere. Besides, when using chords to harmonize the melody (being them full chords, or arpeggiated, like with the accompaniment figure of Alberti bass), the problem with parallel fifths and octaves disappeared. More than that: Fifths and octaves became common. Just look to the music of Mozart and Beethoven.

The avoidance of parallel fifths and octaves was due to the fact that using those would lead to a temporary polyphony reduction, since parallel fifths and octaves would sound as doubling the lower note, not as independent voicing. When there is not "independent voices", there is no need for that. Of course, if the opera composers were writing duets or trios they would observe those "independent voicing" rules for the soloist voices, due to the same reasons, but even then, there would be passages where the soloists would unite in octave/unison movements.

Main thing to retain is: There was a completely different logic when writing for accompanied melody than there before was when writing for polyphony. And the same may be seen even today, for the exact same reasons.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

As to the parallel fifths, Fux never really explains himself as why to avoid them, and this has created a whole field of research trying to explain it retrospectively. Among the explanations and possibilites given, I have seen the following bid:

1. To save individuality of voices in harmonic context
2. To save individuality of voices in polyphonic movements (because he refers to Palestrina as his master/idol in the intro)
3. Because they should be hard to sing in leaps (which is his main reason for avoiding tritonus besides that the interval sounds bad to him)
4. Because he (and others) wanted to distinguish the art of voice leading from the tradition of pagan music characterised by drone instruments like the bagpipe and Hurdy Gurdy.
5. Because he did not really had so many works of Palestrina to decide from to consolidate it as first and general rule (see Jeppesen) and had to make a guess or choice.

I could add a few speculations too:

6. By reference to Palestrina instead of his contemporaries, yet writing in a time where new trends had already gone beyond Palestrina, he wanted to preserve the old art by establishing rules more rigidly and simply mistook a trend to avoid the fifths for a principle.

They are not mutually exclusive either, but shure it was for one reason or another he did so. Not a coincidence, and it certainly had impact on Post-Fux voice leading.

[jancivil]

not interested in Fux, the sort of received normative I went into regards tonal music, JS Bach basically.

as to lesser evils, I had 4 points taken off my final for my commission of Mozart fifths which JSB was also known for. Hidden fifths in an augmented sixth to V7.

[fmr]

as to lesser evils, I had 4 points taken off my final for my commission of Mozart fifths which JSB was also known for. Hidden fifths in an augmented sixth to V7.

You mean a chromatic movement that's made by a different voice, like for example having the tenor playing/singing a G and in the next note having the Alto playing/singing a G#?

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

I had 4 points taken off my final for my commission of Mozart fifths which JSB was also known for. Hidden fifths in an augmented sixth to V7.

Yup, that sounds as rigid as we learned it in the beginning. Depending on restrictions given, a cantus firmus could have one solution only in two part writing or just very few degrees of freedom leading to a handful of solutions in three parts. Of course four parts opens a little more possibilities but can be restricted as well. We did not have any oral exam either, but at least we could make a footnote if we broke a rule and explain why it was the best solution. No explanations from preference allowed though, it had to be the lesser of evils in strict counterpoint. With no footnote, the teachers had to treat it as an error. But if you had explained and even named it correctly as Mozartz’ fifth you might have gone from what corresponds to A to A+ in our old grade system (replaced by another scale today).

[jancivil]

thing is, there was in all likelihood no other move available, as though there was not going to be any 100% on that final.
BTW I was blazing on acid taking that final

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

I was blazing on acid taking that final

Well, studying in Denmark in the post 70s…. Christania was not too far away from our school, so….

[jancivil]

this was really clean and really not a small dose of windowpane. I took it the night before, I was still up and still going for the 9AM test. I must have expected to be still going, otherwise this action made no sense.
I'm pretty sure that version of me was mentally sharper on LSD. I practiced while tripping quite a lot of that era.

[Hink]

I went to a dead concert once in Portland Maine, bought two hits of acid off of someone but didnt get off...this was like 82 or 83, I was pissed. We were leaving the show and this guy walked up to me tripping his teeth out, asked me if I wanted to buy any acid and I was all over it. Two and half hour ride home, I took one hit (my friend was driving) and it was awesome, I lived with my dad and it was a small apartment so all I could do is go in my room, take this little Ross amp thing I had and play through headphones with a black light on...my dad left for work at 7am, I took the rest of the acid

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

As to the topic. Once music composition was an art taking departure in intervals and where chords in the modern block approach (corresponding to 1. species note-against-note harmonizations only in counterpoint) was not thought of as such. The favored term was harmony, and it was given that they arise bottom up by harmonizations and counterpoint and are dynamic to the extent they involved few or all species and few or all type of movements. However, I just made a search on composition courses, and surely the modern approaches are very wide and includes song writing, beat making, DAW courses and what not. However, it cannot be doubted that the chord approach seems to dominate, and that the courses generally are grounded widely with no reference to particular periods or styles. That is probably left to self study now a days is my guess. Just look at this from Berklee online

https://online.berklee.edu/courses/musi ... position-1.

Intervals are basic, voice leadings are understood in chords movement (look at lesson 7). It is okay for a start, I guess. Reducing music to rhythm, chords and "a" melody is a way to start especially if you target modern music as this do. However if the past is entirely forgotten, so are the art and we end up with standard harmonies serving functions instead of being the dynamic result of united melodies, and that is where we are now in mainstream seemingly.

My opinion on that is obvious, but there is no universal right or wrong to this and everyone has right to his own. Suit yourself.

[Hink]

I'm very tired, it's very late (4:05 am), I cant sleep so forgive me...rhythm + intervals = melody...no?

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

I'm very tired, it's very late (4:05 am), I cant sleep so forgive me...rhythm + intervals = melody...no?

Depends on the extent to which you move the intervals somewhere or just let them stay as drones. A bagpipe or a hurdy gurdy can have drones in fifths just staying there, while not using the melody pipe/string for anything. The traditional approach of these instruments would be to consider the drone a stable harmonic, while the melody pipe/string plays, well, melodies. The hurdy Gurdy can make rhythms too with the upper part of the drone, called the trompette, by four positions of the handle, but it is still no melody without tonal movements, and the trompette cannot make such, only the melody string. Lets illustrate with a babe:



She sings out of pitch tho, but looking like that, who cares? (joking, she is not my type, rly)

In the same manner, no tonal movement is unthinkable within classical counterpoint for an interval to be part of a melody, because it is first and formost defined by tonal movements: Direct (same direction, including strictly parallel), contrary and oblique (one voice steady, another fluent in steps and skips). No tonal motion but rhythm only is not even part of the definition. Melodies can be graded (and discussed ad nauseam) as when to consider them motifs, themes or subjects (in fugues) only, but they all require tonal movements to be so if it should be compatible to classical counterpoint.