Analyze This!
If we analyze a simple melody such as Mary Had A Little Lamb, we see that the melody is made up of 7 notes. The word ‘Ma-ry’ is made up of 2 notes, one of which is lower than the first.
Since we don’t know what key or scale the song is in from the image, we don’t know what groups of notes apply to this melody however since that is the case, we can use the numbered scale degrees if we needed to describe the melody to another musician.
If you sing the melody (assuming you are familiar with this tune already) you’ll notice that the word had is the word that feels the strongest. Even though the word lamb is the longest in duration, the word had feels like note the other notes pull towards, therefore we can assume that it is the tonic of the key. Therefore the melody, using scale degrees, would be : 3 2 1 2 3 3 3. To clarify, the words and scale degrees for this melody would be Ma(3)-ry(2) had(1) a(2) li(3)-ttle(3) lamb(3).
The interval between Ma- and -ry is actually 2, just as is the case between -ry and had or between had and aand a and li-. The interval between li- and -ttle and -ttleand lamb however is a 1 as there is no distance between one or the other since they are the same note. So why did I previously state that the melody in scale degrees is 3 2 1 2 3 3 3? The reason is that the interval I am describing is the interval between the word and the tonic. Therefore if we assume that the word had is the tonic and therefore the 1, then the Ma- of Mary is 3 notes away from had. The -ry is 2 away from had and a is also 2 away from had etc. The fact is that intervals can be used to describe either the distance between two notes that are consecutive as well as a note and it’s relationship to the topic. It really depends on the topic of discussion.
If the word had is a C note however and we feel that this is the tonic, then it may be safe to assume the song is in the key of C Major. I say it ‘may be safe to assume’ because we don’t necessarily know this at 100% since the image does not offer any other information that can confirm this for us at this point. We would strictly be making this decision based on what we ‘feel’ or about what we might already know about the song. If the song is unknown to us however, we might be completely wrong as we don’t have enough notes to make a decision on. Even though there are 7 notes, there are only 3 ‘different’ notes and these 3 notes can belong to any number of keys. If however the melody provided to us made use of all 7 notes and if we then notice that the 7 notes do not consist of any accidentals (sharps or flats -OR- black keys of a piano) it would make it that much safer to assume that we are in the key of C Major since C Major does not have any accidentals.
This section is a great way to demonstrate how the material we’ve covered so far might be applied in a discussion and how the new language that is available to us at this point allows us to communicate something that we otherwise would not have been able to put in words. This new knowledge allows you to discuss topics like sound, music, rhythm and time without even making or hearing a sound. That is pretty amazing if you think about how words or language alone allow us to describe things that we would otherwise have to demonstrate by actually playing or listening to an instrument. This demonstrates how music theory has great value in helping musicians communicate with one another without each necessarily requiring an instrument (that they both understand to boot!). Congratulations on your progress so far! Keep up the good work!
This actually makes a great segue to the next topic because the above excerpt of “Mary had a little lamb” is a good example of how we were not able to come to a definite conclusion on the key of the song. I mentioned that if all 7 notes were available to us that it might be easier to know what key the song is in however there are other ways of knowing this information as well that would have provided that clarification even with the 3 notes that were available to us.