please help me to create non melodic progressions!

[crazyfiltertweaker]

I cant solve the secret how to create figures which are not melody either noise. They dont sound like a random wind play or falling coins, they dont sound rememberable like a hookline of a melodyne but they dont sound bad and uninteresting like white noise. It is often used as example in jazz or in atmospheric textures of music which dont has melodies. I really tried to solve it but dont get it. Please help me to solve this puzzle!

[ghettosynth]

I cant solve the secret how to create figures which are not melody either noise. They dont sound like a random wind play or falling coins, they dont sound rememberable like a hookline of a melodyne but they dont sound bad and uninteresting like white noise. It is often used as example in jazz or in atmospheric textures of music which dont has melodies. I really tried to solve it but dont get it. Please help me to solve this puzzle!

While I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about, I think that I have a sense. You're probably trying too hard to extract interest from the notes when you need to balance extracting interest from the notes and from the sound. Try simple figures, just a few notes, loop them, and work on the sound until it's going someplace that you like.

I think that you're going to take some flak for claiming that Jazz doesn't have melodies. It would probably be more helpful if you would talk about what kind of music you are trying to create.

[crazyfiltertweaker]

Im not focused on a special genre. These figures appear in every kind of music. The most in chillout music or easy jazzy tunes.

[Aloysius]

[Sounddigger]

I cant solve the secret how to create figures which are not melody either noise. They dont sound like a random wind play or falling coins, they dont sound rememberable like a hookline of a melodyne but they dont sound bad and uninteresting like white noise. It is often used as example in jazz or in atmospheric textures of music which dont has melodies. I really tried to solve it but dont get it. Please help me to solve this puzzle!

Every figure has a melody, if you like it or not... even the most dodecaphonic / serial ones, and even if you don't consciously put any genuine melodic sense in what you're creating. If you don't put melody into a series of notes, then the minds of those who are listening to them will. Cause that's the way minds work. They try to make sense of anything. Similarly, you can make people look at movies that consist of a montage of randomly drawn dots, where every frame is randomly generated. People WILL find patterns in them and see figures, even if they're not deliberately put in there.

So the only thing we can do about this is to accommodate that particular faculty of the mind, and make life more pleasant by trying to put out a few notes that actually sound and feel cool

However, what I believe you are referring to is the fact that many Jazz is built on "suspended" chords, such as an A11 (Asus4), or the more eclectic material built on eternally ongoing "alternative" scales, such as what you'd play over a A7alt (with a b13 and #5 occupying the same harmonic space). Tons of stuff can be played over the latter, notable possibilities being for example an octatonic scale built on Bbdim, or a Bb melodic minor scale you'd play as over a Eb9/A, with lots of chromatic changing notes.

In general, a well built improvisational line will play "around" target notes of a chord. Instead of playing: A > C# > A, you could play: A > C > C# > Bb > A

Alternatively, you can move chords around in jumps of (mostly) thirds, say a sequence like: || Am9 | Cm9 | Bbm9 | Dm9 ||

Mind you, all these examples will give plenty melodies, it's just that you have to make them surprising enough to suggest they aren't really

A good procedure to use is to always follow your ear, and make sure that the top note of the chords you're playing result in a melody that you like (sing along, if you have to!). Then try to get the melodies of the other notes to move around as best as possible, paying attention to actually make them move and not (all) be the same notes from chord to chord. This way, you can end up with all sort of interesting progressions that could seem "non-melodic" to the untrained ear, but that are in fact a form of melodic counterpoint...

Hope this gives some useful ideas

[ghettosynth]

Im not focused on a special genre. These figures appear in every kind of music. The most in chillout music or easy jazzy tunes.

So then post some youtube examples of what you're talking about. The advice is very different if you are looking for, as the parent suggests,figures with no obvious melody but clearly built from obvious notes, or as I interpreted, figures that have motion and interest, but where that interest is not derived from obvious motion in pitch.

Your response suggests, in fact, that you are somewhat focused on music that is closely related to chillout or easy jazz. So why don't you provide an example of what you mean?

[vurt]

uninteresting like white noise.

you need a better white noise generator.

[ghettosynth]

uninteresting like white noise.

you need a better white noise generator.

+1

Or some nice rhythmic effects.

[wrench45us]

Michael1985 wrote:
uninteresting like white noise.


you need a better white noise generator.

or fx
phasers/flangers thrive on white noise

but perhaps we digress

[No_Use]

Not melodies and not noise ?
My guess is this is about harmonies (chords) in general.
Maybe the OP wants to know about harmonic theory.

Sounddigger above goes that way with his reply already, but I'd tend to think this is maybe more about chord building, cadences, stuff like I/IV/V/I (as example) and so on.

Surely one of you native english speaking guys can explain better and give some links if that's what the OP is looking for.

[crazyfiltertweaker]

The following example discripes the best what I mean.
The main synth which plays most of the time has a non melodic progression, with melody I mean the part which contains a hookline.

[Sounddigger]

The following example discripes the best what I mean.
The main synth which plays most of the time has a non melodic progression, with melody I mean the part which contains a hookline.

Nice atmosphere. Interestingly, that track contains precisely the sounds I was pointing to! Funny how that worked out...

Most of the time from the top up to 04:00, we hear a Am7, with extentions fading in and out. So we hear at times Am9, then Am11. This gets varied with flurs of a Dm chord.

The best way to catch the sound is to play these chords like: || C/A | Dm/A || and variations thereof.

The underlying progression is of the type || Im | IVm || i.e. || Am | Dm ||

This can be varied by || Am11 | Bm7b5 E7alt ||

But playing that more explicitly than what is done in the track will get things to sound really Jazzy Studying some Jazz courses on how to play turnarounds in minor keys will give you tons more ideas to play with this kind of sound.

From 04:20 to the end, the progression is more classic Reggae-ish, like
|| Am | G/A || = || Am | A11 || = || Am | Em7/A ||
These can be substituted in exactly the same way as the previous ones, but this will of course sound way more like traditional Jazz.

Hope this clarifies a few things

[jancivil]

{food for thought in the abstract}

this:



was approached thusly:

"Technically speaking I have always approached musical texture through part-writing. Both Atmosphères and Lontano have a dense canonic structure. But you cannot actually hear the polyphony, the canon. You hear a kind of impenetrable texture, something like a very densely woven cobweb. I have retained melodic lines in the process of composition, they are governed by rules as strict as Palestrina's or those of the Flemish school, but the rules of this polyphony are worked out by me. The polyphonic structure does not come through, you cannot hear it; it remains hidden in a microscopic, underwater world, to us inaudible. I call it micropolyphony." — György Ligeti

so there is music many call 'static', ie., does not conventionally move forward hardly at all, but was arrived at by means that are tied to conventionally moving lines forward; only the density is such that it seems to many to be working primarily in terms of timbre and pure sonority.

so there are [reiterated] melodies so closely spaced they form a kind of cloud.

[crazyfiltertweaker]

micropolyphony." — György Ligeti

Micropoliphony is a nice example for that what Im searching for. BUt how can I compose micropoliphony instead of a melody??
If I compose, I always get a convetional melody...

[jancivil]

donno. but that guy worked hard for years and devoted himself to study.

to defy convention is a matter of obtaining the vocabulary beyond the conventional. probably have to master the conventions first...