The Barber of Seville... well sort of...

San Francisco Opera - Barber of Seville

The Classical Era 1750 - 1800.

9-5 The MUSICAL

Year 9 Composition activity

Year 9...

So you should have created a melody in www.noteflight.com that is 8 bars long. It needs to end on a D at the end of bar 4, then end on the note G at the end of bar 8.

From there you should have named each note (using the lyrics tool) in CAPITALS.

Today you need to COPY the first 8 bar melody and PASTE it again after (so you have two lots of the 8 bar melody).

THEN... you need to create a NEW 8 bar melody using the notes G A B C D E. It needs to be DIFFERENT from your first 8 Bar idea.... Use different melody notes, different rhythms.

THEN....

Paste your FIRST 8 bars at the end.

YOU NOW SHOULD HAVE 32 BARS OF MUSIC!!!!

[8 bars THEME A]  [8 bars THEME A] [8 bars THEME B] [8 bars THEME A]

Make sure you save your work before completing the lesson!!!!

Good Luck, Mr Billiards.

The concepts of music - summaries.

Structure in your song.

Create a diagram that shows the STRUCTURE of this piece. Try to include the details of the instruments [TONE COLOUR] and maybe even how the instruments are being played [expressive techniques]




What do you find interesting about the structure of this song?

Looking at the list of instruments what sub-genre of music do you think this might fit into?

What is the song about? How does the music support the theme of the lyrics?

EXTENSION QUESTIONS.

Map out the chord progressions for the verse and the chorus.
Where does the composer use INVERSIONS?
What effect does this have on the song chords?

Writing Melodies

2. The Power of the Pentatonic

This is a principle true for nearly all popular sung melodies. Song melody tends to revolve around pentatonic scales. “Penta” means five,  and “tonic” means notes, so a  pentatonic scale is a series of five notes. The most common forms of pentatonic scales are the pentatonic major and the pentatonic minor. Here they are in C:-

Pentatonic Major Scale In C
C-D-E-G-A

Pentatonic Minor Scale In C
C-Eb-F-G-Bb

(from which we also have the blues scale by adding in the diminished fifth – F#)

Let’s take a look at “The Scientist” by Coldplay:-

The first line of the song uses four notes from this scale, in this order:-As this is in the key of F, here are the notes to F pentatonic major:-
F – G – A – C – D

F – G – F – C – A
And through out the whole of the verse, it restricts itself to just these four pitches (with a variation on the pattern at line three – notice also the “power of three” at work here). Only at the chorus do we get one new pitch (D)
F – D – C – F  -  D – C – F – D – C 
(To the words “Nobody said it was easy”)
And only on the final two lines of the chorus are there any other pitches in the whole of the melody (Bb and E). This restriction to just a few notes gives the song a nursery rhyme like quality, making it is easily remembered. And when the movement away from the pentatonic comes (on the last two lines) the notes have more impact, because we have been unconsciously anticipating a change such as this for a long time.

Read more: http://www.haydockmusic.com/composing_tips/writing_melodies.html#ixzz4GhI44E9N

Classical Music Structures

teoria Music theory webpage.

 This page helps to explain musical structures in classical music.


You can also learn about musical structures here...

High school presentation/Forms of Music from rocio_mejia

Creating and Naming Chords

Jimmy Recard - Drapht

1. Write down the STRUCTURE of the song.
2. List the instruments you can hear in the piece. [TONE COLOUR]
3. Describe the roles of the different instruments in the song. [TEXTURE]
4. How many chords are used in the piece?[PITCH]
5. What instruments have a MELODIC role in the piece?

Have a go at playing the song (see if you can work out what chords are being played.)