The Complete Idiot''s Guide to Music Theory

Part 3:
Tunes
There’s something else interesting about this particular melody. The first half of
the melody has an insistent upward motion; the second half uses a downward
motion to deposit you pretty much where you started. Even though not all the
notes go up (or down), the general flow of the melody moves in those direc-
tions, and thus propels the melody forward.
You need to have some sort of motion in a melody, or you’ll put the listener to
sleep. That motion can be in the tune, or in the rhythm, but it needs to be
there, to help the melody get from point a to point b.
Michael, Row the Boat Ashore
Next up is the traditional folk song “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore.” The
words to this tune, simple as they are, can actually help us see the melodic form.
When you read the words, you can clearly see that the song consists of two
near-identical halves—rhythmically, anyway.
The first time Michael rows his boat ashore (hallelujah!), the melody has a
slight upward motion, and ends with a slight bit of tension on the fifth note of
the scale (A). The second time Michael goes boating, the melody sways down-
ward slightly, and resolves itself by ending on the tonic of the key (D).
Symmetry, repetition, tension, and release—these techniques are used over and
over to create memorable melodies.
94
The melody for the folk song “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore.”
The two quarter notes
before measure one are
called
pickup notes;
that
little half measure is called
a
pickup measure.
You
use pickup notes and
measures when the melody
actually starts up before
the first beat of the first
measure.
Note
The melody for Bach’s 
Minuet in G
—also appropriated for the pop song “A Lover’s Concerto.”

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Chapter 8:
Melodies
95
Pachelbel’s 
Canon in D
Our final melody is a bit different from the ones we’ve examined so far. It’s dif-
ferent because rhythmically, it’s very simple—nothing but half notes.
You’ve probably heard this melody before—it’s Johann Pachelbel’s 
Canon in D
(sometimes just called “Pachelbel’s Canon”—like he only wrote this one!) and
it’s been used in a number of different movies and television shows. You might
have even heard it in the background of a commercial for GE light bulbs back
in the 1990s. (They bring good things to light.) In any case, it’s a compelling
melody, despite its rhythmic simplicity.
The very simple melody for Pachelbel’s 
Canon in D.
This melody also is different in that it doesn’t use a lot of symmetry or repeti-
tion. (Except for the repeated half notes, of course!) It’s actually the stepwise
intervals between the notes that propel this melody forward; each pitch leaning
forward to the next, one after another, almost in a giant spinning circle of
tones. And then the last note, C#, is the leading tone of the scale (D Major);
you jump back to F# (the third of the scale) and start all over again.
The point of examining this particular melody is that you don’t need fancy
rhythms to create a memorable melody. Pure tones, played slowly and simply,
can be quite lyrical—if you pick the right ones!
Composing Your First Melody
Now that you know some of the techniques you can use to create a melody, let’s
put those techniques to work.
As you learned with Pachelbel’s 
Canon
, a melody doesn’t have to include com-
plex rhythms. The right notes on the right pitches are what you need to start
any new tune.
One of the primary rules of composing is to base your melody on a specific
scale. And, as you’ll learn in Chapter 9, there are three notes in a scale which,
when played together, create what we call a 
major triad.
These three notes rep-
resent a good place to start for our first melody.
For simplicity’s sake, let’s start in the key of C, using the C Major scale. The
three notes we want to use are the tonic, the third, and the fifth—C, E, and G.
So let’s start our melody with two half notes and a whole note, starting with C
and progressing up to G on the whole note.
To be fair, the melody illus-
trated in Pachelbel’s 
Canon
in D
is just the first four
measures of a much
longer melody. The musi-
cal form (
canon
) used in
this piece is like a round,
where the melody starts in
one part and then contin-
ues while other parts start
up with the same melody.
See Chapter 11 to learn
more about the canon
and other musical forms.
Note

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