The Parsons code, formally named the Parsons code for melodic contours, is a simple notation used to identify a piece of music through
melodic motion
Melodic motion is the quality of movement of a melody, including nearness or farness of successive pitches or notes in a melody. This may be described as conjunct or disjunct, stepwise, skipwise or no movement, respectively. See also contrapunta ...
— movements of the
pitch up and down.
Denys Parsons developed this system for his 1975 book ''
The Directory of Tunes and Musical Themes''. Representing a melody in this manner makes it easier to index or search for pieces, particularly when the notes' values are unknown. Parsons covered around 15,000 classical, popular and folk pieces in his dictionary. In the process he found out that *UU is the most popular opening contour, used in 23% of all the themes, something that applies to all the genres.
The book was also published in Germany in 2002 and reissued by
Piatkus in 2008 as the ''Directory of Classical Themes''.
An earlier method of classifying and indexing melody was devised by
Harold Barlow and Sam Morgenstern in ''
A Dictionary of Musical Themes'' (1950).
The code
The first note of a melody is denoted with an
asterisk
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star.
Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...
(*), although some Parsons code users omit the first note. All succeeding notes are denoted with one of three letters to indicate the relationship of its pitch to the previous note:
*
* = first tone as reference,
*u = "up", for when the note is higher than the previous note,
*d = "down", for when the note is lower than the previous note,
*r = "repeat", for when the note has the same pitch as the previous note.
Some examples
*"
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is a popular English lullaby. The lyrics are from an early-19th-century English poem written by Jane Taylor, "The Star". The poem, which is in couplet form, was first published in 1806 in '' Rhymes for the Nursery ...
": *
*"
Silent Night
"Silent Night" (german: "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht", links=no, italic=no) is a popular Christmas carol, composed in 1818 by Franz Xaver Gruber to lyrics by Joseph Mohr in the small town of Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria. It was declared an ...
": *
*"
Aura Lea
"Aura Lea" (sometimes spelled "Aura Lee") is an American Civil War song about a maiden. It was written by W. W. Fosdick (lyrics) and George R. Poulton (music). The melody was used in Elvis Presley's 1956 hit song " Love Me Tender".
History
\ ...
" ("
Love Me Tender"): *
*"
White Christmas": *
*First verse in
Madonna
Madonna Louise Ciccone (; ; born August 16, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Widely dubbed the " Queen of Pop", Madonna has been noted for her continual reinvention and versatility in music production, songwriting, a ...
's "
Like a Virgin": *
See also
*
List of music software
This is a list of software for creating, performing, learning, analyzing, researching, broadcasting and editing music. This article only includes software, not services. For streaming services such as iHeartRadio, Pandora, Prime Music, and Spotify, ...
References
Editions
*
*
*
External links
Themefinderallows searching musical themes by Parsons Code (called "Gross Contour" on the search page).
*
ttp://www.folktunefinder.com/ FolkTuneFinder.comuses Parsons code (amongst other methods) to search a database of folk tunes.
{{Musical notation
Musical notation
Melody