Theme

Music is not written one note at a time.

Very often, composers come up with a great piece of a melody...

...and then they change it slightly and repeat multiple times.

This is called "theme and variations".

Theme

• a piece of melody that the entire song is based on.

Variation

• the theme, altered in one of a few ways

How can we change a piece of melody? Well, there are some obvious ways...

Make the notes smaller
(which makes the music faster)
- diminution

Make the notes larger
(which makes the music slower)
- augmentation

Move the theme up or down on the staff
- transposition

Make the theme go backwards
- retrograde

Even flip the theme upside down!
- inversion

With all of these techniques, it's easy to see how one piece of melody can transform into an entire song.