Hakea
New member
Hi,
Please excuse the long answer...
Firstly, I was amused by dementedchord's response - and it's a fine line for provoking discussion - but I think it's well wide of the mark. Sure, it's kinda lame to simply pinch somebody else's melody holus-bolus, but that's not what it's about. It's really about studying what works and how it works, and then using the info.
I say this on the basis that it’s been an integral part of traditional music studies for centuries to examine the work of previous masters (or even nursery rhymes for that matter) to help understand how and why certain effects can be created and developed. It’s part and parcel of learning your craft. You can learn an enormous amount of useful information about the basic mechanics of writing by looking at how (for instance) various combinations of intervals and rhythms can be used to different effect. It’s an extremely useful exercise to take an existing order of pitches, work out the voodoo of it all, and then see how far away from the original feel you can take them just by altering the timing, touch, tempo etc. Or you can choose to keep the same internal timing logic and make changes to the note order, and thus the structure of intervals. And so on... You can hobble your ‘art’ if you don’t yet have the tools of the ‘craft’ at your disposal.
There are many variations on the theme of learning your basic craft by studying the examples of others, picking them apart to help equip yourself with a kit of tools, and then use them to create something new and personal. For instance, I have no training whatever in building houses but I wanted to fulfill a long-standing dream to design and build my own home. I had the opportunity to help demolish a couple of houses that were built using a similar timber framed construction. I paid close attention whilst I pulled them apart, and learned a huge amount of useful information. Later, I was able to put much of that to use when I did indeed design and build my own house - which conforms to the building code regarding structural requirements, yet is still completely unique, both in its character and execution. I try and do the same with music. Classical composers such as as Mozart and Bach did much the same. These guys were no slouches at coming up with their own melodies, yet were also happy to acknowledge their debt to others, in some cases quite directly. (e.g. Brahms’s “Variations on a Theme of Haydn”).
I’ve seen a somewhat similar idea expressed on music forums - such as versions of “I don’t want to learn music theory because it might stunt my creativity”.
Often it seems to be trotted out by beginners who didn’t seem to have much actual creativity (or playing ability yet) to blunt. But they did feel overwhelmed and put off by the apparent demanding precision and general “bossiness” of theory books (which is pretty much an illusion once you start to understand it - I see theory as “Tools not Rules”.)But back to writing melodies....
As mentioned, I see nothing wrong with taking elements of existing themes, tunes, runs or riffs and using some of the structural strategies to help rebuild something completely different. One way or another you will need to learn something about your craft before you can produce much in the way of art. You can do it by studying theory. You can do it sub-consciously by listening to a lot of music and getting an inbuilt feel for what you think works (even if you don’t know why). You can do it by regular and persistent experimentation. Or you can do it by combining all of those ideas and more (which to varying degrees is what most of us do). But simply waiting for inspirational genius to strike is a known low percentage option.
Here are some other ideas:
1. Noodling. I just love noodling. Pick a bunch of notes and just mess around with them and see what I can create. As others have mentioned, there’s a perceived trap with falling into familiar patterns and not trying new things. This seems to me to be a limitation of the individual player rather than the method, but nevertheless I get the point. If you’re not a very adventurous type then you may well keep falling into ‘safe’ or familiar patterns. The alternative can also be true though - some people find it hard to stick to designated paths and have to struggle NOT to keep wandering off in new directions. Fortunately, I have more than one instrument and swapping from one to the other seems to break any possible patterns just fine. I have acoustic and electric guitars and they require different techniques and make different sounds, all of which can lead me in a variety of directions. I can also swap to piano, arranger keyboard, clarinet, sax or banjo if I want a change of mindset.
2. Generate a random sequence and then edit it. I saw a clip recently of a pianist/composer who had the audience pull discs from a bag, with note names on. He laid them out in the order they were drawn and then played a tune using the result. Some parts worked better than others, but he could have then taken the bits that looked interesting and used them in any way he chose.
3. Lay down a rhythm track first. Obviously, rhythm makes a huge difference to a song, so why not work on that first? I have a drum kit and a drum machine handy, but there are also many ways of creating drums track in software (or even just clapping something out ) so getting a basic groove down first is not much of a technical problem. It won’t restrict what key you play in, although it might suggest a favourite or two, depending on the rhythm. Then take your instrument and play around with your bunch of notes and see what flies.
4. Start with some lyrics. I belong to another forum where they set a weekly songwriting challenge. Most of the lyrics submitted are pretty dire, and one reason is that few of the would-be ‘composers’ have a grasp on how to match the punch and feel of the words to the pulse and drive of any real music. So they often just write bad poetry and think it’s lyrics. Few actually submit any music. So there’s another angle - either write some words, or take a line or two from another source - and try and set them to music. See how successfully you can enhance the impact of the words - in the right place and time - with an appropriate piece of music. Find out what makes it work - how to handle interval jumps and runs up and down, what effect does changing the timing have, etc?? What works cooperatively with the words and what doesn't.
4. Learn more about what makes a good melody. Generally speaking this includes things like creating and releasing tension, movement, and repetition (particularly repetition coupled with variation) and so on. Even if you can't read music you can learn a few lessons just by looking carefully at scores and seeing how the music flows up and down, how the timing changes, how big or small the gaps up and down are, etc. The composer should also have some idea of what the journey is about, where it’s going to take the listener, what moods it’s seeking to create, and what emotional story it’s trying to tell along the way. It's when you sit there with nothing at all in place that it can be hard - no idea of what you're trying to write, no story, time signature, key, rhythm, etc and not much in your kit of tools to tell you how to achieve any effects if they do occur to you. But sometimes that can be exciting too...
Just a few ideas off the top of my head. I’m sure there’s many other approaches, and I’ve doubtless missed some good ones. But I think it still really boils down to putting in the time and learning the craft.
Good luck.
Chris
If anybody points that the words and music don't do much for the listener they'll retreat into defensive assertions that they do very personal stuff, or it's their special thing, or that they just write for the few cognoscenti who are on their wavelength and so on. As per the joke: 
).
) it can be instructive to read about how others worked too. For instance I was surprised, and rather mystified to read that one of the most applauded and successful songwriters of any era - Irving Berlin - liked to compose melodies almost exclusively using the black keys of a piano. Apparently he used assistants to help arrange and transcribe what he did, and even used a special piano that had a cumbersome mechanical method of changing key by shifting the works around.