Motifs and Phrasing

A motif is the smallest piece of music you recognise when it comes back: two to seven notes with a rhythm and an interval pattern of their own. A phrase is a sentence built from those pieces. Knowing the difference is what lets you build a section from one idea.

2 to 7 notes
rhythm plus intervals
the building block

Where you run into this

Classical
Film music
Pop
Jazz
Game music

Hear the motif, then its variationsI - IV - V

In short

A motif always has two properties at once: its own rhythm and its own interval pattern. Together they make it recognisable. The opening of Beethoven's Fifth is three short notes and a long one, one rhythmic figure and one interval that matters, and it carries an entire symphony. A motif is not a complete thought; a phrase is. That distinction is the whole subject.

The feeling

Motif development is a small set of moves: exact repetition, which anchors it in memory; sequence, the same idea a step higher or lower, which creates drive; transposition, which keeps the shape and changes the colour; inversion, where the intervals flip and the answer sounds like a mirror; augmentation and diminution, which stretch or compress the rhythm; and fragmentation, where you keep only part of it.

How it works

Two models organise phrases. The period is two four-bar phrases: the first ends open, usually on a half cadence, the second starts with the same material and closes with a full cadence. Question and answer. The sentence works differently: two bars of basic idea, two bars of repetition, then four bars of continuation where the material fragments, accelerates and cadences. A period balances; a sentence builds.

Where you run into this

A chorus that keeps returning to the same three notes in new positions
An eight-bar phrase that ends open and then ends closed
A film cue where one short figure is stretched to half speed for the big moment

Our own examples

One motif, six ways: exact, sequenced, transposed, inverted, augmented and fragmented. Then the same motif built into a period and into a sentence, so you can hear balance and build side by side.

Keep going

Everything in melody and form

Open melody and form

Writing a melody

Building a song

Taking it apart