SEMI TONE

Other articles in this serie. Melody3. Harmony (under construction) 4. Tone Colour (under construction)MelodyIf rhythm is the canvas of music, then melody is the drawing. A melody, simply speaking, is a collection of notes of different frequencies grouped together to tell a story. I have always found melodies fascinating, because the allure of melody is so mysterious. It is impossible to define in advance what a good melody is, because we instinctively respond to it. Sometimes, a melody might appeal to us instantly but has no staying power. At other times, we may not like the melody on first exposure, but appreciation grows with repeated listening. Even more mysterious is the universal emotional response some melodies have - a melancholic melody will sound sad to everyone who hears it because there is no mistaking its tragic nature. Even people from other cultures will respond to it the same way. Have you heard much native Japanese music? Well, have a listen to Sakura Sakura ("cherry blossom"): Note the sparse instrumentation and bare-bones melody. Did you get a sense of the transient, ephemeral beauty of the flower, which teeters at the end of a twig before falling away to the ground? Well, the Japanese wrote it for themselves, not for Western ears. So how come we still respond to the melody in the same way? I will explore why a little bit later. But first we have to tackle some boring bits. The Diatonic ScaleAll Western music is based on an octave, which is divided into 12 semitones. An octave is a doubling or halving of frequency. Even if early musicians did not know that middle C has a frequency of 261.6Hz, and the next C the octave up is 523.2Hz, they knew that when you halve the length of a string it produces the correct tone the next octave up. The 12 semitones have been named - C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B. I have illustrated this below, along with the respective frequencies each note represents from Middle C onwards: C to C# is a semitone. C to D consists of two semitones, and is a whole tone. Note that E to F is a semitone, as is B to C. You may look at the frequencies, then pause for a moment. Something is wrong - Middle C is 261.6Hz, the C of the next octave up is 523.2Hz. IF we divide this into 12 semitones, then surely the spacing between each note should be 21.8Hz? Why is the difference between E (329Hz) and F (349Hz) only 20Hz? Or, why is the difference between A# (466Hz) and B (493Hz) 27Hz? The answer is - if we divide the semitones up equally, they would sound ugly. This is the basis of the well tempered scale. The development of the Well Tempered Scale is quite interesting, but beyond the scope of this article. Take a look this . Not all 12 semitones are used in a scale. All scales are based on 7 notes, which consist of five whole tones and two semitones. There are two modes of scales depending on the arrangement of the tones and semitones - major and minor. To illustrate, this is the arrangement of notes in the C major mode: C (tone) D (tone) E (semitone) F (tone) G (tone) A (tone) B (semitone) C (tone) And now the C minor mode: C (tone) D (semitone) Eb (tone) F (tone) G (tone) Ab (semitone) Bb (tone) C (tone) In musical notation, they look like this: - Click to play sequence (will download the file, choose to open using Windows Media Player) Click to play sequence (will download the file, choose to open using Windows Media Player)Note that both C Major and C Minor start off with Middle C, it is only the arrangement of the semitones which is different. The semitone interval has been shifted one tone down - from F to E, and from B to A. This will has a massive effect, as we will shortly see!So why am I bothering to go on about the diatonic scale, and the major and minor modes? This is because major and minor scales sound different. Even from playing the scales, you can appreciate that the C Major scale is easier to listen to. The C Minor scale sounds a little bit depressed.

Thanks to acquisition of some music notation software, I can demonstrate the difference between the Major and Minor modes with this an illustration from J.S. Bach's Prelude in C Major from The Well-Tempered Clavier. In the originally composed key of C Major, the melody sounds fresh and simple. In fact, it is so simple that even a child could play it: I spent a couple of hours keying in the notes into the software and I have exported it into a MIDI file. This is what it sounds like in the original key of C Major: Major really is the most basic key. When a pianist plays a piece in C Major, the only keys that are played are white keys. You can tell at once that the key is in C Major by looking at the first note - it indicates Middle C. The lack of any flats tells you that this is a Major key. As we will see later, melodies naturally want to "come home" - if it starts with C, it will want to end with C. And so it does, this particular Prelude ends with a nice chord with the top note as C from the next octave up. I would like to demonstrate the effect of changing this simple melody from the major mode to the minor mode. As explained above, all that happens is the rearrangement of a couple of intervals. The tonic key is still C, but it is now C Minor: am sure you will agree that the freshness is gone, and the music sounds distressed, troubled, restless, and despairing. It has gone a tad bit darker and the melody at times sounds sinister. This is a pretty remarkable transformation when you consider that all that has happened is the rearrangement of a couple of intervals! What happens if we transpose it into another Major key? I will now transpose it 3 semitones down to A Major: . Stop and have a good listen to it. The music still sounds correct - after all, the intervals are still the same as the original key of C Major - but somehow it sounds a little bit darker and heavier. What if we transpose it up to E Major? That is two whole tones up from C Major: Some of the weight has gone, and the music sounds too bright. Of course, both these examples are pretty large shifts from the originally composed key of C Major, but sometimes smaller transpositions are made and the effect is subtle. Consider this scenario - if a singer is a baritone and wants to sing a piece originally composed for a tenor, he may ask the pianist to transpose the piece down by a couple of keys. This is because a baritone can not hit the same high notes as a tenor. Now you come along with no idea that the piece has been transposed. You hear the performance, but you find that the song has become heavier, weightier, and more serious. Some of the colour and life has been sucked out of it, and you do not know why. It never occurs to you that the piece may have been transposed, and why should it? Most people will not immediately pick up the difference between C Major and C-sharp Major because the difference is only one semitone, and all the intervals are the same. But you can certainly feel the effects. You walk away disappointed, thinking that XXX isn't all that good ... at least not as good as he thinks he is If transposing down is a problem, so is transposing up. This is especially noticable on some songs with heavy bass notes. A good example is Schubert's song Die Allmacht ("The Almighty"). The piano repetitively hammers out a series of massive bass chords, forming a firm foundation for the singer to waft above it like an angel: . Imagine what would happen if the song was transposed up a key - the foundation would be pulled from the music, the singer would have no support, and the song becomes too lightweight.Of course, composers are aware of the effect of transposition and the effects are deliberately used. Mahler's 9th symphony is a good example. This symphony is about saying good-bye to the world, a theme that Mahler had very close to his heart having recently lost his daughter and diagnosed with a heart condition himself. He did not have long to live. This symphony starts in the key of D Major to listen to it. Note the slow, walking pace of the music and the air of resignation. The movement ends with an unresolved note, still in D Major. After the first movement, Mahler gives us the two middle movements, which are both ugly and terrifying. After these movements, we go on to the final movement where we would expect the original unresolved first movement to be answered. But instead of D Major, Mahler composes the last movement in D-flat Major - click . Notice that the theme is a straight variation of the theme from the first movement, and transposed one semitone down. As Benjamin Zander (a noted Mahler interpreter) said, "it is as if one had gone on a long journey only to return to find everything had sunk a couple of inches into the ground".