One of the most common methods is to underlay a melody with what E. M. Wickes, [1] one of the keenest popular song critics of today, calls the “internal vamp.”  This is the keeping of a melody so closely within its possible octave that the variations play around a very few notes.  Try on your piano this combination—­D, E flat, and E natural, or F natural, with varying tempos, and you will recognize many beginnings of different famous songs they represent.  Either the verse of these songs starts off with this combination, or the chorus takes these notes for its beginning.  “Sweet Adeline” and “On the Banks of the Wabash” are but two of the many famous songs built on this foundation.  Of course, there are other combinations.  These few combinations taken together might be considered as the popular idea of “easy music.”

[1] Mr. Wickes has been contributing to The Writer’s Monthly a series of valuable papers under the general caption, “Helps for Song Writers.”

And now it is through the consideration of the importance of the variations of the theme that we may come to an understanding of what, for the want of a better phrase, I shall call unexpected punches.

7.  Punches not Suggested by the Theme

The impossibility of adequately pointing out by words the specific examples of what I mean in certain songs makes it necessary for me to direct you back to your own piano.  Run over a group of your favorites and see how many musical punches you can find that are not due directly to the theme.  Pick out the catchy variations in a dozen songs—­you may chance on one or two where the biggest punch is not in the theme.  Of course you may trace it all back to the theme, but nevertheless it still stands out a distinct punch in the variation.  If you can add this punch to your theme-punch, your song success is assured.

8.  Use of Themes or Punches of Other Songs

When Sol P. Levy, the composer of “Memories,” the “Dolly Dip Dances,” and a score of better-class melodies, shared my office, one of our sources of amusement was seeking the original themes from which the popular songs were made.  As Mr. Levy was arranging songs for nearly all the big publishers, we had plenty of material with which to play our favorite indoor sport.  It was a rare song, indeed, whose musical parent we could not ferret out.  Nearly all the successful popular songs frankly owned themes that were favorites of other days—­some were favorites long “before the war.”

Berlin’s use of “Way down upon the Swanee River”—­“played in ragtime”—­for a musical punch in “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” was not the first free use of a theme of an old favorite for a punch, but it was one of the first honestly frank uses.  The way he took Mendelssohn’s “Spring Song” and worked it into as daring a “rag” as he could achieve, is perhaps the most delightfully impudent, “here-see-what-I-can-do,” spontaneously and honestly successful “lift” ever perpetrated.  Berlin has “ragged” some of the most perfect themes of grand opera with wonderful success, but not always so openly.  And other composers have done the same thing.