Jerome Kern
If you have experience with music, you may want to begin by writing the melody instead of the lyrics. One good way to compose a song is to build it in small pieces, bit-by-bit from motif to phrase to period. Motifs are like words. They are the smallest meaningful units, the fundamental pieces of a song’s genetic code, usually no more than a handful of notes. Think of the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (“da da da DUM”) — and how he builds on that motif!
“The notion of using motifs is to peek the audience’s memory,” Stephen Sondheim said. A leitmotif is a special theme that represents a specific person, thing, or idea. In Show Boat, Jerome Kern used a three-note leitmotif in several songs to remind us of the Mississippi, including the opening of “Ol’ Man River.” And John Williams created a leitmotif for nearly every character in Star Wars.
Phrases are like sentences built from motifs, usually two. You can think of the first motif as the subject (noun) of the sentence, and the second motif as the predicate (verb), which modifies the subject in some way. This is also the grammatical structure of most lyrics. English (and almost half of the world’s languages, from Chinese to Spanish) uses a subject-verb-object sentence structure, such as “She loves me” and “I want ice cream.”
And periods are like paragraphs built from phrases, again usually two. You might think of the first phrase as a question and the second as the answer. Or the first phrase as a statement and the second as its rebuttal or confirmation. Or simply imagine the two phrases as adjoining shapes that create a smooth or rough contour. Periods will be the stanzas of your song.
As you build your melody, there are three things to keep in mind. First is the intervals between notes, the range of vertical space. You can move from one pitch to another in either a step or a leap. A step is when the melody moves no more than one whole pitch up or down, such as from C to D or only from C to C#.
A leap is when the melody moves more than that. Usually, the bigger the leap, the bigger the emotion. A good melody will have a variety of steps and leaps in its contour. Too many steps are boring, while too many leaps are confusing — and hard to sing!
Second is the tension among notes. The group of pitches you choose will create a sense of a melodic home base (a tonic). Every pitch has a degree of consonance or dissonance (stability or instability) with the tonic. The second, fourth, and seventh notes from home are dissonant, they increase tension. The third, fifth, and sixth notes are consonant, they create release. We’ll talk more about this when we get to chords.
You can also create tension with the intervals between notes. The strongest tension is one half step, such as the appoggiatura (grace note) and “blue note.” The next strongest tension is one whole step. A good melody will have both tension and release.
Third is variation. A good melody will use motif repetition and variation. There are three main types of variation: truncation (subtracting notes from a motif), expansion (adding notes to a motif), and displacement (moving notes in a motif). That last variation can include syncopation or simply replacing a quarter note with a whole note.
For free music courses on a range of topics, visit Maestra Music. For free music recordings and sheet music to use for practice, visit Musopen.
For inspiration, listen to Musical of Musicals: The Musical, a parody of the musical styles of five leading Broadway composers, and take a behind-the-scenes tour of every song in Come from Away led by its Tony-nominated composers, Irene Sankoff and David Hein.
Next, the harmony.