Photo: Ann H

What makes a great melody?

1 — Great melodies often use repeating elements. Repetition helps listeners identify meaningful musical patterns and provides clues about the musical relationships present in a melody. Almost any melody you can think of has elements of repetition.

medium.com - What Makes a Great Melody? 7 Lessons Learned from UNDERTALE

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What Makes a Great Melody? 7 Lessons Learned from UNDERTALE

The lovably memorable cast of Undertale, by indie developer Toby Fox.

When we listen to a melody, it only takes a few notes to know whether we like it or not. The underlying cognitive processing used to arrive at such an assessment — although extremely sophisticated — is carried out at an almost subconscious level. It happens so naturally that we neglect how many simultaneous elements are contributing to the overall experience. Indeed, a melody is a complex musical construct involving many musical components cooperating at once. Pitch content is perhaps the most obvious of these. But a melody also comprises note durations, rhythmic and metrical elements, accents, structural relationships between the different subsets of the melody, articulations and dynamics. Is there a reason why some melodies sound better than others? Also, are there common traits that good melodies share? Hundreds of years of music practice and musicological analysis has helped us to distill a number of these ‘features’. Some of them are backed up by the latest research in music cognition, as we’ll see later. So, the reason why some melodies are great may ultimately be rooted in our cognition. Over the history of music, musicians (subconsciously?) tailored melodies to please the sound-processing hardware we’re all born with. (Although, judging by modern standards, some classical music composers seem not to have learned the lesson from their musical ancestors). To demonstrate the features that make a melody great, I’ll showcase sample melodies drawn from the soundtrack of Undertale. Undertale is a role-playing game released in September, 2015, by the indie developer Toby Fox. Critics raved at its release, while the game garnered a cult following, and rightly so. The entertaining game dynamics, engaging story and cartoonishly simple pixelated graphics make for a deeply satisfying experience. The soundtrack, entirely composed by Toby Fox, is a little masterpiece characterised by a mix of (sometimes clashing) genres ranging from chiptune to folk music. The music has a complex web of themes that are nested in and reused throughout the game. I won’t delve into the details of the thematic relationships of the Undertale soundtrack, as that would require another article (or indeed, another blog). But I will showcase a few of its melodies as practical examples to highlight some of the features. For an in-depth analysis of the soundtrack of Undertale, have a look at Jason M. Yu’s blog post.

1 — Great melodies often use repeating elements.

Repetition helps listeners identify meaningful musical patterns and provides clues about the musical relationships present in a melody. Almost any melody you can think of has elements of repetition. In pop music, for example, there are usually two main sections, the chorus and the verse, which tend to repeat throughout the duration of a song. The same applies to classical music, where melodies are reiterated time and again. Isn’t repetition boring, though? Apparently not. As psychologist Elizabeth Margulis suggests, based on the results of her long-standing research in music perception, repetition “tends to draw us into a participatory stance so that we’re imagining the next note before it happens”. Repetition can also influence how we perceive and process musical materials. Every time we listen to the same pattern we can focus on a different musical aspect. Undertale main theme from Once Upon a Time (0” to 28” in the track above). What are the musical dimensions of a melody that are part of repetition? As we can see in the main Undertale theme above, repetition can involve both the pitch and the rhythm content of a melody. In the case of this melody, a musical phrase “x” is repeated exactly the same, twice. Both the duration and the pitch of the “x” phrase are cloned. By contrast, in the “y” music unit only the rhythm pattern (i.e., short-short-long) is kept the same. The pitch material, on the other hand, is slightly varied, although the overall inverted-U shape (i.e., contour) of the melodic unit remains the same. The effect of this pitch variation is refreshing and it plays with our expectations (see later). As you can see, repetition can happen at different levels of a melody, from tiny motifs to quite extended musical periods. However, the hierarchical structure of melodies (and of music, in general) goes way beyond the scope of this article, and is certainly worth looking at in a separate discussion. 2 — The pitch range of great melodies is often no more than an octave and a half. This restriction keeps a melody focused in a limited portion of the pitch spectrum, enabling the listener to follow along with the musical discourse. Melodies obeying this limitation are also singable, because an average person’s vocal range is normally one and a half to two octaves. It’s worth remembering that the voice is the most important (and most natural) instrument, and that it is employed in all of the musical cultures we’re aware of. Singing is an essential aspect of music making, and has influenced the design of musical instruments, too. The capacity for a melody to be sung ultimately increases its memorability.

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In the beginning was the voice. Voice is sounding breath, the audible sign of life — Otto Jespersen. The main Undertale theme is apparently singable, in that it has a pitch range of a ninth (an octave plus a second), the lowest note being C5 (circled in green) the highest being D6 (circled in red); and it therefore respects the octave-and-a-half pitch range limitation.

The Undertale main theme stays within a ninth.

3 — Great melodies often comprise stepwise motion with occasional leaps.

This feature is also related to the ability to sing or whistle a melody. Consecutive notes on a scale (known as a stepwise motion) are easier to sing than leaps. By ensuring that a melody has a prevalence of stepwise motion, the composer makes a line more singable. Good composers use leaps as a way of modulating melodic tension. The larger the leap, the greater the tension induced. After a skip, a melody usually counters the leap by moving in stepwise motion in the opposite direction of the original skip. The Undyne theme (12” to 24” in the track above). “l” indicates stands for leaps, “s” for steps. The theme for Undyne from Undertale adheres to this feature in that it is characterised by a prevalent use of stepwise motion (marked with “s” in the score), with a few leaps (marked with “l” ) which contribute to shaping the overall directionality of the melody. Two of the three leaps present in the melody are followed by stepwise motion in the opposite direction of the original skip (marked with red and green lines): an ascending octave followed by a descending minor second and a descending minor third followed by an ascending major second.

4 — Great melodies often use a limited number of tones.

Good melodies are generally characterised by a subset of the 12 possible tones available to a composer (i.e., the number of semitones spanning a single octave). In most Western classical music, melodies are written employing the 7 tones of the major/minor scales. Sometimes only 5 tones are used, as for example when composers rely on the pentatonic scale. This is common in Chinese music as well as in blues and rock. Of course, non-scale tones are sometimes present in a melody, but they tend to be used as a means for ‘spicing up’ a line and don’t usually have a key structural role. Why do composers limit the number of tones used in a melody? In Music, Language, and the Brain, the neuroscientist Aniruddh Patel explains that this probably has to do with the limitations of our memory capacity. The human short-term memory can store 5 to 7 items in mind in an active, readily available state for a short span of time. Therefore, the 5 to 7 tones of a good melody can be thought of as enough information to keep us engaged when tracking the notes of a melodic line, while not being a prohibitive cognitive challenge resulting from tracking too many items at once. This may explain why some contemporary classical music which tends to use all of the 12 tones of the chromatic scale isn’t that popular among listeners. Both melodies from Undertale discussed so far respect this pitch content rule. In particular, the main Undertale theme employs only four different tones. As a good exercise, try counting the number of different tones present in the Undyne theme for yourself.

Undyne, the fish-like monster that leads the Royal Guard in Undertale.

5 — Great melodies often have a climactic point.

A climactic point usually refers to the highest pitch of a melody, but can be the result of a mixture of things: high note, long duration, strong metrical placement (e.g., strong beat), relevant harmonization. What’s sure is that the climactic point corresponds with the maximum degree of tension in a musical theme. Melodic excerpt from Shop (34” to 44 in the track above). The climactic point is circled in red. In Shop, from the Undertale soundtrack, there’s a climactic point (circled in red in the score) which arguably corresponds with the global peak of tension of the piece. Why is this so? The climactic point I’ve identified is the highest note of the melody; it’s placed on a strong metric place (i.e., the downbeat), has a long duration compared to the neighbour notes (minim) and is the apical point of an ascending motion.

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6– Great melodies balance the use of consonant and dissonant tones.

Melodies are usually played on top of harmonic structures organised into chords. Chords are sets of three or more notes which are heard as if played simultaneously. Harmony tends to constrain melody. In particular, all the notes of a melody, which are part of the underlying chord (i.e, chord tones), are deemed as consonant. By contrast, non-chord tones sound dissonant. The bulk melodic structure of a good melody is normally built upon consonant tones. Strong rhythmic points are usually filled up with chord tones. In his Models for Beginners in Music Composition, Arnold Schoenberg suggests to start crafting a melody by creating a skeleton made up of only chord tone firsts, and then to enrich it by adding all sorts of non-harmonic tones, such as passing notes, appoggiaturas and suspensions. Indeed, non-chord tones are used to embellish a melody and to increase its musical variety, and therefore interest among the listener. Temmie Village theme (11” to 17” in the track above). “C” indicates chord tones, “N” non-chord tones. The balance between consonant and dissonant notes in a melody is well illustrated by the Temmie Village theme from Undertale. In this melody, the ratio of chord tones (“C”) to non-chord tones (“N”) is a bit less than 3:1. The dissonant tones, which comprise passing notes, appoggiaturas and suspensions, tend to be placed on weak metrical points. This helps the listeners to (subconsciously) figure out that the non-chord tones are nice-to-have embellishments which spice up the line without interfering with the structural tones of the melody, which are almost all based on consonant notes.

7– Great melodies often have a strict relationship with the bass line.

There are three ways that melodies can interact with the bass. With parallel motion, the bass and the melody move in the same direction. With oblique motion, one part remains unchanged, while the other moves. With contrary motion both lines move in opposite direction. A good melody generally mixes several of these techniques to create a more dynamic bass line that feels like a countermelody. The bass, treated this way, adds interest and variety to the melody. Undertale main theme. “C” stands for contrary motion, “O” stands for oblique motion and “P” for parallel motion. Let’s return to the main Undertale theme to demonstrate this melodic feature. Like most good melodies, the theme employs all three types of relationships between the melody and the bass parts; although parallel motion clearly has the lion’s share here. This may be a deliberate compositional choice, and it’s probably one of the reasons why this melody, although very simple, is so haunting. At least, that’s my subjective, classically trained, humble orchestra conductor take. As in any artistic domain, none of the features I’ve outlined in this post are set in the stone. The history of music is populated with countless melodies that contravene one or more of these rules, and they are still great. Think of the main motif of the first movement of Beethoven’s Third Symphony (see the video above from 8” to 14”). By featuring mostly leaps and chord tones, this motif clearly breaks both rules 3 and 6. However, who would dare say that this melody is less than perfect? It’s the role of the composer to break the rules and to surprise us with innovative solutions, which may attract our attention and stimulate our imagination. As a general point though, it’s possible to trace a high-level trait that’s common to most of the features I’ve listed. Like preparing a scintillating soufflé, writing a great melody is all about balance. Specifically, between fulfilling listeners’ expectations — in any of the possible musical parameters — and surprising them with unexpected, sometimes unpredictable, musical ideas. Paraphrasing the insightful research of musicologist David Huron, we can claim that listeners want to feel in control of a melody’s direction, but sometimes they also like to be fooled.

medium.com - What Makes a Great Melody? 7 Lessons Learned from UNDERTALE

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