Management of Measurement Constructs
Melody and Message

Try humming or singing the first song-tune that comes to mind … just the beginning of it. Try it. The odds are high that you’ve instinctively picked a song that is really easy to remember, that just spills out of your mind. There is something about that song that helps it hold on in memory.

What makes the beginning of a song easy to remember? –This can help us make our consultations memorable!

Usually, it’s the tonal difference between the first note and the second different note.

You could have picked the Marseillaise, the French National Anthem (named so because of its great popularity as a tune among soldiers in Marseilles)! The tune was in 1792, but the first four notes are eternally easy to remember. Try it. –Since the first three notes are the same, it’s easy to hear that first pitch (emphasized as it is) and relate it to the next different note, the fourth one. Bum-bum bum-Bah …

Now, starting on that same first note, begin the song “Auld Lang Syne” (“Should Old …”)! The first two different notes are the same in each of the two songs. –Technically, it’s not the notes that are the same, because a higher or lower voice would pitch the songs differently than you have; it is the interval between the notes that is the same. It’s an ascending fourth, as they say in music [for example C to F…. C,D,E,F]. That’s the secret; our ears and minds hear that interval easily, it has a conclusive finality to it.

Using the same starting tone, try “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”; how about that classic love song “Because”; try “O Tannenbaum”; how about Elvis’ “Love Me Tender”; and if you’re really into opera, try Wagner’s Destiny theme from the Ring (it stands out enormously from the other 40-50 Leitmotifs) or his theme for the forlorn sadness and doom of “The Flying Dutchman.” –The same interval dominates each beginning.

The point is that the interval stated by the first two pitches/notes has a sense of security, of sureness, of finality to it. That’s why the composer chose that interval; it’s easy to hear, to remember, and to repeat. Rhythm and harmonic/instrumentation adjustments change the coloration, of course, but the passage from the beginning point to the next point is indelibly easy to remember; the interval of “a fourth” sits with a sense of anchor, and it triggers recall of the notes that follow.

What can we appreciate from this for our Astrology? What is “rememberable” about our consultation? What is secure and sure and final, if you will, about our talk with the client? How will it be recalled to mind?

You have just finished a consultation. You leave your study room and your spouse asks you, “How did it go?” –What do you say?

You probably give a subjective reaction to how successful you feel about it. But then you need to recall something that portrays the value of the consultation. –How do you sum it up? What is the easily remembered focus of the consultation’s message … its dominant melody?

The client faces the same evaluation. “How’d it go?” –How does the client catch the message with just a few words, with two or three notes? What message tones stay with him or her after talking with you?

I try whenever possible to summarize simply, artfully, emphatically at the end of every consultation. I try to color the summary with authority, togetherness, and positive plan. That’s the feeling of “a fourth”, and I know that that melody can be easily remembered. And remembering that triggers everything else into recall.

Do you write down a few notes during your consultation? You can be preparing that end melody with key phrases, words that clicked, understandings that shone, and very smoothly, at the end, just review them, putting them into a short memorable sentence. –You and the client are creating the melody together, and your client will carry it forward for a long time to come.

Think about it. Hear it.