Melody Comprehension Primer

Navigating Parts 23-31 of the Melody series

Open Skies

The view after reaching the top of a hill in Palampur, Himachal Pradesh, India

31 parts and still standing. Bravo! You made it!!

Having reached this point, it’s likely that your musical perspective undergone some change. If you’re able to hear old sounds with new ears, that could be your impetus to go further.

Before we move on to the next musical exploration, let’s take a look at what we’ve accomplished in the last quarter of the series. At the end of this post, you can quickly review the 9 parts that form the the tail-end of the series, with the provided table-of-contents.

Combining the Elements

We’ve learnt about 3 melodic elements, first in isolation, then in combination, both sonically and visually.

We’ve exercised our audio and visual skills, with an emphasis on listening skills.

We’ve even applied all our abilities on existing melody snippets to understand how a melody might be conceptualised and understood only by listening to it.

We now find ourselves at an advantageous vantage point, ready for further musical discovery.

What’s Coming Up?

We’ve explored a simplified set of values in the 3 melodic elements.

This is the right time to expand our limited vocabulary by including a greater range of values, beginning with the values within pitch.

We’ll also see the underlying framework that gives rise to these values, and the myriad pitch structures (dictionaries) that are made possible with this exploration.

Melody: Parts 23-31 in Points

The following is a broad overview of the last 9 parts in this series.

You can use this as a kind-of table of contents or just as a way to remind yourself of how we’ve explored the combination of the 3 melodic elements: pitch, time and loudness.

Bookmark this post if you want a handy reference for later.

• Part 23: Stirred Together

  • The Right Time

  • Orthogonal

  • Spaced-out Pitch

  • Enter Pitch Duration

  • Pitch-Time Scaffolding

  • The Melody in Pitch-Time

  • Textural

  • The Melody’s Final Form

  Stirred Together

• Part 24: Basecamp

  • The Terrain

  • Getting to Know Ourselves

  • Skill 1: Recognition

  • Skill 2: Measurement

  • Skill 3: Search and Recall

  • Skill 4: Perceptual Stability

  • Skill 5: Mark Comprehension

  • My Journey with Visual Representations

  • Solutions

  Basecamp

• Part 25: Acclimatisation

  • The Problem

  • The Plan

  • The Tools

  • The Purpose of the Climb

  • A Final Note on Names

  • Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Louder

  • Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Beat

  • Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Pitch

  • Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

  Acclimatisation

• Part 26: Ascent

  • Decoding a Melody

  • Decoding a Layer

  • Quintuplet Peaks

  Ascent

• Part 27: Thinking Aloud

  • The First Pass

  • The Gear You’ll Need

  • Loud, Soft and In Between

  Thinking Aloud

• Part 28: Beats Me

  • The Second Pass

  • The Gear You’ll Need

  • Long, Short and In Between

  Beats Me

• Part 29: Pitch, Please

  • The Third Pass

  • The Gear You’ll Need

  • High, Low and In Between

  Pitch, Please

• Part 30: Take in the View

  • The Final Stretch

  • Melody 1

  • Melody 2

  • Melody 3

  Take in the View

• Part 31: Fly Birdie, Fly

  • The Final, Final Stretch

  • Melody 4

  • Melody 5

  • The Melody Series in a Fairly Big Nutshell

  • Where Do We Go Now?

  • Thank You!

  • Long Road Behind, Longer Ahead

  Fly Birdie, Fly

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