Retrograde

What is ‘retrograde’?
Retrograde literally means ‘to move backwards’ and in music describes a
technique for creating new melodies by reversing existing melodies.
Example 1 below shows a short phrase and example 2 shows its retrograde.

Example 1 – a short musical phrase

Example 2 – the retrograde of example 1

This was created by putting the notes of Example 1 in reverse order. The
pitches and note duration stay the same.

What’s so great about the retrograde technique?

It is a useful way of easily creating extra melodies for your compositions. For
example, you can:
 Take a melody you’ve already created and use its retrograde to create a
new section of your composition (e.g. the bridge or chorus of a song). In
this way you can lengthen your composition without much effort.
 If you’re struggling to come up with any melodies on your own, you can
take a famous melody (e.g. the Star Wars theme or “Sincerity is Scary”
by the 1975) and create its retrograde version. You could use the
retrograde version, or you could change some notes and/or rhythms to
create something new.
This is really useful, are there any other composition techniques like this?

So far we have been describing total retrograde which is where both the pitch
and duration are reversed. If you only reversed the pitches but left the note
durations that is called melodic retrograde (see example 3 below):

gg

Example 3: The theme from Star Wars with its pitches reversed but its note durations
untouched.

If you only reversed the note durations but left the pitches that is called
rhythmic retrograde (see example 4 below):

gg

Example 3: The theme from Star Wars with its rhythms reversed but its pitches untouched.

In this way you can use the retrograde to create three new melodies from the
same starting melody!

You should also investigate the composition

techniques of inversion and retrograde-inversion.
If you can understand retrograde, inversion and
retrograde-inversion, you will be able to take any
melody and use it to create many new melodies!