Developing Melodic Ideas

Ekula delivers 25 minutes on melody-writing, starting with the basics of what makes up a melody before delving into techniques for adding complexity and variation that have been used in the western classical tradition for hundreds of years.

In the first video, Ekula describes what constitutes a melody before introducing some of the basic rules of ‘counterpoint’ – a guideline to constructing melodies which classical composers train under.

Following this, we look at how to add in ‘ornamentation’ (i.e. decorative flourishes) to an existing melody in order to add variety and create an improvised feel to your lead parts. This is shown ‘diatonically’ (in key) and ‘chromatically’ (out of key).

In the third video, Ekula describes the concept of ‘suspension’ – a method of exploiting your melodic content to create temporary harmonic instability over the backing chords to create a sense of ‘push and pull’.

Finally, we look at the concept of ’inversion’ – a means of flipping an already-existing melody into something completely new, yet related.

You can now obtain a certification via our EBRSL Graded Syllabus. There is a total of 100 hours learning over 42 weeks. The remaining 10 weeks of your membership will be used for you to prepare for your RSL exam. Alongside enrolling for this course you will also get a full VIP annual membership which will give you access to the rest of the websites content (over 2000 videos) and usage of all the VIP benefits which you can use as frequently as you wish during your membership.

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