147 WAYS TO WRITE A MELODY

hello it's Andrew Huang last week I talked about how music often follows somewhat logical story like patterns and with that in mind I shared half a melody that I invited you to finish composing [Music] where does it go now there were a hundred and forty-seven usable submissions and I say usable because there were a few people who maybe misunderstood the challenge and only sent me chords with no melody there were also a couple of people who sent me password-protected videos and no passwords if you want to share what you came up with or if you didn't write something yet but you still want to link it on Twitter someone started the hashtag chord story so include that and jump in check out other melodies talk to people I think this could be really fun I was gonna say I don't know why they didn't make the hashtag melody story but I just searched that and it seems like that is a person so my original idea was to just talk about different ways to approach finishing a melody when you're stuck but I realized with all these submissions we essentially have a database of a hundred and forty seven solutions that people came up with for this unfinished melody so as I was listening i taked 20 possible attributes that these melody continuations might have here they are in a nice Google spreadsheet where I have checked off which ones applied to each entry it's kind of like you were all voting on the best methods to use and I feel like I've been hearing a lot about voting lately it's important or something so good job everybody let's get a caveat out of the way we were only working with one melody so it's very likely that it was suggesting or favoring certain approaches that another one might not but I think what we're going to learn today is still really valuable and with those 20 attributes I mentioned I was trying to keep in mind things that you could apply with pretty much any song you might be working on the first bunch of them have to do with phrasing the structure of a melody my melody had a very clear sequence you can see the shape of it when it's written now for those of you who don't know in music when we talk about a sequence we're referring to a melodic pattern that is repeated but with different notes so the most famous sequence in the world is probably you in my spreadsheet though I'm using the term sequence a little bit more loosely because while a lot of the submissions didn't follow the exact same shape as my melody many of them continued to use the same rhythm or a variation on that rhythm which is a very natural thing to do 15% of people kept the exact same rhythm for the remainder of their melody for example [Music] 35.4% abandoned the sequence altogether and came up with something completely new for their second half [Music] you almost exactly half of the submissions were a variation on the sequence and I broke that down into two categories 6% created a variation that removed nodes [Music] [Music] and by far the most popular approach 43.5% of submissions created a variation on the rhythmic sequence that added a few extra notes [Music] now let's look at the overall phrase I felt that my melody was pretty suggestive of being exactly half finished in terms of length and a lot of people felt the same way 79 percent of submissions took my four bar melody and completed it in another four bars [Music] alright 17.7% extended the second section which is also a fairly natural thing to do it can add an extra little bit of finality [Music] don't know which way I should go [Music] I know I'll be just fine hello the skies to end how long only 3.4 percent of people created a shorter resolution to the melody and I think that makes sense it's not a very popular approach because it usually makes it feel like it's been cut short so let's take a look at the kinds of choices people made with their notes I have to say it was wonderful to experience 147 different takes on this tune there were obviously similarities here and there but every entry was unique we are all beautiful snowflake was one similarity I picked up on that I wanted to point out because it's fascinating to me and I think indicates if not an absolute logic to music writing at least some definite naturally arising possibilities there were five people three-and-a-half percent of the entries whose continuation of the melody before they went on to do their own unique thing started like this whoa also two of them were named Tom three nine percent might not seem like much but we're talking about an identical three follow up notes in this melody that these people came up with completely independently and it makes me wonder if that proportion would stay the same in a larger sample size looking at the range of the melody how high and low it goes my original bit had a range of 13 semitones so just over an octave not huge but also not tiny 41.5% of the melody is stayed within that range in their second half Oh 12% incorporated one or more lower notes writing something new and fresh like the vegetables in the testers the most popular option at nearly 50% of entries was to go up to higher notes which makes sense in music leggins story we were often building towards a climax and at 2.7% it was very unpopular to include both higher and lower notes now let's talk about keys and chords there were 14 entries that didn't have chords they were just solo melodies so that left a hundred and thirty-three entries that I could analyze a third of those included a modulation so the chords and melody went to a new key usually temporarily [Music] you [Music] I don't know how much I can pull from this because we're getting into more nebulous musical territory where people modulated to different places or different numbers of times or for different amounts of time what I will say is that to have a third of the melodies include a modulation seems on the high side to me and I might chalk that up to this being a mass melody writing experiment for a nerdy music channel it might have attracted more adventurous writers or maybe inadvertently encouraged people to flex their chops a bit that said the majority of submissions two-thirds included no modulation I'll point out one more harmonic possibility which only three submissions used and that is what is known as the pickety third most people resolve their melodies in key which is of course the most natural thing to do the Picardy third happens when you sound like you're going to resolve on the relative minor but you take the third in that minor chord and raise it half a step making it major so the resolution sounds like this it has this sort of majestic triumphant quality to it because you're expecting this sad ending but right at the last minute it's totally overcome no problem everything's right with the world and it just so happens that I used it when I was finishing my melody [Music] you [Music] you [Music] you so if you run My Melody through the spreadsheet it used an extended phrase lank it discarded the original sequence although it hinted at it toward the end it stayed in the same range of notes and it ended with a picardy third also I wouldn't say that I modulated but like the first half of the melody and like many of you did I used a lot of secondary dominance so it's a bit of a gray area I feel like I could go on a whole tangent about secondary dominance but I will save that for another video so what did we learn today it would appear according to all this information that the most logical or at least the most popular way to complete this melody was to create a slightly more complex variation on the original rhythmic sequence keep the phrase length the same reach for a higher note in the second half and never modulate there you go that's the formula is that helpful or just super vague / obvious I've never really looked at this many melodic writing techniques altogether for me as a writer a lot of the times these things aren't conscious I'm usually just feeling my way around and sometimes that works great but when you need them I think it's really awesome that through this project in your contributions we've kind of put a name to and done a very brief study of some of the most basic tools as usual I would love to hear your thoughts so please leave a comment below it was a real joy to listen to all your creativity your voice is everything you came up with so thank you to everybody who contributed I'm going to leave you with a couple amazing examples of one final writing technique which I'm calling the non sequitur where your song takes a complete turn into something no one could ever expect or predict thanks for watching bye [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: ANDREW HUANG

Views: 2,053,005

Keywords: final, cut, pro, video, editing, canon, digital, camera, canada, canadian, toronto, ontario, asian, chinese, 80d, songwriting, melody, melodies, melodic, music, theory, music theory, instruments, guitar, AndrewHuang, Andrew Huang, producing music, rapping, rapping fast, fast rap, 4 producers, how to, how to make music, music producer, op 1, making music, ableton, how to write a song, teenage engineering, fm synthesis, making music on your phone, song in an hour, making a song, 300 words, rap, sing

Id: I2Ej4Jpquas

Length: 15min 18sec (918 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 14 2016