demonofthenight

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EMBELISHMENTS

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I’m going to explain embellishments (or elongations) and diminutions earlier than I should because you’ll need it for some of my other articles to remain comprehensive. It’s a difficult subject and will probably require a lot of questions (which I’m willing to answer). If this article is too much, just skip it and come back to it when you need it (later when I’ve finished my other articles.

Disjunct movement means your melody is moving by more than a degree.

Conversely, stepwise or conjunct movement means your melody is only moving by one degree, which is usually done to resolve.

In addition to regular phrasing analysis (it’s in my next article), you can also think of the first note of each unit and phrase and every climax note as a sort of sub melody. You could even write a sub melody first and add on to it.

Writing like this is very archaic and was usually done in the pre-tonal/chord years. This style of writing has been done too rarely in contemporary music for me to find a real example, so here’s a song I wrote (badly).

Notice the rhythmic simplicity of this song? Now we can use embellishments and passing tones

An embellishment is when we add notes (preferably non-chord tones) to the melody in such a way that the same melody is coming through but there are more notes. Embellishments are usually approached or resolved by conjunct movement unless the embellishment is a chord tone of the implied harmony.

This is effective especially when we have too many syllables for one musical phrase or when a melody is melodically simple.

Passing tones are notes used in between two (usually chord)-tones. These are done quite often in jazz songs, especially as a chromatic run. They can be used chromatically or diatonically. I suggest you refrain from using chromatic passing tones unless you are writing for an instrument or if you are writing for a skilled singer.

Here is the end result of my melody:

The accentuation marks are the original melody. I’ve also added the implied harmony, which would be the harmony I would use if I added accompaniment to this melody.

Notice at “a” I make a leap to the non-chord tone A. This is fine because it resolves downwards to that G, part of our original melody.

At “b” I use a chromatic passing tone (G#) followed by a diatonic passing tone (A) to resolve the first phrase of our melody. Aren’t I tricky? Notice that the notes of the old melody, marked by accentuation marks, are still being played on their original beats.

At “c” I decided that the bar was too empty, so I incorporated one of the most popular embellishments, moving degree-wise out and than resolving back from where I came. This is a very common melody writing technique. I also used this technique at “g”.

Another easy technique is to merely double the non-embellished note, which I did at “d”. This is very common in contemporary music as it’s easy to sing. This is also done at “f” and “i”

I got sort of tricky at “e”. I decided I wanted to use two embellishments instead of one. For this, I used a similar embellishment method as “c”, but moved degree wise back from the first embellishment note. Simple and amazingly effective.

At “h” I used another common classical method of embellishment, which is very similar to “a”. My first embellishment is approached by degree wise movement, but than I skip by disjunct movement down to the other embellishment and resolve by degree-wise movement. This creates a nice effect that’s very easy to sing.

I’d like to explain “j”. At first it looks like a crazy combination of “c” and “b” (not actually a bad idea…, but it’s a little more complicated than that. In minor melodies (which this is in case you haven’t noticed) the best way to resolve is by conjunct movement from the leading tone. Well, the natural minor scale doesn’t have a leading tone so we add one chromatically. I decided I didn’t like the resolution of the original melody so I used a leading tone embellishment.

Well that’s just some embellishment techniques I’ve found. There are millions more and the best way to find them is by experimentation and analysing (preferably classical) music. Don’t be afraid to mix them.

I’d like you to take note that the resulting melody is not chronologically longer, there are just more notes used. The beats of the old melody still occur on the same beats as the new. Nothing is changed, all I did was add a few notes.

But what happens if we have too many notes? Well we do the opposite. To do this all we have to do is look for embellishment techniques and remove them, leaving a lot of chord tones. It’s just the reverse function of embellishment.