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Melody Writing For Total
Beginners
Page 1
So, you
want to start writing great melodies, but every time you try to come up with
one, its sounds like complete crap. You start well, but end up hitting more
wrong notes than Trinny and Suzanna pick wrong
clothes.
Perhaps
you’re thinking your musical heroes come up with all their great melodies off
the top of their heads, with some kind of divine inspiration, as if like both
Mozart and Britney Spears, they ‘got it from God’. Maybe you think that if you
bang around blindly on your keyboard long enough you are eventually going to
come up with something masterful. Well I can tell you right now if that is what
you are thinking, you will spend a long time making that album. You could even
be one of the wise ones, deep down your thinking there is some secret method to
this melody writing stuff that you don’t understand, well your right, there is.
The secret melody writing method is 100 percent fail safe, tried and tested for
over 500 years and! It isn’t even an eBook! It’s called...
Learn Music Theory
Yep, the
truth is that the majority of great artists don’t come up with their melodies
by chance; they come up with them by design,
that’s what makes them great artists. Of course, the occasional great melody
does come out by chance. However, most consistent artists will have at least
some knowledge of music theory and what binds a melody together.
Music
theory is a very complex topic though; sometimes it can be difficult to figure
out which part of it you are supposed to learn for melody writing. Well, if you
want your melodies to be truly great, the answer would be all of it. However, I
know you want to start writing melodies right now! Today! So I’ll cut to the
chase a bit here, I am going to do this by bypassing a lot of background music
theory and get straight down to ‘how to write melodies quickly and
effectively’.
The Scale
First
let‘s look at the scale. A scale is a collection of notes that fit together.
Different scales consist of different combinations of notes.
When you
are writing melodies, you must choose a scale to use. All the notes in your
melody will lie within the boundaries of this scale. If you use notes outside
the scale, they will not work and the melody will go wrong. You don’t need to
know why or how for the moment, just accept this as fact.
Shown
below is the C Major scale. The C Major scale consists of the notes CDEFGAB.
When you reach the next C, you are entering a new octave where the scale begins
again. You do not need to know why for now; all you need to know is that these
notes CDEFGAB make up the C Major scale.
You must
also understand the notes in a scale have an ascending numerical order.
The
numerical order of the notes in the C Major scale is C=1, D=2, E=3, F=4, G=5, A=6,
B=7. However, we do not refer to the notes as just 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; we
refer to them as 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. Like this C=1st, D=2nd, E=3rd, F=4th,
G=5th, A=6th, B=7th.
Using any
combination of notes within the scale to write a melody will keep everything
sounding correct, but it will not make everything sound good. In order to make
things sound good you need to understand the relationships between certain
notes in the scale. These relationships between notes are numerous. Some notes
will ‘call to’ other notes; some notes will ‘answer’ those notes. It is as if
some notes ‘like’ some notes better than others.
You will
learn which notes ‘get along’ as you practice playing but for now you need to know
that the 1st, 4th and 5th notes in a scale like each other very much. Just like
George, Tony, and Cherie, they have a ‘special relationship’. You will exploit
this ‘special relationship’ in order to write effective melodies.
So, let’s
look at the relationship a little more closely...
In the C
major scale, C is 1st. He is like the ace in the deck, the main man. Because C
is the most important note, he will usually drive the melody. All the other
notes will revolve around C and when the melody comes to rest, it will rest
upon C.
F and G
have a special relationship with C. For example, if you play C and then play F,
your brain will automatically expect to hear C again. If you play C then G,
your brain will also automatically expect to hear C again. Both F and G return
the melody to its resting point C. However, F and G also have a special
relationship with each other. You can bounce the melody between F and G before
playing the C and allowing it to rest. This is difficult to put into words but
trust me, once you start playing and writing more music you will understand.
Try
playing around with the notes C F and G on your keyboard and see if you can
hear how they fit together.
Please
note, the notes C F and G only have this relationship when you are using the C
Major scale because they are the 1st, 4th and 5th note in the scale. Once you
switch scales this relationship is between whichever notes are the 1st, 4th,
and 5th, of the new scale.
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