Simple Melodies

It depends what else is there with it. when i had breakfast i was listening to current 93 (Sleep has his house). there are very simple melodies on that one and what makes it so brilliant is David Tibet's vocals. the way he reads out his lyrics makes something ot listen to.

if it was just the melodies it wouldn't be substantial enough for me to go back to (though it would be good just for a one off).

Not to be pedantic, but that sounds more like a complaint lodged against 20th Century composers more than something most composers would probably claim themselves.

Julio, I guess it's never just the melody, but the point is that I can be satisfied with fairly simple melodies and that often the melody is the main thing that stands out.

Inspired by walking around last night with a bachata melody in my head, and this morning with a Frankie Ruiz song playing in my mind. (One that is sadly not on eithe of the best of's I own. I will probably need to get it all just to be on the safe side.)

(After getting away from drum machines and synthesizers, I have to admit, I kind of like bachata, even though it has become very formulaic and rigidly programmed.)

New simple answers.

serialism: very good analogy from Howard goddall (TV presenter who did a program on 'music and fascism').

he egts the chess board out: starts explaining that before serialism there was a 'key' where you rest to in the scale (a hierarchy of notes) (a king who was above a knight that was above the pawn (=notes that are not used a lot)).

then after schoeberg, 2nd viennese school= its all pawns, all notes treated equally, which is why it sounds 'ugly' but you can pick up the beauty that is present if you listen to it for long enough.

[of course this leaves out a few things that i have to get clear but taht made quite a bit of sense]

How about if I ask about something bogus like the New Melodicism.

"I am just a music man / Melodies so far my best friend"

the best thing is: in a French accent IT RHYMES

Serialism does not necessarily breakdown traditional western interval structures; it just introduces the use of patterns into generating musical ideas and makes writing harmony very difficult. I actually bothered to write a tone row before my browser crashed and dumped my last post, but here is how it goes:

First you start with a pitch and work your way though a scale according to whatever pattern you chose. You do not necessarily have to use a western scale; microtonal scales can be used as well. Next you decide on the pattern that you want to use to determine note length and work through the pattern. Then you can move onto things like velocity, octave, and what ever else you can think of. Eventually all the variables you generated though the process will be organized like this:

Pitch: () () () () () () () () () () () () ()
Length: () () () () () () () () () () () () ()
Velocity: () () () () () () () () () () () () ()
Octave: () () () () () () () () () () () () ()

From there you can figure out what kind of motif you got, and how to notate it for a score.

The real bitch of this system is that you can come up with something cool for one instrument, but when you have to use this for several instruments functional counterpoint is very difficult to achieve. It gets even worse if you use this to write 40 separate parts, it sounds like a car crash.

I do not think that composers went to this system because they were out of ideas; they did it because they understood how limiting traditional western harmony could be. When you understand the underlying structure of western music, you realize how much you cannot do with it. They were also trying to escape the tyranny of the traditional western canon. They wanted a composition method that they could put their own stamp on. They wanted to bring music into the machine age.

Pitch: () () () () () () () () () () () () ()
Length: () () () () () () () () () () () () ()
Velocity: () () () () () () () () () () () () ()
Octave: () () () () () () () () () () () () ()

Melody is often very important to me.. but I can't say something along the lines of 'only the most memorable melodies are best' because of course, sometimes they're memorable because they annoy.