Note: I posted the draft of this post early this morning before I had some coffee and edited it, it contained some glaring mistakes which I hope I've corrected. Just in case those who read it found it confusing. I should never write a piece in blogger, that's always happening when I take that shortcut.
SO FAR I'VE GIVEN YOU THREE NOTES, re, mi and fa (d, e, and f) which, from here till notified, I'm going to give you in lower-case to signify the lower octave of your singing range. Add the note above that, SO and you've got what is called a "tetrachord." I won't go into the history of the term because what a tetrachord is meant different things at different periods, starting with the classical Greeks.* We aren't classical Greeks or medieval or late medieval monks so for musical purposes it only means what the term is used for today, a set of four given notes, generally though not necessarily four adjacent notes in the diatonic scale (for our purposes here for now, white keys on a keyboard notes).
RE MI FA SO is a good place to start because it avoids the "do re mi" trap, which I might define for you someday if I'm in a sour mood related to how much movable-do solfege sucks. In addition to the major seconds of RE MI and FA SO it has the minor second of MI FA, and thirds, the minor thirds of RE FA AND MI SO and the perfect fourth of RE SO. It is the first four notes of the Dorian mode as well as the d minor scale but you aren't limited to those unless you want to be.
Most typically a melody or Psalm tone using those four notes would tend to use RE for the first and last notes and one of the higher notes as the tenor (repeating) note for reciting most of a text. But there is no reason you can't begin and end on different notes or to end something you create on any of the other notes For my ears a Psalm tone or melody that ends with a cadence of FA MI has a very strong feeling of the Phrygian mode. I could go into the difference between the Dorian and hypodorian modes which both have RE as a final one but you don't have enough notes yet to worry about that and, anyway, you're not limited by Medieval practice or theory.
To start I'd advise trying melodic writing only step-wise melodies with adjacent notes, major and minor seconds. After you come up with a number of those, as many as pleases you to write, you can start working with the thirds and then the fourth from RE to SO.
If writing in the tradition of Gregorian Chant is your interest, continuing on with that passage about step-wise motion dominating, by far, in that body of chants, Willi Apel continues from where I left off:
Among the disjunct progressions, ascending and descending, major and minor thirds occur frequently. Numerous chants consist of nothing but unisons, seconds and thirds, for instance the just mentioned Offertory Anima nostra. Next in frequency is the ascending or descending fourth examples of which are found, for instance, in the Offertory Perfice gressus and in the Communion Introibo ad altare from the same feast.
I'll give you what he says about larger intervals when we get to them, till then you don't have to worry about them.
But with all of that said never forget that chant is more about the words even when the music becomes more complex, presenting the text in a comprehensible way in music that moves the emotions and mind to what is being said. If you want me to explain to you what that means, I can't. Having read several long treatises about setting words to music I can't recommend even reading any of them. I'm tempted to say that Virgil Thomson's rather unattractively self-indulgent Music With Words is the worst of those but really none of them are especially helpful and trying to read anything like that will do you worse than reading one of those awful books grammar nags of prescriptive grammar will if writing natural sounding dialogue is you goal. Trying to learn to composer from theory is among the most counter-productive things a beginner can do, all those do is inhibit them from trying things, finding out what they think works (what they like) and writing their own music instead of junk that may as well have been written by the rules.
My theory of the history of Gregorian Chant is that there were probably many hundreds of thousands of melodies that were composed many of which got tried out and which were not found useful and so were lost or forgotten. I think most of the old chants are probably the product of that legendary test of time under use. What condescending anthropologist types would call "the folk process." Only the words, based in the Vulgate and the authorized liturgy didn't tend to change except, maybe, in the hymns.
But a new chant doesn't have to follow those old models. I would expect that some composer could come up with a hundred chants in c major with or without set notated rhythm worth using, just as I think it's possible one might come up with something I couldn't classify because it wouldn't fit any theoretical classification that I could come up with. Theory is sloppiness, I believe it was Roger Sessions who said that in German (my translation) and for any attempted start at creative work, that is putting it mildly. You might want to be aware of what the musical materials you're using are called because it helps to explain that to yourself.
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ABOUT USING INSTRUMENTS
I suggested using an instrument to check your pitches to make sure you're writing down what you think you are. I made the assumption that you had an instrument you knew which notes it played, one that played reliably in tune.
If you do not have such an instrument or never learned to play one (or to read music, for that matter) the best thing you could probably do is get a good plastic recorder and learn to finger the notes on it. Probably you would want a Soprano or Alto recorder because they're the least expensive and easiest to hold. There are lots of awful cheap recorders that don't play reliably in tune but there are some that aren't just excellent in that regard but have a decent tone, some of the most expensive would rival a good but budget wooden instrument. Yamaha, Aulos and the Mollenhauer Adris Dream soprano are the only models I've had any experience with and all are excellent, the Adris Dream being far more expensive than you'd probably want to spend. You can find a decent, in tune Yamaha plastic recorder for less than ten dollars BUT MAKE SURE YOU GET ONE THAT HAS "BAROQUE" FINGERING. I have never encountered a "German fingered" recorder that played in tune, not even a very expensive wooden one. The so-called German fingering was an idiotic scheme to produce a slightly more easily taught school recorder in the early decades of the 20th century. What they did was make the thing almost impossible to make it play in tune except in one key, and not for that if you had to play notes outside the key. Most of the horrid "school recorders" that have done so much to give the instrument a bad name have German fingering. It's worse than movable-do as an attempt at making teaching music easier but eternally burdening the learner with inferior content.
It's a lot more iffy to try using a penny whistle. To start most of those are in the key of d major with an f sharp and a c sharp built into it. It's easy to play a c natural but playing an f natural is very hard to get reliably. Both of which you'll need for what I'm doing here. If you want to try using a penny whistle, go out of your way and get the somewhat rarer instrument tuned in c.
Here's a video about choosing a plastic recorder from a professional recorder player (yes, there are professional players).
Sarah Jeffrey has done a lot of reviews of recorders from the cheapest to the most expensive and she is a really excellent musician and extremely practical and anything but pretentiously stuck in an imaginary past. I say that even as I don't always agree with what she says, especially about medieval music. Most of what she says is solid and reliable.
And here's one from the American Recorder Society with two other professionals.
*I'll warn you off of putting much faith in what you'll read or hear online about medieval music theory or, really music theory of any period. Some of it is valid, some of it might even be useful but most of it is everything from bogus to total nonsense. None of it will be much help to you in coming up with the music that will be YOUR music.
One of the truly stupidest papers I have ever read in well over a half a century of reading music papers was someone who proposed reviving medieval Guidonian solfege to apply it to everything from the music of Debussy on as well, including romanitic, classic, baroque era music. A more idiotic and, useless and entirely unnecessary practice I couldn't have imagined until I read the paper, for which I believe the guy got a masters degree from an accredited university
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