Struggling with melodies

[Firewolfs]

Hey,

the last two months I just couldn't start a new track because the most important thing was missing: the melody. I tried thousands of times to compose a decent 'Melodic Prog House' melody. I went through several techniques but none of them worked out for me. I know what kind of track I want to produce and I got an idea of the arrangement of the track. I already got the bass line, but what's the next step now?

I'll post two YT-videos so you guys know which direction I want my melody to go:

Vicetone - Harmony:



Vicetone - Heat:




I'd be thankful if someone has some tips on how to compose melodies like these. My knowledge of music theory isn't the greatest btw. But I know all the basic stuff.

- Firewolfs

[bronceboi]

if you have your melody in your head then whistle it out and try to match your whistle pitch to your synth, its a trial and error process.

do you know witch scale are you using? if you know your base scale then it shouldn't be to hard to come up with a simple melody and then work on polishing it.

my 2 cents

[Firewolfs]

if you have your melody in your head then whistle it out and try to match your whistle pitch to your synth, its a trial and error process.

do you know witch scale are you using? if you know your base scale then it shouldn't be to hard to come up with a simple melody and then work on polishing it.

my 2 cents

The problem is I have literally no melodies in my head, well .. At least no melody that suits the genre.

Yes, it's G-Minor.

[MadBrain]

The problem is I have literally no melodies in my head, well .. At least no melody that suits the genre.

Yes, it's G-Minor.

Then try to find some. Sing to yourself. Noodle around on a keyboard. Listen to music of the genre for inspiration. Play a song of the genre and try to play along on a keyboard (this is often very slow yes, but also often a bit illuminating). Get a feel for the characteristic melodic ornaments of the genre.

One trick you can try is to compose a melody using motifs: small fragments of melody that can be repeated and modified in all sorts of ways such as being played on different notes, with longer or shorter notes, different skip sizes, mixed up in various ways and even upside down. This also helps tie the melody together, make it feel like one whole unified thing and not just improvised noodling.

[julioelgenio]

The problem is I have literally no melodies in my head, well .. At least no melody that suits the genre.

Yes, it's G-Minor.

Listen to music of the genre for inspiration.

I struggle with the same, but the only cure is listening and understanding more music, opening yourself up. Your output is based on your input!

[Firewolfs]

So after trying around for almost an hour I finally got something. I spent the whole day to make the drop-part of the track and here it is:

https://soundcloud.com/firewolfs/preview

Let me know what you guys think of the melody and the whole drop it self. What's bad? What's good? What should I change?

[Sendy]

It always baffles me how people seem to approach music-making backwards like this, trying to make what's inside them match some external genre, rather than bending the rules of the genre to fit what's inside them. If melody isn't your strong point, or not something you hear in your head, try making what you DO resonate with, and using that to expand and grow. If you want to do melodies but aren't good at them, practice writing simple piano pieces first, without all of the fluff of producing a dance track to distract you. Just compose some melodies, oldschool style.

Btw, that soundcloud link didn't work for me.

[Firewolfs]

It always baffles me how people seem to approach music-making backwards like this, trying to make what's inside them match some external genre, rather than bending the rules of the genre to fit what's inside them. If melody isn't your strong point, or not something you hear in your head, try making what you DO resonate with, and using that to expand and grow. If you want to do melodies but aren't good at them, practice writing simple piano pieces first, without all of the fluff of producing a dance track to distract you. Just compose some melodies, oldschool style.

Btw, that soundcloud link didn't work for me.

I did this several times with melodies in my head and tried to make it sound very progressive, but it just didn't fit. I just wasn't happy with the result.

Soundclould link is fixed btw. Thanks for telling me

[Gamma-UT]

The key is to listen and play along so you can work out what the elements of the genre are. I think your basic issue is that you're doing call-response melodies that would work in EDM but this is not what Vicetone is doing – both tracks are more or less outlining a chord and sticking to no more than three or so tones but using different ordering to create the melody. To some extent it's just arpeggios on fourth or major second intervals (which tend to fall out of the use of the fourths) with a bit of phrase changing so that it doesn't sound just like an arpeggio. This is kind of a blues/gospel vamp approach, which gives the track more of a driving quality because you never get a feeling of resolution in the way something like an EDM chorus melody does.

Oddly enough, you're very close but actually coming up with a melody that's, um, too melodic.

[Firewolfs]

The key is to listen and play along so you can work out what the elements of the genre are. I think your basic issue is that you're doing call-response melodies that would work in EDM but this is not what Vicetone is doing – both tracks are more or less outlining a chord and sticking to no more than three or so tones but using different ordering to create the melody. To some extent it's just arpeggios on fourth or major second intervals (which tend to fall out of the use of the fourths) with a bit of phrase changing so that it doesn't sound just like an arpeggio. This is kind of a blues/gospel vamp approach, which gives the track more of a driving quality because you never get a feeling of resolution in the way something like an EDM chorus melody does.

Oddly enough, you're very close but actually coming up with a melody that's, um, too melodic.

So, should I throw the melody away and start from scratch again. Or should I edit this melody and make a few changes. Here is a pic of the MIDI:

[Gamma-UT]

So, should I throw the melody away and start from scratch again. Or should I edit this melody and make a few changes.

I wouldn't necessarily throw it away - keep it and alter it for something it will fit better. But you can probably manipulate the first bar to get more in the ballpark and then work from there, forgetting the rest for the minute. I'd maybe try knocking the Bb down to F, transposing the D to Eb and the top Eb to F and working from there and then work on variations of that. Just a suggestion.

[tapper mike]

I tried for years to play heavy metal. God I sucked. There is a certain thing that goes on when I play guitar that is inescapable. I cannot contain that much anger in me or even attitude.

I too have figured out that even if I really like listening to a specific style that the style may not be "me". As mentioned above by Sendy let the music inside you be your guide and build from there rather then trying to fit into a cast which may not be a truer reflection of yourself.

[Jafo]

+1 to finding your own style.

Don't give up; it'll happen. Even Beethoven would rewrite melodies more than a dozen times before they were right.

[jancivil]

The key is to listen and play along so you can work out what the elements of the genre are

So, should I...

To me, your tune sounds like the genre you're going for, completely. Whether or not that's good in my assessment, I'm not working for you.
Specific moves from strangers from the internet like this? The internet is a crapshoot.
Too much information; the person feeding you specific moves may not want what you want.

If there is something you feel you want to sound like, work 'til you can transcribe that; until you know what happened specifically in the tune.
Make your own observations. What are the characteristic intervals? Is there a rhythm using recognizable intervals that recurs often*? What are the *motifs that typify this thing you gravitate toward. If there is chordal content, what in the tune fits the chords absolutely, vs what seems to be other things. Where is there tension and resolving of the tension. This applies to what you did also.

Then if you want advice, form specific questions out of your work. It isn't really a music theory issue, this thread. You have already absorbed certain elements of the style. There isn't a lot of theory to be worried about there. Yeah, you should keep editing if you're not satisfied. If you care deeply maybe in ten or x years you can improvise wholly formed tunes, but we still edit and rework.

I can't truly know why you're not satisfied which I think is going to be true of most of us.

[Xstatic]

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- Determine in which scale you like to play
- Setup a basic instrument like a piano / plucky sound / maybe a pad for chords. Using delay / arps can inspire.
- Start a loop of 16-32 beats with some basic drums (kick, snare/clap, hat)
- Play along with one or two notes , then play around with adding other notes with different timing, order, length etc.

Sometimes I start with the melody, sometimes chords.
When i start with chords i first use long notes with pads. Often you can copy them to the melody instruments and use arps on them
For inspiration I like to use Tonespace ( http://www.mucoder.net/en/tonespace/ (http://www.mucoder.net/en/tonespace/) )
Regarding progressive, think fifth's