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4.3.4Melody In Music: Tension and Release
The following discussion pertains to interval dynamics in tunes without chords. Tunes with harmony are discussed in Chapters 6 and 9.
When you play a single note, that’s all your brain perceives. Just a note. Not music, not melody (ignoring, for the time being, the tiny little matter of rhythm). But when you play at least two successive notes that are different from each other—an interval—suddenly you have at least the possibility of a melody.
In Figure 20 below, the arrows show the tensions, the unrest your brain perceives in the relationships between the tones (that is, the intervals), as you play the scale up or down.
The term interval dynamics refers to the fact that, once your brain understands which note is the tonic note, it perceives the succession of tones as energized, dynamic players that move in force fields—not as static, lifeless beads on a string. Without interval dynamics, there’d be no melody in music.
In Figure 20, the thicker the arrow, the greater the dynamic tension or unrest.
FIGURE 20: Interval Dynamics: How Your Brain Actually Hears the Major Scale