Frustration during melody building/creating

[MichaelBecerril]

Hi, I've been producing EDM for 10 months by now. I'm taking piano lessons
at the moment to learn and practice music theory, scales, chords and all of that.

One of my many problems while trying to make a track is building a catchy or good melody.

I often just build up a melody over a synth or an acoustic piano and then add a 4/4 house beat, and then I kind of get
annoyed, because I later decide that the track sucks.



I'd like some advise, I've been having this frustration recently.

Thanks in advance.

[Burillo]

Maybe try different style? You never know where you find your inspiration...

[MichaelBecerril]

Maybe try different style? You never know where you find your inspiration...

Yeah, I forgot to mention. I also produce hip hop beats, and they seem a lot easier for me to produce, since that's what I listened to ever since I was a kid, but I like producing both.

[phazedown]

delete-me

[jopy]

when i get stuck, i've found it helpful to to pick out some melodies or other parts of tracks i like by ear. i've gone so far as trying to completely recreate a track from ear and then rearrange elements from my approximation to sound completely different from the original. this could help you both understand what other people are doing that you find compelling and also break down the barrier between what you imagine as music and what you can execute on an instrument.

[MichaelBecerril]

The first years are very, very annoying concerning this.
Especially when your idea starts to bore you once it takes too long to finish it. But at some point you will get a much better workflow.

If you want to have a 4/4 beat anyway just try to set the kick first.
And if you get unwanted noises while doing this apply a sidechain compressor on the synth with the kick as sound source.
Everything else is just trying. Like using glide, overlapping notes, setting a 1/8 dotted LFO or whatever.

Also try to let some space (let's say within a 2 bar/4bar) so it doesn't sound like a closed sequence. This is what I just learned.

It's all about trial and error, if one method doesn't seem to work try another.
Soon you have a taste of how you can get things done faster.

when i get stuck, i've found it helpful to to pick out some melodies or other parts of tracks i like by ear. i've gone so far as trying to completely recreate a track from ear and then rearrange elements from my approximation to sound completely different from the original. this could help you both understand what other people are doing that you find compelling and also break down the barrier between what you imagine as music and what you can execute on an instrument.

Thank you all for your quick replies

[Storms]

Good EDM should have a motif in the song. The motif is the catchy melody that usually repeats on a 2 bar or 4 bar phrase. It might help to think of the motif as a point/counterpoint or question/answer. Usually the question comes in the first bar, as a rising melody, and the answer comes in the second, as a falling melody. Try experimenting and noodling around on your synth until you come up with a catchy rising melody, then try to create an answer melody that answers the question of the first part of the motif.

It's really just a matter of doing this until you get something that sounds good.

I was listening to a lot of David Guetta recently and I noticed that on his tracks he heavily borrows motifs from classical music. You might try something like this, just to get you started. A lot of classical music is repetitive in the same way that EDM is.

[jopy]

A lot of classical music is repetitive in the same way that EDM is.

A lot of silly stuff gets posted in KVR's music theory forum, and this is one of the silliest things I've yet read. I've listened to a fair amount of EDM and a lot of classical, and the structural methods used in the two are nothing alike. You can use classical motifs in EDM, but try writing an actual sonata form piece in EDM and see how well that goes over...

[Storms]

A lot of classical music is repetitive in the same way that EDM is.

A lot of silly stuff gets posted in KVR's music theory forum, and this is one of the silliest things I've yet read. I've listened to a fair amount of EDM and a lot of classical, and the structural methods used in the two are nothing alike. You can use classical motifs in EDM, but try writing an actual sonata form piece in EDM and see how well that goes over...

Whether you agree or not, check this song out and tell me it doesn't have a ton of classical influences: In fact, if you simply changed the midi mapping from synth to violin it would probably sound almost identical to a classical piece. Is it as complex as "real" classical music? Hell no, but my point is that you could borrow a motif from a classical piece and try to use it in your EDM, if you can't think of any other ideas.

[tapper mike]

Slim to none. And no it wouldn't. Simply repeating a motif does not make it a classical composition.

[pyairmusic]

try learning the melodies of songs you like and look at how they're constructed

[dalor]

A lot of classical music is repetitive in the same way that EDM is.

A lot of silly stuff gets posted in KVR's music theory forum, and this is one of the silliest things I've yet read. I've listened to a fair amount of EDM and a lot of classical, and the structural methods used in the two are nothing alike. You can use classical motifs in EDM, but try writing an actual sonata form piece in EDM and see how well that goes over...

+1. I think what might be perceived in classic music as "repetitive" are arpeggios (?). The classic music pieces I like are *because* they are non repetive and keep moving and evolving from start to end. Sometimes it's just a chord you never hear again in the track. David Guetta and classical music is ouch for me.

[jopy]

that guetta track has just the one g minor riff; there is no melodic development or key change at all. he does modulate the timbre of the riff, but that's not the sort of development that one would hear in a classical piece. if we're talking baroque, classical, or romantic era music, that motif would be developed across multiple parts of the scale and through different keys or through some sort of inversion or transformation of the melodic idea.

i'll certainly grant that a person could take a riff from a classical piece and use it in a repetitive way to make an EDM track (actually sort of an interesting idea because a lot of classical motifs are taken from european folk music and then developed), but it wouldn't be the same sort of repetition one might hear in a true classical piece.

[coquillo]

A lot of classical music is repetitive in the same way that EDM is.

Agreed they both use repetition, but EDM rarely has any harmonic variation or development and often has no timbral or rhythmic changes either.

[coquillo]

i'll certainly grant that a person could take a riff from a classical piece and use it in a repetitive way to make an EDM track (actually sort of an interesting idea because a lot of classical motifs are taken from european folk music and then developed), but it wouldn't be the same sort of repetition one might hear in a true classical piece.

Let's hope not. You'd be writing for a totally different orchestra. Food for thought though.