I just wrote this melody. Now what do I do with it?

Most composers want to make longer pieces and in many cases they have a great 8 or even 16 bar idea, but can't develop it any further. Here are some ideas to hopefully get you going in the right direction:

0. Number 0 because it should preface this whole discussion.
No Accompaniment. That's right! You don't have to have an accompaniment to your melody. The Accompaniment can always be varied, which adds an entire different level of complexity to this whole scenario, so for now, let's leave it out. A very effective way to present a melody is - by itself! So always remember this option!!!

Now, assuming a more traditional presentation (with accompaniment, but we're not necessarily concentrating on how to vary that), here are other things you can do with a melody (or a motive, and sometimes other musical elements).

"Repeat"

1. Repeat it. Yep, repeat it, as is. Sometimes, a melodic idea is so central to the piece that it's worth repeating immediately. Sometimes, a melodic idea is so central to the piece that it's worth repeating immediately. See - you didn't get bored with that did you? It's important, it's worth repeating. What you as a composer must do is, decide if a single statement (maybe with a repeat later) is enough, or if it needs to be repeated immediately.

"Transposition"

2. Repeat it with a Pitch Variation. This should seem obvious after #1 above, but there are a couple of common variations you can make without changing the basic content of the melody (thus these transformations are fairly subtle).

2a. Repeat it at an octave higher or lower, or if there's accompaniment, change the register so that it's above/below the accompaniment, or within the accompaniment.

2b. Repeat it at some other pitch level. This can be done two ways:
2b.1: Move the melody to a different pitch level, but keep the intervallic content the same. This is known as a Real transposition, so C-F-G, when moved to start on F, becomes F-Bb-C, NOT F-B-C. This has the effect of making the melody Modulate to a new key when done in a Tonal context.

2b.2: Move the melody to a different pitch level, but keep the overall mode or key intact. This is called Tonal transposition. C-F-G would become F-B-C in the key of C major, or if we were in C Lydian, C-F#-G would become F#-B-C. This has the effect of making the melody maintain the the Key or Modal center. In Tonal music, this opens up the possibility of presenting a melody in Major, then moving the whole thing down a m3 to put it into the relative minor (or vice versa). Which brings us to:

2c. Keep the melody at the same level but change the intervallic content. The most common alteration is to present a melody in C Major for example, then change it to C minor (or vice versa). Only certain notes will change (as will the intervals created by those notes). A modern interpretation of this transformation is to take a melody in C Major for example, then change it to C Mixolydian so that all of the B naturals become B flats.

"Transformation"

3. Repeat your melody with a Contour or Order Variation. Two similar procedures will produce similar results (though it should be noted that a palindromic melody will not work well for these transformations).

3a. Inversion: Inverting a melody means to change any ascending interval to a descending one and vice versa. For example, if you invert C-D-E (all up), it becomes C-B-A (all down). These can be Tonal or Real as well (thus a Real inversion of C-D-E is C-Bb-Ab). Another way to put this is to say, for Tonal "my original melody went up a 6th, so my repeat needs to go down a 6th" and for Real "my original melody went up a M6, so my repeat needs to go down a M6".

3b. Retrograde: Play it backwards! I know, this seems like a funny kind of transformation to apply to a melody, but it's a time-honored one. There is a form called a Cancrizans Canons - Cancrizans comes from Cancer the Crab (the Zodiac) since crabs walk "sideways" this word was used to describe a type of Canon that plays against itself - that is, a forward presentation of the melody is played backwards against itself. This brings us to a little aside:

All of the above - Tonal and Real Transpositions, Modal Changes, Inversions and Retrogrades are common in Canon and Fugal writing, as well as many other forms.

In the 20th Century, the Atonalists, and Serialists picked up on these transformational techniques as ways of organizing their music without the unifying factors of tonality (Key Centers, Modulatory hierarchy, etc.). They are usually listed as follows:

Prime Form (or Original Form). The unaltered melody (or row, series, etc.)

Transposed Form. Transposed, though in 12-tone music it's always Real.
Inverted Form.
Retrograde Form.

These are the three classic operations that can be performed on a tone row (or melody). A fourth operation is really a combination of two, Retrograde Inversion, which I won't give a special category because it should be obvious you can combine operations. It should be obvious you can combine operations (see, worth repeating :-).

"Augmentation/Diminution"

4. I have one I like to call Intervallic Augmentation/Diminution. Here, we decrease or increase the size of intervals. For example, if my original went C-D-E, which is up M2, up M2, then my intervallically augmented version would go up M3, up M3 or whatever interval I decide, so the result would be C-E-G#. An alternate method is to "add" the same interval to each, so if I choose to add a M2 to everything, C-D-Eb becomes C-E-G.

I got this idea from Messian and what they call "additive" rhythms. It seems so obvious but I've never seen it explained anywhere in a pitch context, so I lay claim to it if no one else already did :-).

That brings us to the next section - Rhythmic changes. I should note that, in most (except for repeat as is) of the above transformations, the rhythm stays the same while the pitch changes. SO now, I'm leaving the pitch the same and changing the rhythm in the following transformations. Rhythm is a little harder to deal with because you can't really "invert" it. You can retrograde it, but many rhythms are "non-retrogradable" - that is, they're palindromic (or symmetrical) and thus don't produce a new rhythm when presented backwards. That said, there are still a few interesting things to do, and, since I was just talking about intervallic augmentation/diminution, and that's the most common rhytmic alteration historically, I'll start there:

"Augmentation/Diminution"

5. This is yet another common device from Canon and Fugal writing that appear in many other guises as well. The simplest thing (and traditional) to do is to halve, or double the note values. So for (q = quarter, e = eighth, h = half - you Brits figure it out :-) | q e e q e e | in 4/4, augmenting that (doubling it) would give you | h q q | h q q |.

A less traditional approach is to add a predetermined value to everything. Adding a q to | q e e | q e e | becomes | h q. q. etc., effectively changing the meter or making syncopations.

"Metric Transformation"

6. In this transformation, you take a melody that was in 4/4 and make it 3/4, or take one in 2/4 and make it 6/8. This was actually very common in early Dance pieces - there used to be a "Dance" and an "Afterdance" in works we call Dance Pairs (I'm not making this up, honest - but these are the English translations). The first dance might be in 2/4 and the second in 6/8 - but they were basically the same dance, one presented in a duple feel, and one in a triple feel. This is actually not unlike what happens in jazz when someone takes an ordinary "non-swung" tune and "jazzes it up" by swinging the 8th notes. So if an original melody is played "straight" and then "swung" in Jazz, it would be this type of transformation.

Now it gets hard to kind of categorize things because there's a lot of crossover here. I'll call the first category:

"Rotation"

7. Rotation involves reordering elements so that the first in a series is put at the end, and the 2nd becomes the first and everything else moves up. So for example: C-D-E-F would become D-E-F-C. This can be applied to pitch as well as rhythm. One of my favorite forms from the 1300s is called Isorhythmic Motet, and in it a pre-existing melody is coupled with a pre-exitent rhythm. Composers usually chose the two so that after a melody repeated three times, the rhythm will have gone through four repeats. So it best fits under this category because it seems that in each melodic repeat, the rhythm is rotating (but you don't notice it in listening necessarily).

8. Shifting Rhythm so that is moves in relation to the meter falls here too. It's kind of like "transposing" rhythm to a new beat if that makes sense. So if we take | q e e q e e | and "transpose" it to beat 2, we get: | x q e e q | e e ... etc. - in other words it's shifted over the bar. While it is a lot like "transposing" you're actually rotating it against a stable element (the meter) so it's also a form of rotation (modes are a from of pitch rotation against the stable element of key).

"Articulative"

9. Articulative variations or transformations involve not pitch or rhythm, but how you play things. These should all be very, very obvious, but often times they're completely overlooked.

9a. Vary the Dynamics! You played it loud last time, play it quiet this time!
9b. Vary the articulation - legato pass 1, how about staccato pass 2!
9c. Vary the timbre - played normal pass 1, how about with a mute pass 2!
9d. Vary the amount - played |q q q q| pass 1, how about playing
|e e e e e e e e| the second time - not "twice as fast" but "double strokes" for each pitch.
9e. Add ornaments - grace notes or turns etc. While this can be "composing new material" the main melody is still the point of focus.

There are too many of these to mention but what you should always be thinking is, how many different ways can I present this material, and of those, which one or ones will be most effective in this particular point in the piece.

"Total Serialization"

10. This is a nasty word from 20th century music, also known as Intergral Serialism. In it, EVERYTHING is serialized - that is, put in order at the pre-compositional stage. Every C will always be forte, staccato, and an 8th note, and every D will always be piano, legato, and a half note, and so on. The original serial composers (Schoenberg et al) just dealt with ordering Pitch, but later people like Boulez came along and serialized other elements. But the point here is not to serialize everything, but to make you realize that everything can be serialized (or ordered) - or not. Can you retrograde Dynamics? Absolutely. What about Inversion? Sure. Consider the following:

Cp Dmp Emf Ff Gff - hopefully you see there's a cresendo. What happens if I invert it (or retrograde it here)?

Cff Df Emf Fmp Gp - I get a Decrescendo!

So what the Intergal Serialists have taught us is not that everything has to be composed in an intergrally serialistic manner, but that MANY musical elements can be varied besides pitch and rhtyhm.

So next time you're thinking about repeating some material (especially a melody in the context of this article), don't just slap repeat bars around it (or copy and paste in Finale :-). - oh, unless you're doing modern popular music where repeating material ad nauseum is part of the style!!!

Think about the various ways material can be repeated, and decide if any one, or combinations of ones will produce a better effect than just a simple straight repeat. And finally:

11. Go on to new material. That's right, sometimes an exact repeat is warranted, sometimes a varied repeat (transformations) is warranted, and sometimes something new is warranted (you can always come back to material later too!).

fine.