Chord Tone Melodies

[robberg]

4Bar Melody Example - C to G-1.jpg

The above example 4 bar melody comes from a brilliant YouTube "How to Compose Music - Lesson 2 - Harmony 101 . . ." that was put out 8 years ago by ArtofComposing.com.  It's a simple 4 bar statement - Bars 1 and 2 are over C major in root position with the triad chord tones C,G,E in the melody.  Bars 3 and 4 are over G major in first inversion with the triad chord tones B,G,D in the melody.  

So we have a simple phrase based on chord tones, which we can perfectly recreate in RC.  

BUT HERE IS THE MAGIC - we can do it by only using the first two bars of the example melody (with a very small tweak)

The first thing is to create a 4 bar master track in C Major. Assign the chord C major to the first two bars, and assign G major to bars 3 and 4. Make sure the Master Track is set to Relative Mode so you see Roman numerals I and V for the chords.
Right click on the V chord in the Master Track so you get the monkey wrench dialogue. Click on the Voicing Box and select "Edit Voicing" We want to create a G major first inversion chord, so on the keyboard, click on B3,D4,G4. If you don't see that octave range on the keyboard, just right click on it and you can adjust the visible keyboard range. (too me a while to discover that !!!) Now you will notice that the Master Track reads V/VII(custom), but we actually just have a G chord over B, which is the third of the chord. However, B is the VII of the scale. Don't sweat it - it's just the way RC notates a 1st inversion.

Now you want to carefully create this simply TWO BAR Phrase in the first two measures. Here is the Magic - we don't need to create the 2nd two bars because RC will do it for us. All we have to do is drag the phrase from bars 1 and 2, to bars 3 and 4. Because we adjusted the Master Track to 1st inversion, RC will transform the phrase almost entirely into the one in the example (with the exception of two notes)
--- here are the settings for creating the 2 bar phrase:

RC Prase Settings-1.jpg

After you create this phrase, just control-drag a copy of it onto Bars 3-4.
Here is the result:

RC version using G 1st inversion in Master Track-1.jpg

Here is the result if you don't adjust the Master Track for the 1st Inversion (of the G chord):

RC version without G inversion in Master Track-1.jpg

Notice that the results are completely different. When you don't set the "1st Inversion" in the Master Track, you basically get a Transposition of the phrase down a Fouth (C down to G). BUT, when you do adjust the Master Track, you get a much more musical result.
You will notice that in the last measure the second G4 needs to be changed to F4 and the F4 (3rd note) needs to be changed to E4, to match the Example melody. But this is a minor tweak, and the power of RC transform melodies on the basis of harmony is readily apparent.

RC goes far beyond simply Transposing Melodies and making sure that all the notes say in the Key. Keep in mind that this example is based on a "Chord Tone" melody. There are times when you don't want the melody to follow the harmony, rather, you want the reverse - the harmony to follow the melody.

[musicdevelopments]

Nice! Thanks, robberg!
Attila

[BluGenes]

So cool.. I actually tried this.. Also made me think it would be a cool feature for RC to be able to draw visual note lengths based on notation.. meaning, example: visually draw a midi note that is what a dotted eighth note would be, etc.. (which would mean notation support! hehe )

So, for the fun of it, I used this wiki link to draw the notes in RC..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_m ... _and_rests

Which produced this in RC..



Great way to learn notation and what midi looks like as it is represented..