Choral Resource

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No matter what camp of composition you fall into, you will appreciate it when your performers are able to hit the right notes quickly. When vocalists are given melodic lines that are ‘natural,’ they are able to move that much faster ’beyond the notes’ into higher expressions of musicianship.

Believe it or not, you can make things much easier for performers by following a few simple rules. I didn’t make these rules up, but am grateful to my 16th-century counterpoint teacher for passing them along to me when I was in school. After hundreds of years of regular use, these ‘rules’ still make great guidelines, even if you are determined to bend or break them.

For the the most natural and easily sung vocal lines:

1. Motion should be predominately step-wise in your chosen scale or mode.
2. Avoid accidentals that do not belong to your scale or mode.
   • Exceptions: In minor modes, the note below the the root will be altered by a half-step up when leading to a cadence. Also, to avoid a melodic fragment the length of an augmented 4th, the 4th may be lowered a half-step.
3. When you skip,
   • use major & minor 3rds, perfect 4ths & 5ths and 8ves in most cases.
   • only use minor 6ths when leaping up.
   • skips tend to be compensated by a stepwise movement in the opposite direction.
   • skips should be at the top or bottom of a melodic fragment, NOT in the middle.
   • skips larger than a 3rd tend to be at the bottom of a fragment.
   • multiple skips in same direction are acceptable if outlining the notes within a chord, or when using root-5th-8ve motion, or making the D-A-C motion typical of the dorian mode.
4. The melody should have a clear shape and not meander aimlessly.
5. Use only one climax in your melody, but not at the beginning or end.

All of these ‘rules’ have been successfully broken at one time or another. A famous example is Berstein’s “Maria” melody which leaps into a tritone and then resolves to the fifth. However, if you examine that and other famous rule-breaking melodies, you will find that MOST of these rules still apply to the rest of the melody. Usually the ‘transgression’ is  singular. In pop terminology, the broken rule becomes ‘the hook’ for that particular melody; the thing that sets it apart.

Good singable melodies are going to follow most of the rules. The trick is to know when to transgress a rule for good dramatic, musical reason and not to go making things difficult for singers for no reason at all.

I’d suggest writing a few melodies, following the above rules strictly, and then experiment with various ways to break them, one at a time. Some of the rules aren’t worth the cost of breaking them and others are. You’ll have to decide which ones.