Does Melody Even Matter??

[jancivil]

subgenre of trailer music or whatever it's called these days

Fads. In perfect alignment with 'Spiccato libraries' (the OP's other effort here); spiccato is a fad located in people with a very superficial sort of internet grasp of orchestral strings, related to 'media composing', 'trailer music' and is easy to talk about.

[telecode]

I think it’s an interesting topic and worth discussion. Melody is important in certain circumstances, but in others in may actually detract from the goal. It all depends on what you want to achieve.

So, does melody even matter?

Of course it does. Especially in pop music and anything where the focus is a strong vocalist.

It's not my thing personally, but I was really impressed with what Zedd and a gazillion other writers did with the country artist in 2018. In this case the melody is front can center IMO.

[jancivil]

TL;DR: it matters except when it doesn't.

Of course there have been musics which are interested in other things.

[jancivil]

Then on the other hand:

[aMUSEd]

TL;DR: it matters except when it doesn't.

Of course there have been musics which are interested in other things.

Exactly

[IncarnateX]

Personally I think my roots in the 80s made me attached to melodies. As long as it was preserved, e.g. In EBM and Goa, I was on board. However, when they left melody out and went rhythm and noise only, I could not catch up. Dance music without melodies sounds like a tune never starting to me. An never ending intro. I expect it to come any time but it does not. Another issue is my training in classical music, where my main interest is polyphony, mixture of several melodies, within modal as well as tonal frameworks. From the 1600 century till today, we have generally lost polyphony in our music, and only one melody rules a tune despite interplays. I like to hear more polyphony returning. Some brances of melodic psy-trance do this already, at least they typically mix two melodies, often arppegiated, which brings much more life and excitement to each of them. Only thing is that this may not be easy to do by ear at an advanced level, and thus you would need to study some counterpoint to really explore it. No “electronic musician” has time for such things now a day, has he? It is not something offered in construction kits afaik.

[jancivil]

"electronic musician" lol. Put that shit in scare quotes, for the love of f**k.



Electronic music has to be more than it is as some people apparently find it.

[IncarnateX]

Done

[telecode]

Personally I think my roots in the 80s made me attached to melodies. As long as it was preserved, e.g. In EBM and Goa, I was on board. However, when they left melody out and went rhythm and noise only, I could not catch up. Dance music without melodies sounds like a tune never starting to me. An never ending intro. I expect it to come any time but it does not. Another issue is my training in classical music, where my main interest is polyphony, mixture of several melodies, within modal as well as tonal frameworks. From the 1600 century till today, we have generally lost polyphony in our music, and only one melody rules a tune despite interplays. I like to hear more polyphony returning. Some brances of melodic psy-trance do this already, at least they typically mix two melodies, often arppegiated, which brings much more life and excitement to each of them. Only thing is that this may not be easy to do by ear at an advanced level, and thus you would need to study some counterpoint to really explore it. No “electronic musician” has time for such things now a day, has he? It is not something offered in construction kits afaik.

My personal take on the polyphony comment is its a sign of the times and how the general music listener pays (or doesn't pay!) attention to music anymore. They attention span is spread out across a wider activities. I admit I am guilty. I don't listen to records/releases/albums the way I used to when I was a young person. The days of putting on a LP and sitting there closely listening to the record and reading the list of credits on the song and reading lyrics is something I dont do anymore. I used to. Now I am as guilty as the next person. I will listen to music or spotify on my phone while doing other things as the same time and tying to multi task. I guess big time successful producers and music makers know this and they know a person in the modern era can only focus on one main theme or melody in a piece of modern music at a time, so there is not active attempts to make polyphony in a grand scheme. (I think music in film probably doesn't fall in this category).

My personal take on modern music is I miss the lyrical content. I always felt popular music is poetry to music and the good lyricists seem gone and can only be found in back catalog catalog releases. Reading a set of lyrics and finding true meaning in them I dont seem to find as much in modern music. Its either not there and the approach is too simplistic or its there is a very strange form that seems a little aloof. As always, my own personal take on it and does not apply for anyone else or can be used as a generalization for others and their approach(es) to enjoying modern music releases.

[jancivil]

I moved to guitar from drums because I got tired of trying to get melody from the drums.
Actually it was Hendrix who moved me to guitar, but I was actually stupidly retuning the few toms I had all the time trying to be somewhat melodic.

[Ploki]

+1 on the polyphony thing.

thank mozart for that. lazy jerk.

[Gamma-UT]

From the 1600 century till today, we have generally lost polyphony in our music, and only one melody rules a tune despite interplays. I like to hear more polyphony returning. Some brances of melodic psy-trance do this already, at least they typically mix two melodies, often arppegiated, which brings much more life and excitement to each of them.

In the broad history of music, polyphony was a blip and only really possible because of strict rules and circumstances, such as the belief that music was as much part of physics as the motion of the sun and the moon. It was reserved for sacred music – the music played in the local bar was still primarily monophonic, but also far less constrained in terms of modal rules. The whole melodic arc was largely predefined. However, that allowed some room for improvisation in terms of things like melismatic singing. The strict rules meant that you were highly unlikely to hit a really bad dissonance as polyphony grew out of the more basic organum styles of the 11th and 12th Centuries.

The tradeoff is that polyphonic music of that type doesn't really go anywhere. It just drifts past with enough surface detail to keep the mind engaged as it switches between the lines. That psytrance has picked this up is perhaps not a big surprise as it often trades on that "spiritual" element. Plus it also gets to pick up on the rhythmic counterpoint that is common to non-Western music.

[IncarnateX]

The tradeoff is that polyphonic music of that type doesn't really go anywhere. It just drifts past with enough surface detail to keep the mind engaged as it switches between the lines.

Yes, this is especially true what 1600 century style polyphony concerns but not tonal polyphony in which melodies are subordinated chord movements, e.g. like Bach, Mozart and Bethooven’s counterpoint.

Psy-trance can often be modal in nature, while e.g. Eurotrance relies heavily on chord movement. They could benefit from polyphony from each their roots, modal or tonal.

[Ploki]

mozart wouldn't be my first choice for polyphony

[IncarnateX]

Well, Mozart has a lot of polyphony going on but he is deffo one of those who put forward a strong emphasis on one catchy main theme, and he was a genius at harmonization, so you may have to look a little closer to find it underneath the surface.Though, in his church music, his Requiem, he uses imitative counterpoint in many parts, and also has a double fugue along the way (Kyrie). However, here is Requiem Aeternam, the intro to Requiem. Wait for the vocals at 0.45, and here we go. Breathtaking. It brings me to my knees every time I hear it, along with many other parts of this masterpiece.