Borrow... or steal

In this activity you will borrow or steal a tune from a piece you already know and re-imagine it to create your own melody.

Many composers borrow or steal snippets of other people's music to use in their own music. One of the most famous of these is Hammered Out by composer Mark Anthony Turnage who borrows from Beyonce's Single Ladies.

Turnage's son Milo loved to dance to the track and so he created this piece. Here is is performed by the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain:

Composer Thomas Adés uses Cardiac Arrest by Madness:

Here, Thomas Adés arranges a much older melody Les barricades mystérieuses by Francois Couperain:

For a printable version of this resource CLICK HERE

Your Turn!

Do you have a favourite piece of music that you feel confident playing? Now look at it again. Play the melody section by section. What do you notice about the melody: the melodic shapes, rhythm patterns, phrase structures etc. Create a list and mark the different sections/phrases.

Here's Twinkle Twinkle Little Star:

Twinkle Twinkle has these musical features:

• Melodic pattern: two notes repeating on the same pitch, then two other notes and so on
• Distinctive interval: a fifth between first two and second two notes 
• Rhythm pattern: 6 crotchets followed by a minim
• Pitch contour: steps that go down

Choose a short section of your melody. Play the section again but vary it in some way. You could change the pitches, dynamics, duration, speed, articulation, play it backwards etc. Use the downloadable variation ideas below to give you ideas. 

Here are some examples from Twinkle Twinkle: a grand loud slow version of the first four notes:

and, a fast staccato repeating version of the repeated note falling figure. 

Now choose some of your favourite ideas from your explorations. It might help to write them down in music notation. Play around with putting them in an order to make a longer piece. Think about the beginning, middle and end. You could start with the original and then your version. You can repeat ideas as many times as you like. 

Or you could record you ideas and use Audacity to organise the different sound clips. 

Please send any music you create to learning@bcmg.org.uk

In March 2024, BCMG were lucky to have Euan on his school work experience placement for one week at the CBSO Centre. Euan is in Year 11, and is a keen saxophonist and composer, who loves jazz music. This year he has also been taking part in BCMG's Creative Composing Lab with Professor David Horne.

During his work experience placement Euan got to know the team at BCMG, and what goes on behind-the-scenes in the different departments, including productions, development, finance, and learning and participation. He also used one of the BCMG Learning Resources, Borrow or steal!, to compose his own piece of music for solo saxophone.

"For this composition, I drew most of my inspiration from ‘One Step Beyond’ by Madness. I took the key and main pitches from the original piece and used them throughout as well as adding some other pitches from the key. To keep the main theme running, I placed main melody from the original in multiple places around the piece. I played these pieces of melody slightly different each time to prevent it from becoming too repetitive. I also included a small amount of vibrato on the longer notes as well as a tremolo at the end of the first section."