Writing the melody in my head

[akstylish]

When I come up with a nice melody, I can't transcribe it no matter how hard I try. I press all the keys but none of them sounds right. Maybe I'm getting way ahead of myself because I'm still learning to play piano. But how do producers do this exactly?

[generalstargazer]

When I come up with a nice melody, I can't transcribe it no matter how hard I try. I press all the keys but none of them sounds right. Maybe I'm getting way ahead of myself because I'm still learning to play piano. But how do producers do this exactly?

I usually hum the note I hear in my head and then pick the note on the keyboard closest to it. Well when I started, now I just play it on the keyboard or guitar.

[TristezaOrange]

I have no problem with finding the pitches or doing the harmonization. The most difficult thing (at least for me) is finding the correct BPM and time signature for the melody I have in my head and it's usually a case of trial and error. Maybe that's your problem?

[Aroused by JarJar]

Maybe the notes you are hearing in your head aren't on the keyboard? Twelve notes out of "infinite" (well, lots- there are at least 30 kinds of thirds documented in Arabic music) may be too limited for the size of your soul.

[Nystul]

Well if you've listened to western music for your entire life it is very likely that your ideas do fit more or less into the 12 tones found on a western instrument. But you are probably not consciously familiar with the size of the intervals you've been hearing and mimicking in your musical ideas. You need to train your "ear" to recognize the size of the different intervals. In reality you already know pretty well the size of the intervals, but don't know which is which in order to translate it to an instrument or write down the notes. For example, you could probably hum "Here comes the bride" and get almost exactly the right interval in between "here" and "comes", so you only need to learn that this interval is a perfect fourth and then be able to recognize it when you hear it in the future.

Now some people cannot play by ear well at all, but have learned very well the scales and chords on an instrument. And those people can compose with the instrument based on "finger memory" or even understanding the theory of what they are trying to do. But a lot of times you are going to have a melodic idea in your head and need to be able to pick around and find the right notes.

[synthgeek]

For me it was just a matter of practice. At first I couldn't even come close to getting what I was writing to sound like what I heard in my head, but now it's gotten much easier (been doing this almost 13 yrs now).

I think this is an area where learning an instrument really helps, because as you learn to play you will also learn how certain intervals sound, etc., which ties into what Nystul said (at least, that's how it worked for me).

Also, practice playing along with other songs, as this will also help you learn how to translate what you hear.

[akstylish]

I usually hum the note I hear in my head and then pick the note on the keyboard closest to it. Well when I started, now I just play it on the keyboard or guitar.

I'm just a beginner. That method doesn't work at all for me.

I have no problem with finding the pitches or doing the harmonization. The most difficult thing (at least for me) is finding the correct BPM and time signature for the melody I have in my head and it's usually a case of trial and error. Maybe that's your problem?

No, I'm not even in the stage to worry about bpm. Were you capable of finding the pitches from the beginning? If not, how did you master it?

Maybe the notes you are hearing in your head aren't on the keyboard? Twelve notes out of "infinite" (well, lots- there are at least 30 kinds of thirds documented in Arabic music) may be too limited for the size of your soul.

I'm pretty sure they are.

Nystul and synthgeek: so practice and/or relative pitch are basically the only ways?

[synthgeek]

Nystul and synthgeek: so practice and/or relative pitch are basically the only ways?

The only way I know about...

[A.M. Gold]

How complicated are these melodies? You could just start with C and try all 12 notes for every note of the melody until you get the right ones. Are the melodies in your head staying the same while you try to figure them out or are they changing at all?

[jancivil]

When I come up with a nice melody, I can't transcribe it no matter how hard I try. I press all the keys but none of them sounds right. Maybe I'm getting way ahead of myself because I'm still learning to play piano. But how do producers do this exactly?

A musician gets a handle on this by learning an instrument, such as, where the notes are, you know... and how tunes work, from doing stuff like playing tunes that work, and learning them by ear. You can't avoid 'practicing'... or developing your ear, which could take a minute.

I started with, 'I like the lick in Proud Mary by Credence', and I sang it until I wasn't confused by the changes, in my mind. Then I trial and error'd the intervals on a guitar. Then I did things like, I like this Clapton solo in Badge by Cream, and slowed the 45 RPM record down to 33 1/3 RPM and wore the grooves out of a couple copies of that record, as I watched every guitar player who came to my home town I could manage, and everybody I could find on TV who did what I liked, and hunted down people and bothered them and had 'em show me licks I did not know. Fuji done showed me the Foxy Lady chord, you know.

After... a few years, and I am someone with a lot of desire, right, I got to where I pretty much knew what I heard.
If you're Mozart you get a golden ear as a gift, right out of the womb practically, the rest of us work for it.

[mtilli]

If you can't transcribe melody in any other way, you can hum melody to microphone and record it. Then it's possible to use some audio to midi converter (like ReaTune) to get midi from the recording.

[mr]

How complicated are these melodies? You could just start with C and try all 12 notes for every note of the melody until you get the right ones. Are the melodies in your head staying the same while you try to figure them out or are they changing at all?

The first note of your mental melody can be any one on the keyboard. I use C because is in the middle of my singing range. Then I found the second (up or down from the first, is very easy to know) then the…..

[Jcoaster2008]

When I come up with a melody in my head, usually trying to figure it out on the piano will make me forget it, so I always hum it into a microphone and record it, then simply play back the recording until I figure it out.

[mr]

+1
Today even cellphones have recorders

[Aroused by JarJar]

do-mi-sol-mi-do
re-fa-la-fa-re
mi-sol-ti-sol-mi
fa-la-do-la-fa
sol-ti-re-ti-sol
la-do-mi-do-la
ti-re-fa-re-ti (yeah!)
DO-MI-SOL-MI-DO!

f**k, 25-30? years ago, haha

Take an eartraining class. It's all so, so, easy, only the burdens of police society delude otherwise. The natural true state of the human animal is that it is monstrously musical and knows exactly what it is doing- it is only the chains of servitude that convince otherwise!

Take a class, secretly nurturing your individual confidence and identity.

Yeah!

(sorry, I just got, tu-dej, like, some thousand more money for my musical masturbations of the last year than I had expected and I just gotta James Coburn a la carte in some random directions of the compass, enchente voulez vous)