http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zykZC 2IhI4M#!
Guys,my question is really simple - how could I get the melody like that ? I haven't got any problems with getting that sort of bass sound and about a hundred variations of it, but I just can't get the melodic progression right.Anybody?

The Black Keys, my friend... Not the band, flats and sharps.

exactly what I was lookin for,thanks a lot!

No problem... Thank my wife she made me click on your question. lol

Depending on your style I'd also suggest octave spread (moving to the same note in either above or below octave) it gives a strange Mono-tonal feel that can couple VERY well the 'Sadness' you are looking for.

DivinEviL616,your wife is a gem lol

I know, that's why I married her...lol

I think that as far as the scale you are playing in is minor, it will sound said

as said for sad mood minor scale (tho' major also work because actually it's all about the composing) suprise..

composing: doesnt matter which keys you use but more which intervalls between them because you can play every melody from every key. tho' every melody have is "fits better" scale.

with the black keys you only limited yourself to the so called pentatonic scale (five notes per octave) in contrast to a heptatonic (seven note) scale such as the major scale and minor scale.

Arguably you can make a happy sounding melody with a minor scale, but regardless I think the harmonics play a bigger role in dramatically changing the emotional tone of music rather than melodic elements. Or a good combination of both I guess.

I think you mean harmonies rather than harmonics. Very different thing

Major = happy and minor = sad is just something we tell little children when they're first starting out. It's nowhere near as simple as that in practice of course and there are many other things that can affect the mood of the piece more than the tonality.

Of course you can have "happy" pieces in minor keys and "sad" pieces in major keys.
Just alter the tempo, dynamics, harmony, instrumentation and so on...

ultimately, one is going to want to get busy with *intervals* and see about what provokes a feeling in music at the deeper level there. an interval by itself is more neutral however (and above that the general 'major = happy' thing is kind of too reductive. For example, G down to E in C major could be conveyed by some strategy to seem quite sad.).

for instance the minor third. say you have a minor third descending. this is probably the most natural interval the human voice comes out with if you think about it.
if the note you arrive at is central to your ear, chord root or keynote/tonic (C down to A in 'A minor'), this {minor third descending} has a quality that's different than if the arrival is say the major third (down from the perfect fifth) per the root/keynote (G down to E in 'C major'). so everything is contextual.
that's a generality, too. But in general the keynote/tonic has a gravity the rest of the set won't. But other areas can be weighted by approach. The next highest gravity will be the Perfect Fifth from the 'tonic'.

Here's an exercise: Establish C as center/keynote, now (maybe over a pedal or drone C) do G - E. Then once you have that, do Bb - G. Go back and forth with those two instances of the desc. min. 3rd interval. Now, compare that with B - G following that G - E.

Observe what that does for you, in itself. See about stuff like this in songs, get experience singing songs, playing songs and make note of this action. Singing these intervals, using your voice is really good for getting a 'feel' for sounds...

]

Yeah I definitely meant harmony not harmonics lol.

Pentatonic scales there are several. Not all minor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentatonic_scale

What affects the emotive value of a song often translates into the emotive value of performance rather then simply choosing major or minor. A greater deal has to do with the emotice qualites you bring via performance. Tempo, timing, articulation.

http://books.google.com/books/about/Arranging_techniques_for _synthesists.html?id=vDhLAAAAYAAJ

the mood of the music is influenced first of all by the different modes. In this case it's the use of the minor scale (or minor mode, same thing). I didn't know the song nor I have played it, just heard it (that's what ear training does for you ) and the progression is actually very simple to figure out. Let's take a random minor key, Dm. The progression is Dm, C, Bb. It also sounds as the chords are rather empty and incomplete, the thirds are probably missing, so it's just a bass line on the roots of the above chords.

The reason why it sounds remotely interesting it's because in the vocals the singer plays always the tonic, this is called a 'pedal note'. It creates an oblique motion because the one part stays static, and the bass moves.

The short answer is: it's a simple riff in a minor scale.