Part 2: Melodic phrases
The previous section was designed to help you develop your aural response to isolated single pitches. Real music, however, doesn't contain notes in isolation but in relation to each other, not only in pitch, but also in rhythm. This section will focus on melodic phrases (
i.e groups of musically related notes) of the kind heard everyday in songs.
Level 1: Phrases on a single string
At first we’ll focus on short phrases, or phrase f
ragments, within a very narrow range. i.e., on a single string played anywhere from the open string to the fourth fret. giving a choice of five notes.
These tests have a pitch range of one note less than the previous exercises (five instead of six). There’s a reason for that. As this section features tests that are musical, rather than just isolated sounds, you should think of them from a guitarist’s
playing perspective and play them in a
fixed position, in this case, the
first position of the guitar. Technically, playing guitar in the
first position involves using one finger per fret, i.e. first (or
index) finger plays the note on fret one, second finger plays second fret and so on up to the fourth fret played by the fourth finger. Try to adhere to this fingering when playing the examples. Not only will you be developing your ear, but you will also be learning to associate pitch changes with efficient fingering technique.
Here are some test phrases on the three separate strings in turn. Each test contains four phrases and is confined to notes of the open string to no higher than the fourth fret. Each phrase is followed by a gap. Try to fill the gap by playing the phrase you’ve just heard. If the gap is too short, pause the file after each example and replay it as often as necessary.
Self tests
Test 1 – Four phrases on string 1 (frets 0-4)
Test 2 – Four phrases on string 3 (frets 0-4)
Test 3 – Four phrases on string 6 (frets 0-4)
(Answers below)
How did you do?
1. Very well – all or almost all correct
2. Ok – But I had to play the examples a few times
3. Not well – too many mistakes – or too slow
What to do
1. Well done! Move on.
2. Good – but you need more practice at this. Listen to the practice exercises again. Also try it without the guitar. When you hear the phrase, sing it back and try to visualise which frets are being held.
3. You need a lot more practice at listening to phrases. You might also need to drop back to the previous exercises. Listen to real music and notice how the melody has a shape. Follow the shape mentally as it rises and falls or stays the same. Try to notice if the melody changes by small steps or larger leaps (less common). Practice is the key.
Answers to phrase tests
String 1 phrases:
Ex 1 – frets: 013101
Ex 2 – frets: 310131
Ex 3 – frets: 420024
Ex 4 – frets: 2020420
String 3 phrases:
Ex 1 – frets: 0242420
Ex 2 – frets: 420242
Ex 3 – frets: 131134
Ex 4 – frets: 3131431
String 6 phrases:
Ex 1 – Frets: 023202
Ex 2 – frets: 320230
Ex 3 – frets: 242244
Ex 4 – frets: 2020424
LeveL 2: Melody
Tonal music
Most of the music we hear is what’s known as
tonal music. All tonal music consists of a limited choice of notes that relate to each other in a special way, which is very good news for anyone wanting to identify notes and chords by ear. If music consisted of random notes, our job would be much harder. Tonal music, fortunately, doesn’t. Most of the notes of any tonal song or composition are taken from a ready-made series of notes (usually the major or minor scale) and music composed using those notes is said to be in the
key of that scale. Simply put, it means that if a song is in the key of
C major, it will consist mostly of notes of the
C major scale. If it's a simple song, it may not even contain all of the notes of the scale; if it's a complex song, however, it will more than likely introduce a few foreign
'out of scale' notes.
Major key melody
We’ll now extend our available notes to include all the notes of a major scale. The scale that we’ll choose (for no particular reason) is
G major.
G major, like every major scale is a repeating series of notes arranged in order of pitch. The notes of the
G major scale are:
G A B C D E F# G
The note range that we’ll work on is from
G on the open third string to
G on
string 1 fret3. The higher
G is eight notes higher than the low
G so we say it’s an
octave higher (
from octa = 8)
Here are the notes that we’ll be working with in tab form:
-----------------0--2--3-------
--------0--1--3----------------
--0--2-------------------------
-------------------------------
-------------------------------
-------------------------------
Notes of the G major scale
Play (and sing) the above scale over and over, both ascending and descending.
We’ll also include an extra low note on the open fourth string, because our example happens to include that note. You should be able to hear that when it occurs in the melody. It’s by far the lowest sounding note.
Now listen to the following well known melody (Beethoven’s ‘
Ode to Joy’) and try to find it on the guitar. If you keep practising, you’ll start to notice some of the essential and distinguishing features of tonal music, i.e., how some of the notes have a unique quality. For example, you might start recognising the note
G because it sounds more restful or final.
There’s a good reason for that. It’s because we are playing in the key of
G major. On its own, there’s nothing special about the note
G, but when we hear it in the context of a
G major scale, or as the
key note of a piece of music in the
key of G major, (i.e., music composed using notes of the
G major scale) it begins to show this special quality.
Self tests
Ode to Joy (full melody)
Ode to joy (phrase by phrase)
Listen to the full melody version to familiarise yourself with it, then using the
phrase by phrase example, try to fill in the gaps by playing the phrase you've just heard. Pause and replay the file as often as necessary.
Minor key melody
Now, to provide practice using a different set of notes and note spacings, we’ll try a melody in the key of
E minor, i.e. using the notes of the
E minor scale.
Minor key music is a little more complex because there are three slightly different forms of the minor scale, which means music in a minor key can be made from a combination of those notes.
The resulting set of notes of the combined scales of
E minor is
E F# G A B C (C#) D (D#) E and we’ll set them out as follows:
----------------------------0---
--------------0—1-(2)—3-(4)-----
--------0--2--------------------
--2--4--------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
Combined notes of the scales of E minor
Now listen to this melody by
J.S. Bach from his
Bourée in E minor. Again, there are two versions. First the entire melody is played from start to finish. Second, the music is played with gaps between the phrases. Again, try to fill in these gaps with the phrase you’ve just heard. Pause and replay the file as often as necessary.
Bourée in E minor (full melody)
Bourée in E minor (phrase by phrase)
You may notice notice that in the first half of the tune, the note
E now has the feeling of finality that
G had in ‘
Ode to Joy’. That's because in the key of
E minor,
E is now the
key note. Another note that displays a definite quality (or
diatonic function to use the technical term) is the note
D#. The function of this note (the seventh note of the scale) is to lead us to the key note, which gives it the name 'leading note' (US =leading
tone). You may also notice that by the end of the melody, that feeling of finality has shifted from notes
E to
G. If so, well done. The music has in fact changed
key from
E minor to
G major by the process known as
modulation.
These are the
musical signposts that we constantly look out for to tell us which key we’re in at any time. That, in turn, lets us know which notes and even which chords are likely to be used at any particular time. It can take a long time for these effects to become obvious. Don’t worry if you find it difficult to recognise them when you hear them, but the more you practise on real music (preferably simple songs at first), the more you will begin to notice them and be able to identify them.
COMING NEXT >>>>>>Part 3: CHORD TYPES