Unit 9, Lesson 1 of 3
Brainlag Plus Music

Question and answer

Music theory, Shaping a melody, 12 minutes

Eight bars as two phrases: a question that stops on the dominant and an answer that starts like it and finishes the tune.

Two phrases, one tune

An eight-bar melody is usually two 4-bar phrases. The first is the question: it ends in bar 4 on a note of chord V, an imperfect cadence, so the music feels unfinished. The second is the answer: it closes the tune with a perfect cadence.

The rest of this lesson and its 4 practice questions are in Plus Music.

Screen 1 of 3, free to read.

  • 4 exam-style questions, marked as you go, each with a worked solution
  • Anything you get wrong is saved to your flashcards