Of all the things related to music production I have noticed that I have a REALLY hard time coming up with melodies. I’m not sure what it is but I literally just get stuck when I get to that part.
What are your tricks to help you create a good melody? I’ve done the whole (write out every note of the scale and play around till u find something cool) thing but i can never come up with something that i’m happy with.
Here is an example of the type of melodies I am looking for:
Any advice or tips on how to start the process so that I can start getting better at it?
A few things I do to try and get a melody together - create a bassline or chord progression first (sorry if this sounds duhhh obviously)… and then get a rhythm for the melody together (its amazing how much the rhythm of a melody can change the entire feel of it!)… and if nothing comes to me right away then I’ll literally move the notes up and down until I get 4 bars or so of something - there are no set rules (other than musical theory really - which don’t forget is all based around how things sounded in the first place) and then create variations.
If all else fails - when you have your bassline / progression in place, I sometimes duplicate that onto a new channel, take it up an octave or two, give it a bigger sound and perhaps throw an arpeggiator, beat repeats or random effects over it to get the notes moving still in key and record down what might sound nice - although this can be very hit and miss!
Take a percussive approach. Hammer in a funky off or on beat perc line(conga, bongo,carnival drum,wtv…) to your kick/hat snare loop. Add swing to your drums. Copy the midi notes to a midi synth track. Experiment by pitching the notes up and down a tone or semi tone. Memorize this t-st-t-t-st-t-t.
[quote]DJ SPAZ (22/05/2012)[hr]Take a percussive approach. Hammer in a funky off or on beat perc line(conga, bongo,carnival drum,wtv…) to your kick/hat snare loop. Add swing to your drums. Copy the midi notes to a midi synth track. Experiment by pitching the notes up and down a tone or semi tone. Memorize this t-st-t-t-st-t-t.[/quote]
t-st-t-t-st-t-t - is for a natural minor scale (the actual terminology is whwwhww, w meaning whole step and h meaning half step (tone / semitone)).
For a major scale (making your music generally have a more happy feel) is t-t-st-t-t-t-st or wwhwwwh.
To give your music a more housey feel, a common practice is to harmonsie with minor thirds or perfect fifths (perhaps an octave above your main melody) giving a thicker more interesting melody - although this all requires a lot more thought and general musical theroy studying than my previous suggestions!
You could try using an approach something like this:
Step 1) Choose your scale
Step 2) Load up a piano or something similar and create a chord sequence in that scale which appeals to you. You might want to do some research into chord progressions for this ( Chord Progression ). Pay particular attention to your tonic, dominant, and sub-dominant chords and choose chords that have the same number of notes.
Step 3) Now treat each note in your chords as a seperate voice or instrument. The top note of each chord will be your melody voice, the bottom will be your bass voice, and the inbetween notes might be some kind of pad or strings. Split up the midi file and load an appropriate instrument for each voice. This would be a good time to do some reading up on voice leading ( Voice Leading ).
Bearing in mind this is what you will be trying to acheive, then during step 2 you might want to take extra care to try and choose a chord progression in which the middle voices share some notes with adjacent chords so they can run together whereas the top voice changes note with each chord to make for a more lively melody voice.
Step 4) Add some rythmic interest to each part by imprinting some kind of repeating pattern over it whilst keeping the pitches the same. Not all voices need to follow the same pattern, in fact it will help if they don’t. Keep in mind the type of instrument playing when choosing a pattern, for example a plucky melody voice might require a rapid pattern with lots of variation, where-as an evolving pad will suit a slower pattern of notes.
Step 5) You should have something sounding pretty good already by now but you can improve things by adding some embellishments to the top melody voice. Simply move some of the melody notes up and down within the scale to create additional movement. Try to stick to pitches of the current chord for the strong beats so not to destroy the character of the chord and harmonisation but use any pitch from the scale for other notes. This would be a good time to think about melodic rules such as note skipping, question and answer style patterns, etc.
Hope that helps. I’m no expert myself and these aren’t hard fast rules but hopefully following a work method like this will get you exploring and discovering more quickly.
I’m gonna miss out all the really technical stuff and say it in basics…
create a starting position (bass/lead/pads what ever)
now once you have a starting point (4 bars what ever) of one element copy the notes to another instrument (if you have created a bass melody then copy and make pads/main melody)
Start to move notes (if you dont have a melody in your head) and play with them moving them up or down until you get something
Then move on to the next element and copy the notes and repeat
Soon enough you will end up with a few elements that go together
then arrange and start putting in the little surprises!
I think the easiest way is to use midi keyboard. You don’t even have to know how to play (and that may actually yield better results if you don’t) to get some interesting melodies.
Just put recording on and hit some keys for a minute or two and listen afterwards if there is some nice melody in the recording. If not, try again
[quote]voidstar (17/07/2012)[hr]You could try using an approach something like this:
Step 1) Choose your scale
Step 2) Load up a piano or something similar and create a chord sequence in that scale which appeals to you. You might want to do some research into chord progressions for this ( Chord Progression ). Pay particular attention to your tonic, dominant, and sub-dominant chords and choose chords that have the same number of notes.
Step 3) Now treat each note in your chords as a seperate voice or instrument. The top note of each chord will be your melody voice, the bottom will be your bass voice, and the inbetween notes might be some kind of pad or strings. Split up the midi file and load an appropriate instrument for each voice. This would be a good time to do some reading up on voice leading ( Voice Leading ).
Bearing in mind this is what you will be trying to acheive, then during step 2 you might want to take extra care to try and choose a chord progression in which the middle voices share some notes with adjacent chords so they can run together whereas the top voice changes note with each chord to make for a more lively melody voice.
Step 4) Add some rythmic interest to each part by imprinting some kind of repeating pattern over it whilst keeping the pitches the same. Not all voices need to follow the same pattern, in fact it will help if they don’t. Keep in mind the type of instrument playing when choosing a pattern, for example a plucky melody voice might require a rapid pattern with lots of variation, where-as an evolving pad will suit a slower pattern of notes.
Step 5) You should have something sounding pretty good already by now but you can improve things by adding some embellishments to the top melody voice. Simply move some of the melody notes up and down within the scale to create additional movement. Try to stick to pitches of the current chord for the strong beats so not to destroy the character of the chord and harmonisation but use any pitch from the scale for other notes. This would be a good time to think about melodic rules such as note skipping, question and answer style patterns, etc.
Hope that helps. I’m no expert myself and these aren’t hard fast rules but hopefully following a work method like this will get you exploring and discovering more quickly.[/quote]
Best post I’ve read on here. Thanks a lot for sharing that mate
