1. Short motifs repeated at different points 2. Rise and fall strategy 3. Start with an interval that inspires you and repeat it in different parts 4. Make a melody then walk away and try and recreate it the way you think it went and what you change it to naturally
@@devarni thanks, I really just left the comment for myself to reflect on later, I didn’t expect anyone to see it. I didn’t include 5 because that’s something I already do (:
I've been using that remembering trick for years and always wondered how often other people came up with and used that same technique. It's simple but very effective.
I just stumbled upon this accidentally! I just got back into making music from 20 years ago and tried to recall an old riff that came back to me. And I tried and got it almost correct. There was value in my new version!
I use Bandlab to write a lot of melodies on my phone. Just to sketch ideas that come to me for different chord progressions, etc. When I sit down at my DAW later to make a more focused track, I always try to write them again from memory. At worst, I can always just go to bandlab and copy it, at best, I either get it perfectly from memory and get to be proud of myself, but what usually happens is that I get distracted and turn that idea into a different one, usually one that i’m far more proud of. It’s truly a fantastic exercise.
I noticed that the melodies I like the most have a lot of the time a special tone that goes out of the standard minor or major scale. Williams does it almost all of the time with using the lydian mode for example. It helps to memorize the melody too because it sound less generic and more surprising in a good way. Especially when that "special note" hits on an accent or has some kind of an important place inside the melody.
I totally agree. Surprise "out" moments are so important. I like to do the same thing with chords...like, write a harmonically diatonic piece, and have like one big "surprise chord" that exists outside the tonality set up so far...usually a chord that supports an important note in the melody! It can really open up a piece and make it feel much bigger and deeper than it would be otherwise.
Totally! And I think it’s important to do this further along in the song (later than sooner) so that a pattern can be clearly established before it’s “broken”. Of course, it can absolutely be done sooner and be effective as well :)
The example I'll always think of is the surprise raised fourth in "Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection." The kind of thing that makes you need two harmonicas.
I agree with this. The melody of greensleeves comes to my mind. In the last or so measure it hits the raised 6th just once, but if you took that note away it would not be the same at all.
"Use your [own] memory as a process of extracting what is memorable about your melody." Fantastic, Zach. Succinct, intuitive, and powerful. I'd love to hear your thoughts on development and building out larger forms! Keep up the excellent teaching!
Wow! The third part, "misremember and adjust" is really mind-blowing. I find it particularly useful and would definitely keep trying it in my futuring song writing.
the memory trick is how I make songs. I intentionally dont record or write it down I trust that when I have an idea and I still have it a while after without noting it down its good. Works every time
I've been trying to "learn" how to create my own music lately, and as someone who spent most of my life playing music by others, but never learning music theory myself... I'm incredibly jealous of anyone who can do what Zach did while giving this tutorial. It felt very, "Oh, this old thing?" *Proceeds to ad lib an homage to Howard Shore* "That'll just end up on the cutting room floor." Meanwhile I spend 3 years playing audio garbage on my keyboard because creating music might as well be developing a practical theory of time-travel as far as I'm concerned. Anyone who has ever produced anything that could be considered music within a DAW; You have my undying respect.
People put way too much emphasis on theory, you really don’t need it unless you’re communicating between musicians. The way we talk about music is so disjointed; we feel the need to put into words what can be intuitively understood by being played and listened to.
Awesome video mate! This is possibly the hardest part of writing music and not coincidentally my biggest struggle. This is great advice particularly taking break and coming back to it later. So many times this brought me to the realization that my melodies where too weird or impossible to follow 😅
I love this video! The first part of this video is exactly the stuff we discuss on The Melodology Podcast! Over the Rainbow and Raiders March, which you reference, have even both been featured so far. Range, motifs (cells), rising motion/arc, are all part of what we discuss. We also point out how melodies often follow an upward or downward scale or chord as their "skelatons". The winner of the "rising" melodies probably goes to the Force Theme, which is amazing to examine.
I found myself humming your #2 melody after the video ended, so I guess... mission accomplished. Very clever tips Zach and misremembering seems like a good way to impart soul into what at first seems like a clinical process.
Thank you Zach for these amazing advices and all the great videos you make for us so we can learn from you. Your way of teaching is how I always wished my teachers at school to do it. While watching and listening to your examples it somehow clicks in my mind and after you composed a phrase I instantly get thousands of ideas how to continue it and develope the idea further. I don't know how you achieve that effect while you teach us these things but I'm really thankful for all what you do. Have a great day!
Hey Zach, great video as always! I was wondering if you could make a follow up video to this on how to make a good supporting harmony? I feel I can write melodies fairly well, but I often can only think of single-note bass lines to go along with it, so I have difficulty writing a harmony/orchestration (and don't even get me started on countermelodies) to support the melody. Would love if you had some sort of approach to hashing those parts out?
Great video! I always found that writing melodies is easier to me then writing the supporting chords. I would love a video on how to write chords based on a melody, unless you already have one! also your clock seems to be broken, it barely moved in the thirty minutes ;)
Yup, good melodies always come to me with the implied chords. But then it's lots of fun to reharmonize, so the second or third time it shows up the emotional texture different.
After hearing you play that ET harmony a couple times across different videos, I realized I’d never thought about the chords of that tune which I’d heard a million times as an 80s kid. But man…gosh that’s so pretty… so happy you shared this.
Again a great video. Good melodies come up quite intuitive in my case. But it's good to know some guidelines that are used unconsciously. These will definitely improve the quality. I really like the "unmemorize" tip. You may not need to choose one idea over another but using both (or more) as variations. What about a follow-up to this video digging into terms like period form, call/response. Would be interesting.
Really great points! When I watched your video, I was like "of course." But then at the same time I was "YEAH, INDEED". These are the kind of points that can be so easily overlooked but yet so powerful. Thank you for sharing.
I'm amazed by your content!! You deserve millions of subscribers and I'm sure you get there. The last tip about what's memorable it's incredible. I like to forget my music and go back to it to have a "fresh" ear and listen to them as if it was the first time and judge it better, but trying to remember it to figure out what's more catchy about them it's such an useful and smart thing to do. You're helping many people here, and you have a gif on teaching that makes everything clear and easy to understand. Thank youu❤
The memory trick is quite good, I might try it. Ive noticed this sort of happens naturally if you remove the ability to record your initial ideas from the writing/develop process. Eventually the ideas sort of simplify out of almost necessity. But also at the same time can sometimes loose the unique ness as you end up in mores muscle memory spaces
I couldn’t help but notice that when you went away for 30 minutes the clock read 5:20, but when you came back it still read 5:20. You must have a short memory! Nevertheless, despite that petty gripe, I’ve been composing for 41 years and I still learned some new stuff here. So you got yourself a new subscriber. X
Ooh the memory trick is really neat! I'm definitely going to try that in the future. I even have a new melody I thought of a few days ago and haven't re-listened to since! Edit: whoops, I remembered it exactly the way it was 😂 I guess it's a good sign that my Monday morning musical musings stuck in my head this long…
Great video! I find I subconsciously use opening 7ths alot and generally rely on intervals as a main construction technique,, but I tend to fall my melodies alot earlier than you suggest, so theres tons of top advice here I can start experimenting with. Cheers
Zach you have the heart when you touch the keys…my brother was a prodigy and I know a natural when I feel one. The notes are the vehicles to the spirit energy-
The remembering method is how Giacchino decided on the theme for Up! He said he had this tune in his mind during the day, and said, I'll sleep on it, and if I still remember it next morning, it might be something.
Wow, keeping the melodies in a certain range, is a great advice to avoid writers block. Because starting out with one note and having the highest note inside the range in mind by varing everything in-between is really a neat top notch tip.🎉
11:02 Eyeopening! Or earopening? I often had that misremembering benefit but didn't connect it to that thought of wanting to create memorable melodies.
Love your content, have been watching your videos for the past month now every day on the train (1 hour commute). Just about done following your video on creating a template (took me a lot longer than it took you because of my beginner level composer skills xD) I'll be sure to apply this knowledge alongside any other goodies you have coming our way as well! Also, thank you for introducing us to Anne-Kathrirn, her videos have also been super helpful! Side note: I think of Adam from Viva la Dirt League everytime I see you and vice versa haha Keep being awesome!
I'm writing my first song as a beginner with the piano and music altogether. So I can only really play very simple melodies, and nothing faster than an 8th note at 120bpm. So I kinda need to stick to mostly long notes. But... I feel like that's actually enough to create something nice. So far I've written and re-written it a bunch of times, but each time gets better. I've changed the scale once, changed the time signature twice, changed the chord progression three times, and the actual melody I've changed... uh, four times, I think. But the first bar of melody that I created I loved so much that I've stuck to it ever since. So it's just all the other flavors around it that I keep changing, so that it can really lift and pull that one bar. So far what I feel good ways to create a melody are... as you say about rising notes, but I wanna add that falling or descending notes can be just as impactful and that it doesn't have to end on a higher note. It can instead do the opposite and start high and then end on a lower note. A higher end note will generally give a happier ending, while a low note gives a more sad ending. And in my song I play a lot with descending scales to give it a sad feeling, which I then pick up just to drop again. Other things I've found is taking the same small segment of melody and replaying it in just slight variations that are deliberatelly a bit "off" and keep coming back to the resoluting "core" of the melody. Basically "call and response." Another few... Deliberately avoiding the tonic chord/root note for as long as possible, even dancing around it, or just lightly touching it to then land on the note right before or after instead can create some fun twists, before coming back down to it for some of that release you've been taunting the listener with the seeming absense of. Adding a few off notes here and there to keep things interesting. Not be afraid to go out of key on rare occasion to make the tonic "core" of the melody even more satisfying. For example I added in a G minor chord right before the chorus that starts with G major chord in the B minor scale, which briefly adds a dissonant Bb, which then gets quickly relieved. Experiment with different time signatures if you have trouble finding the right feeling or flow for the melody that you're looking for. I started my song in 4/4 but I utterly hated it then even though some aspects felt alright, then tried it in 3/4 which was an improvement but still felt off, so then when I tried it in 7/8 that was my jackpot. Also... when learning about chord progressions and scales and all that stuff, don't be scared of thinking outside the box if you wanna make something that's unique. It doesn't have to be standard to be great. And as for taking inspiration from other songs: I quickly found that if I just take inspiration from several different songs that might have a similar kinda feel to them but very different melodies, I think I'm less likely to accidentally plagiarize something. For especially catchy, flowy melodies, I've found that creating a repetitive pattern involving around 5-6 notes, yet never hitting the same note twice in a row (unless your melody is made up of frequent double taps) creates that feeling of endless flow to the melody, which tends to be memorable, although that's just one way of achieving that effect. Only a few people have heard my song yet as it's very far from finished and played on a very crappy toy piano, but so far I've been told that it's memorable. Not sure if for good reasons though lmao. I'm generally a writer, been writing stories since I was a kid. So it happened kinda naturally for me to treat my songwriting like I'm writing a wordless story. And that's advice I've seen around elsewhere as well. To make your melody like a story, and I think it works wonders.
I've been struggling a how to get this music started that's been in my head about the recent Eclipse. Thank you for your hèlp. I've written plenty of poetry in my life, but this is first time I want to write a piece of music. I play classical piano.
In one of my songs I kinda just blast the listener with this onslaught of notes and a unique rhythm. It’s mostly 8th notes but it has this feeling of direction. Its complete lack of longer notes makes it interesting. It’s also a very memorable melody with everything that goes on around it like the weird synth or the jazzy chords. It’s probably the most messy memorable melody I’ve ever written. Maybe it’s the tempo, maybe it’s everything else, but something about the melody or even the song’s intro has a unique almost bombastic sound. The melody itself eventually slows itself down halfway through and repeats this syncopated rhythm. If you’re interested, it’s in my elementals playlist on my channel and it’s called sellout.
Great tips, with excellent examples. Very helpful. It’s my first time finding you and I’m subscribing to check out more. One thing you didn’t quite mention, but I thought you might, is the notion of ‘question and answer’…where a phrase leaves a bit of tension or shape that is answered and/or resolved in a next phrase. Irish jigs and reels are loaded with examples of that…and also B parts that establish a new variation on an A part, but then use little bits of the A part to resolve and bring things back. It’s such an interesting topic. See…you got me thinking about it. Thanks.
also I notice, something you left out, and something I hear a lot in your tunes. To anyone reading, it's really important to be aware of your accent structure. When composing on piano especially, because it's percussion instrument, it's temping to slam the downbeat. in both your examples of original melodies, all the phrases were 2 bars, and all of them accented a long note on beat 1 every phrase, and all of them mostly used high, long notes accented on beat 1. Other very important details in writing a tune: vary your phrase length. In "Somewhere over the rainbow," the chorus is a 2 bar phrase, a 2 bar phrase, then a 4 bar phrase. This variation in phrase length creates a sense of gravity and momentum to the climax of the tune. In "Only fools rush in," it's the same technique. "wise men say" is 2 bars, "only fools rush in" is 2, then "but I can't help falling in love with you" is a 4 bar phrase. Then the bridge is all 1 bar phrases until the final phrase which is longer. Be VERY aware of accent structures. Check out, say, the verse to "Thriller." "it's close to midnight" is accented on the and of 3. "there's somethin evil lurkin' in the dark" is a pickup on and of 4. "your paralyzed" is accented on "a" of 4. Really exciting variety in the phrase accents. This also leaves a lot of room for "THRILLER/thriller night" which is very downbeat heavy. But then "inside a ...killer...thirller" that little tag, aggented on the and of 1 and beat 3, using rests strategically. I could go on and on, and of course no short video is exhaustive, but if you're not careful about phrase length and accent structure, you run the risk of writing music that sounds kind of droning and insipid. downbeat+long note+2 bar phrase over and over and over causes the music to kind of drool.
I use a trick a lot, that works similarly as the memory method. As I am a hobby musician and most of my compositions and songs are just for myself, I love to use accidental "false" notes, misremembered lyrics etc. to change the (until then) final melody/lyrics that way. I have songs that have quite different versions, decades apart. But at this point I even change those, that have already been performed. And I have to say, every time I like them more in the end.
Wow I've really just was blown away with this knowledge I'm nowhere near playing but I really believe this will get me started in the right direction I really mean this was the most informative and well explained video on melody I've seen on RU-vid ty ty ty ty and yes I've subscribed and looking forward to more tools to help me become a compososer
The last thing u suggest really works i do this all the time, when i make a melody and dont know what to do i just leave it for some time, and after i go back its always like 2 or 3 changes what makes the melody so much more powerfull then before. because ur head makes a better version of it when u keep thinking of ur melody
Lol! As soon as you played that motif at 4:39, reminded me of the Sound Stone melody in EarthBound (or Ness’ victory music in the original smash bros 6:4 or in Melee).
Lots of good advice - I've used the misremembering trick many times. One curious thing about melody though is that you can follow all of these suggestions and still end up with something that is not that memorable. I think it was important that you mentioned a couple of times that you were 'following your ear'. So sure, the craft skills are important and increase your chances but there is something else at work too which is hard to quantify.
I like to let a proto-melody repeat in my head over and over while walking, driving, or doing housework. It will slowly refine itself over a couple hours. Often, orchestration will begin, as well, so that I can enter a fairly complete composition into a notation program when I get a few moments.
Wow, that's a completely different approach, which is more compositional. The complicated thing is: if the melody is also intended for singing, but you play it with a piano, for example. A singer can't sing over 3-4 octaves like a piano. A singer also doesn't sing the way we play a piano... that's difficult! This thing with the 1 to 1/2 octaves makes a lot of sense to me!
Liked the video, but pro tip: if you’re going to pretend to walk away for 30 minutes, don’t have a clock on the wall that shows it was just a couple minutes ( 9:31 )
