Activity 1- Melody

Step by Step

Either starting from the second line or second space from the bottom of the stave, add notes one step higher, one step lower or repeat the same note as you move along until you have eight notes. Your eighth note must be the same as the first note. Only use this note value:

. When you have composed your tune, listen to it a few times and decide whether you wish to change any notes before you save the file. Check to make sure that you have followed the rules.
You should now have a tune which may look similar to this:

Note: moving by step means that if a note is on a line (i.e. has a line running through the round part of the note), the next note can only go into the space immediately above or below that line.
You are now ready to make a longer tune.

Extending the tune - upside-down!

Continue from where your tune ended to make the extended 16 note tune. Using the same start note, add notes which move in the opposite direction from the first eight. For example, if the second note of your original tune moved up a step, this time move down a step. If you do this properly, you should end on the same note as you started. Save your file with a new name. Here is how the extended tune looks using the example above:

Other ways of extending the original tune include:
Copy the original tune backwards ie. the 8th note becomes the new 1st note, the 7th becomes the new 2nd etc. The more ambitious pupil may even try extending the tune by writing the original backwards and upside-down!

Draw the Line

If you look carefully at the notes of the 16 note tune above and drew a line connecting each 'roundel' (the black 'blobs' at the end of each line) you would end up with a drawing like this (the straight red line represents the position of the start and end notes):

Notice that the line is smooth (so that it represents the step by step movement of the notes on the stave) and has flat points which show where some notes have been repeated.
Now draw your own smooth lines and try and create tunes which follow the shape you have drawn. Try to follow the same rules as you used for the Step by Step tune. When you have written your tunes, listen to them carefully and make any changes you need before saving.

Jagged Lines

In the 'Draw the Line' exercise, you drew smooth lines to represent a step by step movement of the notes. This time draw a line which has 'jagged' lines instead of smooth lines. A jagged line will mean a jump from a line to the line above or below it, or from a space to the space above or below it. You can still have repeated notes in your tune. Don't forget to listen to your tune carefully and make any changes you need before saving.

The following example shows a tune:

made from a jagged line:

Can you write a tune made from a mixture of smooth and jagged lines?

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