AUM162: Week 5

This week, our class continued working on melody, and we focused on nursery rhymes. Our lecturer chose nursery rhymes as they are simple examples that show important characteristics of melody, which are still used to this day. Some characteristics of melody are:

- Having a basic range (no more than an octave-and-a-half)

- Stepwise Motion

- Having occasional leaps

- Repetition

- Climatic Points

For an activity, we had to pair up and transcribe the melody of some nursery rhymes that were picked for us on a DAW. We then had to transcribe it on a staff on paper. We chose "Old McDonald" first and I felt pretty confident transcribing it, but my partner was having trouble with transcribing. I helped him by trying to explain some things but he still couldn't understand (I'm also pretty bad at explaining things). I wrote out the nursery rhyme on the staff and he just watched and took a photo so he can look into it and practice. To help him, I also wrote out the intervals between each note, and the names of the notes so he could play it as well. We did the same activities for "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" but it was a tad more complex as the time signature was in 2|4, but we worked through it.

It was good to get back into transcribing on staff as I haven't written music out on a staff since high school. With the help of Ear Master as well, it's helped improve my sight reading a bit and has improved how I read rhythms as well. I'd like to write out some of my compositions out on a staff as it'd good to practice on my own songs and I'd be able to have a different visual on how the melody and rhythm is laid out.