Identifying melodic motives

Motivic development is more of a classical music thing than a rock/pop thing. If you want to hear a motive carried through a series of elaborations and variations, you should look to Beethoven rather than the Beatles. Pop songs are a few riffs, repeated or strung together. But there are some songs out there whose riffs are organized in ways that you could understand in terms of motivic development.

Let’s start with the melody I have probably spent more time thinking about than any other, “Dear Prudence” by the Beatles.

Here’s a chart. Here are two views of one of the song’s main motives, first in notation:

And then in MIDI view:

Let’s go through this tune a phrase at a time.

• The opening phrase “Dear Prudence” is a little syncopated three-note motive, E to D to A.
• “Won’t you come out to play” prepends a string of D’s to the motive, which this time is sung on “to pla-a-ay”. The word “play” also gets a new note inserted into it, a B in between the D and the A.
• The next “Dear Prudence” is almost identical to the first, but “Dear” is stretched out, so the “Pru-” falls a little later.
• “Greet the brand new da-a-a-aaaaa-a-ay” starts the same as “won’t you come out to play”, but its last syllable jumps up to a new note, F-sharp, and then wanders back down to D.

So that’s the first half of the verse. The second half of the verse introduces a new motive on “The sun is up”, A to D to E to D. It’s kind of a backwards version of the motive from the first half of the verse. This little motive is repeated identically on “the sky is blue” and “It’s beautiful and so are you.” The concluding “Dear Prudence” repeats the motive from the first appearance of that phrase. Finally, “won’t you come out to play?” is a new motive, but it uses the same E and D we’ve been hearing in all the other motives. That is some tight and economical melodic writing.

Let’s consider another straightforward example, “Enjoy The Silence” by Depeche Mode.

Enjoy the chart. The guitar part on the intro is a single rhythmic motive organized into a call and response structure: going up on Cm, going down on Eb. After two pairs of calls and responses, the call riff moves lower, while the response riff stays the same. Here’s how it looks in MIDI view. You can see how the whole thing is a little offset rhythmically from the chord changes. So cool.

The vocal melody has a similarly clear motivic organization.

• “Words like violence” is on G and A-flat.
• “break the silence” is in the same rhythm but on G-flat and A-flat to follow the chord change from Cm to Ebm.
• “come crashing in” is a new arch-shaped motive on E-flat, F and G.
• “Into my little world” repeats the arch-shaped motive but with a few E-flats prepended onto the front. 

The back half of the verse is the same as the front half. Then the chorus introduces some new motives.

• “All I ever wanted” bounces between A-flat and B-flat.
• “All I ever needed is” is the same rhythmic figure shifted down to E-flat and F.
• “here in my arms” is a new idea, starting and ending on G with trips to F and A-flat in between.
• “Words are very unnecessary” repeat the pitches from the first two lines, but with a slightly different rhythm.
• “They can only do harm” starts like “here in my arms” but ends by walking down the Eb major scale to E-flat. But surprise! First of all, it doesn’t respect the hypermeter, it slows down and stretches out. Also, it doesn’t end on Cm like you expect, it lands on a richly strange Cb chord (enharmonically B).

For a slightly longer and more motive-centric melody, let’s look at “Life On Mars” by David Bowie.

Here’s the chart. The entire verse and prechorus uses the same motive, the one Bowie sings on “It’s a God-awful small affair.” It’s a walk up the F major scale from F to B-flat and back down to F, then a jump up to A. 

• “To the girl with the mousy hair” repeats the motive identically, but the last two notes are F-sharp and G rather than F and A.
• “But her mummy is yelling no” is the motive transposed diatonically up a step.
• “And her daddy has told her to go” is the transposed motive but ending a bit differently.

And so it goes, the motive gradually rising every time, with small adjustments to follow the chords. At the prechorus, the key changes from F to Ab, but Bowie keeps the motive going, with more pitch variety. Finally, the chorus introduces a new idea, on “Sailors fighting in the dance hall.” This idea repeats with different rhythmic phrasing on “Oh man, look at those cavemen go.” From there, the melody becomes more linear and flowing and less tied to repeated motives.

Motivic development is more prevalent in jazz than it is in rock or pop, especially in improvised solos. Thelonious Monk loves a good motive, both in his solos and his compositions. His tune “Bye-Ya” is an easy entry point. I like the version on Monk’s Dream.

Here’s my chart. The melody is self-explanatory. (Or so it seems, until you start thinking about the chords, which are pretty strange. No one can agree what key the tune is in.) There’s a phrase (“ba da ba da BUM BUM”) which repeats. Then it gets transposed a fourth and Monk rushes the ending (“ba da ba da BUMBUM”). Finally, there’s a response phrase. In the B section, there’s a new simple motive, just two notes alternating in a syncopated rhythm. Monk moves it up and down chromatically, and doubles the harmonic rhythm right at the end. Hip.

For the real motivic magic, listen to Monk’s solo, starting at 2:45. It opens with a melody that reminds me of “I’m Beginning To See The Light” by Duke Ellington. As with the head, the solo’s melodic logic is easy to understand, no matter how odd Monk’s note choices and rhythms might be. Listen to where he quotes the melody, and notice all the empty space he leaves.

For even deeper motivic wizardry, listen to Monk’s “Straight No Chaser“.

I can’t even begin to verbalize this tune’s motivic structure concisely, but this annotated chart might be helpful. You can see the structure in these screencaps I made of the MIDI version in Ableton:

It looks cool wrapped in a circle too:

At the end of Monk’s piano solo in the recording linked above, he quotes his tune “Misterioso“, yet another motive-driven classic tune of his.

Should we consider the way that soul and R&B singers phrase a melody to be a form of motivic development? Let’s listen to “Chain of Fools” by Aretha Franklin.

My chart necessarily simplifies the pitch nuances; I did my best. Is this melody a string of riffs that Aretha is using in a semi-improvisational way? Or is it a series of motives that she’s developing? Or is there a difference? Let’s take the first verse.

• “For five long years” is a riff centering on a higher C.
• “I thought you were my man” arches from C up to G and back down to E-flat.
• “but I found out” is like an elaboration of “For five long years”.
• “I’m just a link in your chain” is a new idea, concluding the phrase by centering on a lower C.
• “Oh, you got me where you want me” centers around the higher C, maybe it’s a loose version of that first riff.
• “I ain’t nothin’ but your fool” is a new idea centering on F before bending up through E-flat to E-natural.
• “You treated me mean” sort of resembles “but I found out”.
• “Oh, you treated me cruel” sort of resembles “I’m just a link in your chain”.

So are these riffs or motives? I genuinely don’t know.

It’s similarly difficult to tell riffs from motives in Marvin Gaye’s recording of “I Heard It Through The Grapevine“.

Here’s the chart. Consider the first chorus.

• “Ooh-ooh, I heard it through the grapevine” is a two-note motive bouncing between G-flat and E-flat, ending on beats three and four.
• “not much longer would you be mine” moves up higher before returning to G-flat and E-flat, but now the rhythm is more syncopated.
• “Ooh-ooh, I heard it through the grapevine” is like the first line with a little pitch variation at the beginning.
• “And I’m just about to lose my mind, honey, honey, well” is maybe descended from “not much longer would you be mine” but with a big melismatic flourish on the word “lose” and a new pentatonic idea on “honey, honey, well”.

So, again: riffs or motives? Playing around or systematic development? And is there a difference?

The NYU theory syllabus suggests that we analyze melodies in terms of their shape, direction, rhythmic and melodic repetition, cadence, range, rhythm, singability, whether they are mostly conjunct or disjunct, and whether they use primarily chord tones or non-chord tones. We can also think about how modular they are, whether they are composed of subphrases or sub-sub-phrases in hierarchical groupings. A more subtle consideration is where in the hypermeter the accents fall. In The Musical Language of Rock, David Temperley draws a distinction between beginning-accented and end-accented melodies.

• Beginning-accented melodies start at (or slightly before) hypermetrical downbeats (the beginning of a hypermetrical unit), which is the more usual situation.
• End-accented melodies conclude on a hypermetrical downbeat, which is less usual. For examples of end-accented melodies, Temperley cites the verses of “Houses of the Holy” by Led Zeppelin, the chorus of “Like a Prayer” by Madonna, and the second and third phrases of “Yesterday” by the Beatles.

A single song might combine beginning-accented and ending-accented phrases. Temperley points to “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson as one such tune. “Dear Prudence” is another – the melody starts on a hyperdownbeat, and “won’t you come out to play” ends on a hyperdownbeat as well. “Enjoy The Silence” is mostly beginning-accented, but the last line in the chorus (“They can only do harm”) is unexpectedly ending-accented. “Life On Mars?” is almost all ending-accented except for the choruses. “Bye-Ya” is beginning-oriented throughout. “Straight No Chaser” has an accent pattern that is too weird and complex to easily categorize. “Chain of Fools” is beginning-accented. “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” is beginning-accented except for the very end of the chorus, where “honey honey well” is ending-accented. You can tell when something is ending-accented because it pushes over into the next hypermeasure, so there either has to be a break before the next beginning-accented phrase can start, or there will be an awkward overlap.

We are so used to analyzing melodies in terms of their pitch content, but in popular music, the timing of events has more structural salience than their pitches, especially in groove-based genres. But while Western theory provides a detailed framework for analyzing pitch, our rhythmic tools remain limited. Thinking in terms of hypermetrical placement and accent is a great entry point. This is something I’d like to contribute to developing.