11 Tips for melodic composition

@Anomalous Materials on the Elektron discord asked: “Do you guys have tips for coming up with good melodies?”. This led me to think about different melodies I enjoy and what I enjoy about them, as well as my own melodic constructions. Now I wont claim to be the best at creating melodies, or that I’m an expert on any of this, so take this advice with a grain of salt. There might be reasons to disagree with many of these ideas or professionals who can offer better ideas. This is only my perspective, and I can only hope it helps. As well, these tips were written with Using an Elektron in mind, so some methods might not be available in your particular tools, but often there is an analogous version of many of these ideas.

I’ve broken these tips down into two categories, “methods” and “concepts”, methods are mostly things you can do that might lead to better melodies, they are the actions you can take. Concepts on the other hand are a bit more descriptive, and focus on analysis and make subjective claims about WHY a melody might be good. This is more of a theory side of things, and I am no expert in theory, so I do apologize if I get some vocabulary wrong, or if my concepts don’t align with traditional music theory.

 

Methods:

1) practice, I know it's stupid advice, but it really helps. Practice scales, and practice rhythm

2) you can fold the keyboard into a scale so you don't need to practice scales

3) using standard layout w/ scales can make playing different scale degrees a bit trickier, this will naturally coerce you into creating different melodies/patterns

4) focus on as few notes as possible, try to find one note that "works" see what kind of timings feel nice with that one note, retain that note, and try to pair it up with another repeat until you find a melody you like. The key here is process, just take your time and really listen and feel for what works

5) use step input recording, this can be an easy way to create melodies without thinking about timing

6) abandon order, embrace chaos, use randomized trig conditions and polymetric patterns to generate melodies automatically, they will mostly be stale, but sometimes an amazing idea will present its self

7) and finally, try to hum or imagine melodies, this can help you intuit melodic ideas that you might not arrive at from playing
doing this even when you're not in front of an instrument will build a melodic vocabulary that you can apply in the future

Concepts:

1) call and response, many melodies seem to present an "idea", then rephrase this idea
this is most often done by ending the melody on a different note
even more often this is done by ending the melody on a stressed or dissonant note the first time around, then resolving it on a consonant note the second time around

2) good melodies tend to have a strong rhythmic concept. usually notes will be bunched up in one region of the sequence, and sparse in the other (within a measure)
this is where the feeling of your song comes into play, you can build tension, or drive intensity, or make things feel relaxed depending on which regions of the pattern you focus these groupings
once you feel more comfortable, you can play with call and response and switching between timings and groupings

3) melodic notes tend to focus on chord tones, and good melodies tend to add a 7th, 9th, or 11th, of some sort to emphasize a mood
notes outside of the current chord can be used to step between chord tones, but tend not to be emphasized of sustained
think about how we speak, and how we intonate syllables, some syllables are given more intensity that others

4) in sparser regions or any time you hold or pause on a note, this note is the most important and drives the feel of the melody
you can almost get away with anything so long as you land on the "right" note. there's no rule for what this note should be, but it should at least "feel" right

 

I hope these suggestions can help you as much as I believe they have helped me. I have to create melodies quite often for my software reviews and preset demos. These tend to lean towards the simpler more basic end of things, but by creating so many, I’ve inevitably written a few “good” ones (or at least I hope). This is why “practice” is my first advice, and seeing as I’m recalling it here, also my last advice. I think in some senses you almost have to bore yourself of the more mundane melodies. Get them out of your system, master them to a degree. Once you have a grasp on these, you’ll naturally play around with ideas and come up with catchier and more emotional sequences.

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