Leitmotivation
I had an idea recently, in the vein of sound design, or score writing for movies, games, what have you. I’m wondering if anyone is working on this. The idea is simple: extract certain salient patterns of melody and rhythm from the speech of an individual, transforming those patterns directly into musical motives, to serve both as leitmotifs and as materials for variations and development.
I think for instance of my two-year old the other morning. He woke up cranky, awaking his older brother, who came to our bedroom, and announced the situation, while crawling into bed with us. I invited the two-year-old to join us, to which he replied:
which he repeated numerous times. I realize, of course, that this is a paradigm for dismissal or dislike. The pattern is clear, large rise (greater than an octave) at the beginning, a short pick up to a medium-length (or possibly long) accented noted, followed by rapid descent and fall in amplitude. The number of syllables/notes following the accent is mostly irrelevant, as long as it is at least three, it would seem. What a great motive for a character.
Is anyone doing this sort of thing today? Extracting real motives from snippets of speech, transforming them into musical motives, then using them as leitmotifs and fodder for musical development?
