Melodic Time Primer
Navigating Parts 9-18 of the Melody series
Far From Home
After our foray into melodic pitch (Melodic Pitch Primer) and melodic time (starting with Part 9), here we are — ready to begin the next chapter in the Melody series.
We’ve covered a lot of ground with 8 parts on pitch, and even more with a staggering 10 parts on time. Having blitzed through these 18 parts of the Melody series, we decidedly deserve a short break. This short pause will give us some time to review what we’ve accomplished so far.
This is a great time to give yourself a hearty cheer for making it all this way. You’re either deeply interested in what you’re coming across, or you’re a really good friend of mine cheering me on. Either way, I’m very happy to find you here.
At the end of this post, you’ll find a point-wise summary of Parts 9 through 18. You can use this as a quick refresher, and if you don’t remember what something means, just use the links to head on to that part.
Yin and Yang
Time is one of those things that endlessly fascinates me. The fact that it’s such a crucial part of not only music, but any performing art, makes a deep study of it eminently worthwhile.
I view musical time through two prominent lenses: tempo and duration. These interrelated lenses are both equally useful in decoding rhythms.
We’ve mainly gone into the duration aspect of time because that’s easier to begin with, but the tempo aspect is equally deep.
To be honest, I was tempted to include more about tempo but adding another 10 parts to an already burgeoning series would have taken us off-course from our intended aim: developing the basic tools for decoding melodies.
So while we’ve not ignored the role of tempo, there is a lot more to it than just being a timekeeping device, which we’ll save for a later series.
Pitch-Time Twinning
Another thing that fascinates me is how time and pitch mirror each other in so many ways. At first glance, they appear so different, and yet, when we zoom in closer, we can see multiple structural similarities.
These similarities show up in almost every part of this series, trickling down all the way to the representations for pitch and time.
In fact, even the way the parts for pitch (Parts 1-8) and time (Parts 9-18) are organised is almost identical, thanks to their similarities.
And to add to these eery parallels, Part 18, of course, directly exposes an explicit connection between pitch and tempo.
Where Do We Go from Here?
Although we’ve only covered the bare basics of time, I think we have a good foundation for the long-term as well. The more advanced bits that we’ll cover in a later series will be easier to grasp with this foundation in place.
Before we combine what we have so far into one unified representation, there is one more crucial element to melody that we need to cover.
This melodic element often goes unnoticed but I firmly believe that it’s essential for breathing life into a melody. This element is: loudness.
Once we go over this very underrated element, we can combine all 3 elements (pitch, time, loudness) into one representation and try our hand at decoding some popular melodies.
Melody: Parts 9-18 in Points
You can use this as a table of contents for the rhythm section of the Melody series. Bookmark this page to have a handy reference.
The Experience of Tempo
Beats
Establishing Tempo
Ranking Tempo
The Melody as a Rhythm
Order
Duration
Relative Time
Duration Dictionary
A Test of Rhythmic Intelligence
Beat or Duration?
Time is a One-Way Street
Clocks Run Clockwise
Trash the Beat Dictionary?
Tempo to the Rescue
Melody-Tempo Audio Cocktail
Numbers Can Be Names Too
Renaming Tempo-Beats
Tempo-Beats and Inner Beats
Stacking Inner Beats
Stacking Tempo-Beats
Turning Time Horizontal
Pitch Duration
Silence!
The Melody’s Rhythm: Decoded
Level I
Level II
Level III
Rhythmic Cylinders
Beat Spiral
Side View
The Tempo Apartment
Experiencing Rhythmic Contour
Duration Shift Symmetry
Front View vs Side View
Tempo-Beat Symmetry
Duration-Interval Parallels
Extension to Longer Durations
Level I
Level II
Level III
Level X
Repeated Tempo Doubling
The Pitch-Tempo Continuum
Tempo Doublings and Pitch Octaves
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