A New Method of Melodic Interval Analysis as Applied to Maori Chant

Abstract

This paper describes a method for representing melodic structure diagrammatically, and an associa ed desc iptive t rminology; together hese yield results useful in stylistic analysis. The idea is a development and systematisation of the cent frequency charts which appear in Brandel 1961. Essentially, the method provides a means of representing each melodic interval of a song in terms of note duration, distance from the tonic, frequency of occurrence, form rising or falling, and relationship both to starting note and to final. Moreover, the number of melodic intervals of each kind can immediately be seen, the number of notes in the scale can be likewise seen, and the range can easily be worked out. Other information implicit in the diagram is enumerated later in this paper. The first step in drawing the melodic interval diagram of a song, using this new method, is to distribute the note names representing the scale of the song down the left-hand side of the page with larger and smaller spaces between them representing tone and half-tone steps. The diagram can now be drawn up according to the schema in Figure 1.