How do you write a melody?

[fenderfun22]

I can string a few chords together on guitar but seem to be lost when it comes to the melody. I have tried but it's one of those "too many variables" for me.

Any clues?

Thanks.

 

[Toddskins]

Forget the chords

2 or 3 variations:

1) Try humming some notes that seem interesting to you. Then hum them again, with a little changeup (i.e. at the ending). Next Hum them again in a slightly higher key. Lastly, a climactic line that solidifies the thought.

This is a Chorus.


2) Again, hum a line that is catchy and think of this as Person A singing. Next, think of a 2nd person (Person B) singing (speaking) to the 1st person as a response. So now you have a dialogue beginning. Back to Person A for a sung response to Person B. And finally, both people singing something together in harmony.

This Chorus will be different from variation #1, in that these responses don't have to have any similarity to the other person's singing.

A - sings 15 syllables in an up/down way
B - sings 10 syllables in reply, but goes up, up, then down, then up
A - replies back, in the same way as the first stanza (musically)
A&B - Harmonic line by both singers that lifts the whole dialogue in reverie. Mmmm maybe 7 syllables.


3) Think of the theme to the Godfather. Beautiful melody. It seems simple, but is actually quite contrived. Very memorable.

Anyway, this melody stands alone, it is so good. But why stop there? Orchestration was added to the melody to complement it, and give it more fulness, i.e. chords were add to complement the melody.


Who knows whether anything I just wrote will help. Just trying.

 

[tateros]

I use a music program called FL Studio, it's a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). First I write the basic notes. The program will then loop these notes at which point I can layer over it as much as I want. Like Toddskins said, you can hum along with what you have & try to find something that fits.

I do this, but I don't know how to read music so when I put the layer that I hummed over the basic melody, I end up finding that some notes are usually out of tune. What's cool about FL Studio & many other computer song making tools is that you can just drag the note up and down until you find the perfect fit.

If I remember correctly, there is also a tool in FL Studio that allows you to write the basic melody, at which point you can ask the program to find the key of the melody. After this the program will only allow you to add notes that are in tune with the melody. I've never tried it, but I've read that the option is there.


I understand that you are trying to write for guitar, but if you just use a simple sound & translate the notes you've created to guitar, it should hopefully work out. Not to mention you will be documenting your work along the way.

This is clearly a primitive method, hope it helps!

 

[mikeh]

Writing melodies is like any other skill - to some it may come easy, to others it takes time and effort.

Study some of your favorite songs to determine how the melody develops and why you like the melody - after a while, you may surprise yourself.

 

[Yonce N Mild]

Usually I write lyrics with no melody in mind. For me the rhythm develops first then as I get further into the song sometimes a melody just kind of happens. If it doesn't I wait.... it will come to me eventually. Sometimes I wake up in the morning with a song in my head that I wrote months ago and it suddenly has a melody.

I'm lucky to do most of my writing with a band though. So I'll write a complete song that is really just a poem then when we do some writing I bring my notebook and try and pick stuff that goes with whatever new riff the other guys came up with. I usually don't have any problem coming up with a melody for my lyrics that goes with whatever they have written.


If I do write a melody on guitar I just try to come up with something cool. I don't even think about the lyrics I just play the guitar. I just let it happen.

I'm constantly humming and singing pretty much all day every day. Sometime lyrics and melodies come to me that way too.

 

[dementedchord]

back in the college days we had to analyse just about every aspect of writting... the study of melodies seemed kinda curious... for instance the big alltime favs have a tendency to have even numbers of chord vs nonchord tones... also movement by a step was just as evenly done as in some arpegiated fashion... just as much ascending as decending movement... and jumps of more than a third were often mirrored in other places of the melody.... seeing a trend???? yep... balance is the key...

 

[Oancient1]

I can string a few chords together on guitar but seem to be lost when it comes to the melody. I have tried but it's one of those "too many variables" for me.

Any clues?

Thanks.

I usually have a basic melody in my head when developing the chord progression, and hum along as I play. The final melody often changes, sometimes drastically, when I have the backing music down and write/sing lyrics.

 

[SEDstar]

...

Maybe I can cut time off the learning curve here. I got a lot of differing advice when I asked "how do you make a melody... what *IS* a melody?" (and this wasnt but like 2 years ago...LMAO I was doing all chord based stuff prior to this point, I wasnt impressing myself at the time, LMAO)

Many here will flame me for making it seem so cut, dried, rule based... but...

1) scale. ALL notes, each and every one, musyt come from the scale. Use Pentatonic Minor first, and stay with it a long time. For many reasons, easy harmony and easy chord changes amongst them.

2) using the 5 notes that make up Pentatonic minor, stay in C. The FIRST note must be C, and the LAST note must be C. All the notes inbetween pick from the scale in that octave only. If the musical phrase is short or long, it doesnt matter.

3) while there are no rules per se, as any of those five notes are guaranteed to "go together perfectly", in general moving up your scale will generate tension, and coming down the scale, especially to end on C, will sound more "resolved".

4) working on a cheap computer with something like fruity loops? If your main musical phrase (melody line...) has 7 measures long? you can pick out one measure here or there that stands out, and assign those notes to another instrument sound, to begin to hear some light background for your melodies now, try simple bass lines out... experimentation will show you much, and you will slowly learn to trust your ear. That rule is simple... if the note you just added doesnt sound good? pick another. As you get going more, you will get further and further each time before you get "stalled" and the piece is "done".

5) when you want to do chord changes, use 145 (3 chord song...lol) until you experiment with others... you start in C, thats the 1. Skip the 2 and 3 (D and E...) and the 4 and 5 is F and G

your first melody line is in D? 145 (I IV V) would be D ---> G ---> A

easy.

Also, if you pick only notes from pentatonic minor, you can cut and paste any melody line from your root C, into F and G freely and it wont be out of tune or any sour notes, as an example. Acccompaniment brought in can be from the 4 or the 5 for interest, when the main song is firmly in C.


you will in short order start asking what I asked then... and you will want to read about "canon/canons" and "counterpoint".

"What *is* a counter melody? I can make a decent melody, but i have trouble making counter melodies..."

then you go to "Wikipedia" and read everything there is to read on "counterpoint", and click on any term you dont know by then...

*shrugs* everybody learns different, I think. That worked for me. Whatever works for you, man.

 

[tateros]

You definitely just cut my learning curve. 5 note Pentatonic scales, first C note, last C note, stick to the octaves in between, tension generating scales & finally Wikipedia as a musical dictionary...

Thanks for the input!

I'm gonna start on my requiem so I can hopefully kill myself by the end of the week at the thought of this "easy" explanation.

 

[SEDstar]

...

I only mention strictly picking notes ONLY out of one scale and octave, because it wasnt obvious to ME when i first started. I knew what scales were, just idiotically didnt think to USE them...

hey, no one says "hey... the scale isnt a suggestion... its a RULE" so I missed that early on, LMAO. I spent months trying different combinations of notes, and some were better and most were worse. One fine day, I decided I wasnt going to MOVE from the computer until I had adjusted each and every note in this short piece JUST where each note "really rang out, man..."

a few weeks later, I discovered scales, and found out that particular piece I had moved each and every note onto Pentatonic. heck, I discovered that half of the "slightly classical sound" I was hearing in everything I ever liked in any form of music was mainly the use of Pentatonic Minor.

Pentatonic major is a little too "happy" unless your looking for that sparkly sound, PentMin has that slightly sad and wistful sound built in.

starting on C natural, establishes C as the KEY. as you go to use the other 4 notes in scale, they are just above it, so it naturally creates a slight tension, very slight, right from merely starting. When you start to end your musical phrase, you have to end back down on your starting C, so it creates a natural descending "resolution" back to your KEY, your ROOT NOTE.

I eventually started trying to get two different melodies playing at the same time, or overlapping like I heard in complex music I liked. (Its frustrating to try to do even a simple example by intuition...)

when you hit that point, "counterpoint" will polish you off. By that point you will have accidentally found enough out you can just "click" on the wikipedia terms that dont seem familiar. Once you hit a certain point (a watershed moment, or as i think of it, a "moment of Teed"...) you have enough working knowledge already you can figure out what you want next.

terms like "counter melody" and "harmony" are used in different contexts, by different people, meaning slightly or radically different things. Dont let it throw you, and stick to Wikipedia for definitions.

also, dont feel the slightest bit bad ignoring things, that seemed like huge concepts, when learning to play piano or guitar when younger. I find no real use for those clusters of flats and sharps they assign in little clusters at the starts of traditional staff paper.

I start and end on C, usually on a piano sound on the computer, to start a melody idea. I then cut and paste it up thru the other 11 keys, to hear it sound off in different key signatures. One or more always stands out.

Example, I write it in C. I wanna hear how the F and G of this melody line sound, for when i run it thru chord changes in the song. Transposition like that is easy on the computer, hard in real life working it out by ear and eye.

I might find i really like the melody in D, and the G and A versions really "LIFT UP" like i want. Okay... I write as many musical phrases as i can of varying length in D. most of them get used in D, occasionally accompaniment comes in G, maybe A.

How do i choose? *shrugs* I can try different melodies from my "melody pool", and if my ear likes the way the guitar suddenly jumped up from D to G, I keep it. If it sounded funny? *delete key* try somethign else.

what is syncopation? What is a polyrhythm? WIkipedia.

Tech Tip: the skill set needed to PLAY awesome guitar, or piano, or violin music? whether from sheet music, or by ear? is TOTALLY DIFFERENT than the skill set needed to write music. You dont even have to play any instrument at all to begin doing it with a computer.

here's the best analogy of what counterpoint is...

1) its what people MEAN when they say "countermelody" usually. You know what it IS when you HEAR it, but its next to impossible to make by ear.

2) simpler, chord-based music for example... on piano, traditionally with popular music, the right hand (higher octave) does the "main melody", and the left hand largely drops in low bass chords, maybe a simple plunking bass line with the left hand on the piano.

in counterpoint, both the laft hand and the right hand on the piano are busy making the complicated melody. Actually, the left hand is doing ONE simple melody, and the right hand is doing a completely different melody.

played simultaneously, these 2 simple melodies suddenly make a new, third melody together. The bass player might pick up the "lwft hand" (lower pitch...) melody line... the lead guitar might pick up the right hand melody...

and all of a sudden? the bass player and the lead guitar are playing totally different melodies... yet they sound great together... the piano player can play with one, the other, or BOTH as he sees fit. The piano player seems to have many different things he can do. You can hear recurring themes in the lead guitar player and the piano player, but its not simple and straightforward...

yet no one has YET to even leave the root D key... its a "one chord song" so far. Amazing! when the lead guitarist suddddenly plays a couple of the melody lines at double or quadruple speeed, but in G and A instead of D?

how did he DO that?

its all counterpoint and cannons.

a 3-chord song is sometimes really a 3 voice canon, when viewed from a traditional classical perspective.

Wikipedia is your friend, and smile and forget everytime someone says you compose by ear, "not rules, man... you like, have to make sounds, and play with them, and then you like move the sounds around where you want them, you know?"

just smile... they play awesome music, and when you write it finally, they can learn to play it by ear, I suppose when they hear it on the radio, LMAO

you can lead a horse to water, but you cant make him drink.

Theres a TON of stufff I am just sure I dont know, but... this all got me started and running quickly.