Putting some conscious thought time into the detail of your melody writing can give them a twist or a sound that you might not come to just by ear. Of course, the ear is still king, but there are several ways to examine a melodic line.
The approach I’m outlining today is counterpoint. Counterpoint is simply the movement of two or more melodic lines together. The lines should stand on their own, that is, they will sound good and make some sense played separately. And while counterpoint lines do create harmony, that is incidental to the independent lines. They way the lines interact should be seen as the creation of tension and release.
The study of counterpoint can be very complex and involved (second species? Huh?!) but the essential ideas can be applied to a wide variety of music. Although the practice of counterpoint is ancient, my prog metal band uses counterpoint techniques when creating vocal harmonies and when writing complimentary line between the guitar and bass.
There are four types of melodic movement in counterpoint: parallel, similar, contrary, and oblique. Five types if you count unison. Although there is no tension in unison lines it is a perfectly valid writing technique. You’ll find the best counterpoint uses a variety of different movement. The following examples are very basic. They all use the same rhythm for simplicity’s sake, but counterpoint lines can have mixed rhythms.
The most basic movement other than unison is parallel motion. Parallel motion happens when the lines move in the same direction with the same intervals. The sample has lines in parallel thirds and sixths.
parallelaudio
The second movement is similar motion. In similar motion the lines move in the same direction but not always by the same interval (one voice moves up a fourth, the other moves up a third).
similarAud
The third movement in contrary motion. In contrary motion the line move in opposite directions (one moves up, the other down).
contraryAud
The last movement type is oblique motion. Oblique motion occurs when one voice moves while the other is stationary (one voice moves up a third, the other remains on the same note).
obliqueAud
Here is an example combining the above techniques, along with the individual lines, so you can hear how they stand on their own.
both
line1
line2
Here is a more involved composition of my own that uses two voices and more mixed rhythms. I’ll take a closer look at this piece in a future article.
fullCP
more articles by Sean Gill
July 16th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Great job Sean! As always, I’m a sucker for articles with good audio!