Learn the Power of Motivic Development Through This Modern Fiddle Tune

One of the most fascinating aspects of composition and improvisation is motivic development:taking a short musical idea (or motif), and varying it in numerous ways throughout a composition. It’s a cornerstone of all great music, regardless of genre: Beethoven string quartets, Miles Davis solos, rock riffs, and fiddle tunes all contain it in spades. It’s also a key component of what makes for compelling listening. When we hear something familiar presented in a newer or slightly different way, it helps give our ears a sense of form and narrative, leaving a trail of sonic breadcrumbs to guide our listeners along.

While this is true of both instrumental and vocal music, I think its use is especially important when our ears don’t have a lyric to latch on to. In this lesson, I’ll show you how I applied motivic development to composing a long-form fiddle tune, using “Blue Moose” from my latest album, Passages, as a study.

I’ll dive deep into the melody and harmony to show you how motivic development is used throughout to get maximum musical mileage out of a few ideas. If this analysis feels overly technical or academic, rest assured that each choice was made for musical reasons first and foremost: I liked how it sounded, and it was fun to play!

The Basic StructureFor our purposes, a fiddle tune is an instrumental piece of music played by string-band musicians. They’re called that because many originated with fiddlers, but you can write and play a fiddle tune on any instrument. You’ll hear them at bluegrass festivals, old-time jams, and Irish bars, among other places. While many classic fiddle tunes in the American acoustic music canon are old enough to mostly be considered traditional, there is also a parallel tradition of contemporary folk musicians writing new, original fiddle tunes.

Many popular fiddle tunes in the bluegrass world have an AABB form—two parts, each played twice. A hallmark of modern fiddle-tune writing is expanding the form by adding more parts, and integrating compositional ideas from other musical traditions outside the idiom.

“Blue Moose” is a four-part fiddle tune (ABCD form). The band arrangement on Passages jumps around those parts somewhat, with the melody passed around among guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, and dobro (and often two or more of those simultaneously). However, this is Acoustic Guitar magazine after all, so I’ve presented “Blue Moose” here more straightforwardly as a flatpicking tune, with each part played in order. 

Ethan Sherman, Passages (Indoor Recordings)Breaking Down the DevelopmentsLet’s begin at the top: the foundation of the A section is its first two-bar phrase. We hear this repeated verbatim at bars 5–6, but phrases 2 and 4 mix things up a bit. At bar 3, the phrase first heard in bars 1–2 has been lowered by a perfect fourth. If you zoom in, you’ll notice that the intervals aren’t transposed exactly, though. 

The beginning of bar 1 is a descending D minor arpeggio, beginning with the F (the third of the chord). The arpeggio in bar 3, however, begins with a C, which is not the third but the root of the accompanying Cm chord. Here, the development of the chords influenced the development of the melody: I liked the way the Cm chord sounded after hearing Dm and Am under the first phrase, so I altered the melody to outline it. This approach provides both familiarity and variation: the rhythm and downward direction of the notes stay the same, but the underlying harmony changes.

The first ending (bars 6–9) extends the variation from bars 3–4, turning it into a four-measure phrase. From there, we repeat from the top of A and play through this section again, this time taking the second ending at bar 10. Melodically, the notes in bar 11 are exactly the same as bar 3, but this time the meteris different. Whereas bars 3 and 4 alternate between 3/4 and 4/4 time, bars 10–12 are both in common time. This is mainly to set up the melody at bar 12, which in turn sets up the B section. 

The next instance of melodic development occurs at the beginning of the C section. The phrase that takes up most of bar 21 has the same rhythm and shape of the main motif of B, but here, the qualityof the melody—and the accompanying chords—shifts: what was once minor is now major. To emphasize the connection to B, the 2/4 bar at bar 25 has the exact same notes from the ends of bars 15 and 19.

By the way, this section is the first time in the tune that we’re in a really clear key center (A major, mostly). This gives our ears a nice break from all the shifting tonalities of the previous two sections—a harmonic exhale, if you will.

The D section wraps up the tune and ties everything together. Here, we’re returning to the main idea from A, with some newish developments. We’re continuing to use the quality-change device, turning the once-minor descending arpeggio to major. This shift is reflected in the chords, too—where in part A we heard Dm and Cm chords under this idea, now we’re hearing C, D, and G major.

As the D section continues, this little melodic nugget is repeated twice at bars 29 and 32, but extended. What began as a two-bar phrase is now three measures. (Remember when that happened in the A part?) The ends of these extensions (bars 31 and 34) climb up in pitch, which sets up the seemingly inevitable final phrase of the tune: the exact second phrase of the A part, an octave higher than the original.

That concludes our guided tour through “Blue Moose.” The various approaches to motivic development we covered are repetition, transposition, reharmonization, syncopation, and metric modulation. How I used these ideas shows just one way things could have gone—the possibilities they open up are infinite. If you aspire to write your own fiddle tunes, I hope this deconstruction offers some insight and inspires you to go exploring yourself. I’d love to hear your take on “Blue Moose”!

Ethan Sherman is a guitarist-composer and educator based in Los Angeles. He is the co-author (with Adam Levy) of String Theories: Tips, Challenges, and Reflections for the Lifelong Guitarist.

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2024 issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine.