So what do trees have to teach us about writing stronger melodies? As I already mentioned, we resonate with things that are similar to the natural world around us. When you look at a tree, one of the most distinctive characteristics is the pattern in the branches. Not surprisingly, you can find the same pattern in our bodies. This is a picture of pulmonary veins, the blood vessels that are in our lungs. And with both the tree branches and your veins, I want to draw your attention to something specific.

They have a number of smaller patterns that are very similar to each other, and they combine to make a larger shape. And this is exactly the same structure as a melody. melodies also have a number of smaller patterns to combine into a larger shape. And in music theory, these have specific names. The smallest pattern is called a motif and you combine these together to make a friend Arnold Schoenberg, a famous composer, defined a motif as a unit, which contains one or more features of interval and rhythm, whose presence is maintained throughout the piece. Now, that's an extremely academic definition of a motif.

I'll try to give you a simpler version. A motif is the building block from which you make a melody. Similar to how Legos have these very basic and plain shapes, but from them, you can create an astounding variety of things. A motif essentially has two elements to it, a distinctive rhythm, and note interval. To really understand this, let's listen to what is probably the most famous motif of all time. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is also such a great example because he puts the motif right in the beginning and it's so plain and so simple that you can really see Magic that he creates with this piece.

And if we look closer at this motif, you can see the two elements. We have the rhythm, data data, and we have the interval. Now let's listen to how he takes this motif. And he turns it into a phrase right there, he's already done something significant with this motif. He's repeated it, but he's moved it to a different note. And that changed the interval here, from major third, to hear a minor third.

And this is the essence of melodic development. You're taking a motif, and you're changing it in subtle ways. Now, with that in mind, let's listen to this again. This next section, he keeps the rhythmical part of the motif, consistent data. But he really starts to play with the variation in the note intervals. We have a major third, a minor second, a minor, third, perfect fourth, and you can't really see it here, but it's another minor second.

Let's listen to how that sounds. So let's take some inspiration from Beethoven. And we'll build our own melody, but make it a little bit more contemporary. I'm intentionally going to create a melody that's very simple and basic, primarily because I want you to be able to see the motif and the development very clearly. Alright, so I created a basic melody that we can work with. Let's take a listen first, and then I'll break it down for you.

As a reminder, we're not trying to create the best melody of all time. So don't get distracted and whether or not you've liked this melody or not, we're using it as an illustration to understand the process of melodic development, something that you can do to any melodic idea. In this melody, you may have noticed that there are two primary motifs. There's this idea which is repeated to other times. And there's this idea. And you might even argue that the second motif really isn't a new motif at all.

It's really just the development of the first one, using this interval here, over and over again. Let's begin our development by working on the first motif. And I'm going to take you through really the same process that I go through when I'm Working on melodies and developing ideas, I take this initial melodic idea, the motif, and I spin it around, I try out different things, sometimes feels a little bit like a game of Tetris. Okay, so let's start with the first motif and give it another listen. One of the first things I might do is just turn it around and play it backwards. It's not a true backwards where I'm actually flipping the rhythm around as well.

In this example, I'm keeping the rhythm the same. I'm just changing the notes. And then I might turn it upside down. Again, we're not changing the rhythm, we're just changing the note arrangement. And we could try moving it to start on a different note. What I'm doing here is just trying to see if there is a different way of twisting this motif that I like better Just similar to editing a sentence you might be writing, for example, if you try too hard, it can backfire.

It can backfire if you try too hard. Don't try so hard. And when you rewrite sentences like that, you're trying to see if there's a more direct way of saying what you're trying to say. And the same thing is true with music when you were working to rewrite your motifs or your phrases. Now, let's do the same thing with the second motif. Here it is, again.

We can turn this one upside down. Try it on a different note then. So now that we've taken these two motifs, and we played with them, like Tetris, turn them around. Let's combine some of them together to make some variations on this whole melody. Let's take the first motif which we've turned backwards, and we'll combine that with the second motif. unchanged.

Also kind of like when we turn the first motif upside down, and we'll combine that with the second motif moved to a different note. How about when we moved the first motif to a different note, and we combine that with the second motif moved to a different note as well. Now we can also start to change it up even more. Take the second motif. We'll put it the beginning, repeated, and then add the first motif flipped upside down. As you might be starting to see, we could do this for a while longer.

And this is just a very simple melody with two motifs. Sometimes you get an idea and the melody right out of the box is great. You don't need to further develop it. But if you're someone who really wants to write stronger melodies, this kind of practice is how you get to your best work by creating lots of variations on your idea and then picking the strongest one. In the beginning of this chapter, we looked at what two trees have to teach us about writing stronger melodies. And the essence of that is about pattern and motifs are the patterns that you can use to build melodies.

And in this next chapter, we're going to look at what smoke has to teach us about utilizing the element of surprise.