3 SIMPLE Rules for Catchy Melodies EVERY Time 🎹

in this video I'm going to show you how to make Melodies From Scratch including how to choose a scale how to build them around your chord progressions how to make your Melodies evocative and unique I'm going to show you the common mistakes producers make when it comes to writing Melodies and I'm going to show you some various tips and tricks that the professionals use to get their Melodies really catchy and really memorable I'm also going to show you something I haven't seen on any other videos which is how to create effective counter Melodies which will really make your track stand out my name is Will from EDM tips and I've spent the last six years helping bedroom music producers just like you get their music to a professional level so without further Ado let's hop into the door and get it done okay I have my magic list here so let's work through it so the first mistake I see people making is not choosing the right preset with which to write their Melody now I really like to use a piano and I recommend that for a couple of reasons one you're not gonna get distracted by these crazy amazing sounding synths if you're using a piano so you're going to be focusing on just making a really strong Melody the second reason is that when you're programming in a piano in MIDI it reacts to the length of the midi note so a longer note will be sustained a short note will end quicker some synth patches aren't reactive to the length of the midi note so that's the second reason the third reason is is such a common and popular sound to hear so if you want to send your track to a singer to get her or him to sing that Melody having a simple piano sound makes it really easy for them to do that okay so that's the first thing to mention the second is that Vibe is king So how you create the melody really depends on the vibe you are trying to create so it's important to have an idea of the direction of the track you start before you even start writing because if you're writing a big room trance track that's going to be very different from if you're writing a slow ballad or a hip-hop track it's going to determine how complex the melody should be which notes the melody should be hitting whether it should be happy whether it should be sad so everything should work this one particular theme or vibe that you're going for okay next thing to do is to select the scale you are going to be working in now it's very easy if you're working in MIDI to change the scale afterwards but what is super important is as to whether it's minor or major now a minor is the simplest scale to work in because it's just all the white notes from a up to a but if you're using Ableton or FL Studio or logic or pretty much any door nowadays you've usually got this scale feature that you can just click and you can choose any scale that you want and it's going to allow you to only show the notes from that scale and you've got these different modes of scale as well so we could just choose major or minor would be the most common so I'm just going to choose this scale a flat minor press the scale button and only the notes from that scale are going to show now so it's super easy now when it comes to creating the melody the notes you're going to be hitting really depend on the bass and the chords that you've already got in the track so the easiest thing to do is to start with the bass line build out the chords and then work the melody into that so let's start by doing that let's create a chord progression we're just going to start on the root note of the track we're going to pick four bass notes starting on the root of the track foreign [Music] so let's build out the chords based on these bass notes then we're going to show you how to spice them up and then work in our Melody so I'm just going to skip a note each time to build out some basic Triads [Music] and a mistake producers make is leaving their chord progressions really generic so that's what this is at the moment let's have a quick listen and have a sip of coffee [Music] I don't know so now we want to make these chords more interesting I'm going to show you three techniques how to do that the first of which is building out a seventh note in each of these chord so if the first note in a chord is the root this one here is the third because it's the third interval one two three and then four five that's the fifth interval let's put a couple of sevenths in there as well completely changes the vibe [Music] foreign might be diminished so that sounds a bit weird I'm just going to put it up one semitone and that's going to fix that problem next of the second tips is just spreading these across different octaves and that will almost make these top notes a Melody anyway and we can spread some of these lower notes across the octaves as well what I'm going to do is I'm just going to copy the lower notes and put them down one octave like so now they're one octave below and then these first notes of the chord is root I'm just going to put some of them up an octave and that's called a chord inversion so it's the same note but just played on different octaves and that will instantly make it sound a bit more interesting so let's try that [Music] but I prefer these if they're lower down foreign [Music] and the third way that we can spice up our chord progression is with the rhythm of the chords as well so in particular if you have a second chord played just before it leads into the next one is going to allow The Listener to know there's a chord change coming [Music] but there are different techniques we can use for chord rhythms but there for a different video I'll link to it now and we're just going to do the same technique for this chord as well foreign [Music] now to make it even more interesting I'm just going to change these notes Here to another note within the key and see how that sounds [Music] foreign lovely so now we've got our base notes and our chord we can write our Melody and what I'm going to do for this is just duplicate our piano and we'll call this melody and having our bass and our chords and our Melody all within the grand piano is going to allow us to make sure that we're hitting the right octaves as well so this space in the frequency range for all three elements to breathe together then when we actually do move to using interesting presets for each of these elements we already know they're going to be in octaves they're going to complement each other well so I'm just going to drop our chords Down an octave so we've got space for our Melody foreign [Music] okay this is the easiest way to create a Melody the first thing is to focus on the rhythm of the melody first just using the root note of the key that you're working in so for example we are working in G sharp minor so if we get a G sharp now we can focus just on creating an interesting Rhythm before we actually change the pitch of each note in the melody so the key here is to find a rhythm that works with any of the other elements that you already have if you've got Drums if you've already got the bass and the chords the rhythm of your Melody will have to interplay with those different elements if you're starting as we are today using just the basic chords basic Bass the melody can really run the show from this point on so we can choose any Melody and then everything else will have to work around that now here Simplicity is key you don't want your Melody too simple but you don't want it so complicated that it just sounds ridiculous we'll get back to that in a couple of minutes but let's draw in a simple Melody Rhythm that's going to work with these other elements [Music] and what we're going to do here and this is very important when it comes to Melody is to use repetition of the Rhythm the more repetition you've got in terms of pitch and of Rhythm the more memorable that Melody is going to be so we've just duplicated this first Rhythm here into the second part so now it sounds like this [Music] and if we repeat it all once more we're just going to create a slight variation at the end of the second time it goes through so we just add one more note there but you can see this is a very simple Rhythm and I've got both Clips selected which is why you can see all the notes at the same time which can help and make things easier as well top tip there okay so now we're on to changing the pitch of each of these notes we've programmed in for our Melody now there are a few notes that you can hit with your Melodies that make them even stronger so I want to touch upon those first now the first note is unsurprisingly the root note of the track now if you remember the key of our track is in G sharp minor so that means the root note of our track is G sharp so obviously hitting that note with our Melody several times it's going to give it a really nice strong Foundation now the second note is the third so if we move up to the third that's this position and two other notes that are really strong to use is the fifth and the seventh now the other in between notes can be used for little runs and flourishes depending on the vibe and the emotion that you want to create so let's create our Melody using the first the second the third the fifth and the seventh and just stick to those notes and see if we can make something strong sounding so that's the seventh but an octave down and that's the fifth but an octave down [Music] and then we've got the second [Music] okay so now let's listen to it foreign [Music] how I've done this we've repeated the Rhythm exactly the same for the first and the second we've repeated the root note several times to lock in the key of the track and make it really strong so we've got the G sharp the G sharp the G sharp and another long G sharp there and a little one here but what we've also done is repeat the shape of the jumps so here we've got the seventh going down to the fifth and here we've got the third going back to the root so you can see the jump between these is the same we've got one note in between and here we've got it running up and here we've got it running down so we've got repetition not only in Rhythm but in the pitch patterns as well so now let's take that Melody and duplicate it as we did before but remember we wanted to have this extra note here the second time it runs through and we're also going to switch things up so the end of this melody Loops round to the beginning and again that's something that's really important and people often make a mistake is they'll leave it here and they won't make sure that it Loops round smoothly and sounds like it's leading back into that Melody because the chances are this is going to be looped several times throughout your track so for the fourth part of the melody this is when it's nice to switch things up again and once more it depends on what vibe we're going for but my gut says because this is quite an emotional sad song I'm going to take this down rather than going up further and I'm going to use the fourth interval in the key which is the C sharp just because I think it really hits that emotional note foreign [Music] and remember We're looping back to this G sharp so I actually want to have a note that's going to lead up to it [Music] so here we're going from the e up to the F sharp knowing full well that we're going to loop back to that G sharp if I make this F go down it's gonna sound a bit weird and jarring when it loops around it sounds much better when it resolves back so we're taking that into consideration as well so now we've got our basic Melody that fits the vibe of our track and it's in the key we've got repetition of Rhythm we've got repetition of the shape of the pitch jumps now I want to create a counter Melody so what is a counter Melody it's basically a second Melody that contrasts and simultaneously bolsters your main Melody this isn't used in all genres of music but it's nice to have this tool in your toolkit especially if you're using perhaps a different instrument to play that counter Melody and the best tip I've seen of how to think about this is two different characters in a play so one might be talking to the other so there's an interplay there's like a conversational tone between these two Melodies so let's write the counter melody in the same instrument as our main Melody and once again what we're going to do is work out the rhythm of that counter Melody before we work out the pitches and we need to make sure that rhythm interplays with the main Melody foreign [Music] we're going to keep this very simple in terms of Rhythm repetition is key here so I'm just going to duplicate this like so we will get rid of some of these but we've got this repetitive motif of Rhythm that's going to solidify the theme and the entire Melody so now let's change the pitch of some of these notes [Music] foreign [Music] because I think they'll sound better and then we'll probably just repeat this Rhythm instead [Music] Yep this is the Rhythm we're going to use so I'll delete those and I'll then duplicate this one instead [Music] foreign [Music] and then we're just adding a little flourish there [Music] so this frequency is twice as fast as the main Melody [Music] and now let's just duplicate that remember we're repeating both the Rhythm and the pitch shape but we'll probably switch it up in the second repetition [Music] and I'm repeating this interval jump here as well [Music] so let's put those back in because I like that [Music] and for this second part I'm now going up with our Melody again to keep things interesting but the internal jumps are still the same [Music] and this runs down whilst the main Melody runs up which links us back beautifully to this G sharp here we could run it back up so that we link back to our G sharp here an octave up foreign [Music] so we've got the main Melody looping back to the main Melody we've got our counter Melody looping back to our counter Melody now if you imagine two people singing These two Melodies it would work beautifully together you could even take some of these out and just make it a much more of a sporadic jump between the two Melodies but I really like it the way it is now as I said a common mistake producers make is to over complicate their Melody and think it really needs to be complicated to make it sound interesting so even if you're using the notes from within the scale it's easy to over complicate it so here's an example of what it might sound like [Music] foreign yeah okay you might think oh that sounds pretty and Baroque but the truth of the matter is No One's Gonna even acknowledge that as a Melody let alone remember it and sing it back and that's what we're trying to do we're trying to create something memorable because the melody is what sticks in people's head when they listen to a piece of music most of the time like 98 of the time so simple is key now the last thing I want to touch upon is how to humanize your Melody because this sounds quite robotic at the moment whilst it's quite pretty sounding and we want to make it sound like it's played with emotion and the way we're gonna do that is slightly tweak the timing and also to use velocity now velocity for most instruments by default is assigned to the volume so with a lower velocity the note is quieter but you can assign it to many different parameters and if you're using a synth to play your Melody that can be particularly interesting because you could assign it to a low pass cutoff filter for example which means that your sound is going to sound filtered out if it's got a lower velocity so with this example the first thing I'm going to do is really take down the volume of the counter Melody because I want people to be able to sing My Melody and you can't sing two notes at once so it's confusing so I'm going to take it right down foreign [Music] people singing the main Melody so let's just put that up on volume a bit we're going to take the chords Down in volume a little bit as well [Music] but I want people to really feel the emotion when they hear this melody so it the easiest thing to do is if you play it in you're naturally going to have different velocities as well but if you're not an amazing piano player like I'm not you can just program them in so the first thing I'm going to do is think about which notes I really want to be accentuated and then we're going to increase the velocity on those so that would be a really strong note and the first note so again you can see my strong notes are actually falling on each bar so we'll make this one stronger as well in fact what I'm going to do is take down all of the notes in my main Melody a bit because then I've got more Headroom to work with so this is the first note of the bar this is the first note of the bar I'm going to bring all of those up in volume foreign [Music] change of chord I think that needs to be strong as well so let's bring that up [Music] so this is almost a rhythm within a rhythm these strong notes are almost a rhythm unto themselves [Music] foreign [Music] notes that people are going to hear these are the main notes that people are going to sing now to make it even more humanized you could actually within Ableton specifically you can randomize the velocity so if we choose the range we wish to randomize it that's going to mess up all the work I've done but just to give an example of what it sounds like [Music] so what you could do is actually randomize it and then again go back to the core notes that you want people to remember and then boost all of those in volume so you've got the best of both worlds then you've got the random human feel and we've also got our main notes really strong [Music] I quite like that actually now this is easy in FL Studio and logic so the way you do it in Ableton is you use a Groove template so I'm just gonna pick a random Groove template let's choose this one I'm going to drag this onto our Melody like so and then we can adjust the timing here and randomize it slightly as well [Music] and the higher number you select the more that is going to be off the exact grid which gives it a human feel foreign [Music] or you could do it manually by just dragging some of the notes slightly forward or back but again that's going to take a bit more effort and a bit more time it's easier to just experiment with the groove templates and once again the vibe will dictate whether you do that or not if it's a trance track the chances are you want it bang on the grid if it's a slow ballad the chances are you want to sound like it's being played by human now one extra top tip I want to give you when it comes to writing Melodies is using reference tracks so whichever style that you're producing in I recommend finding a really good track that you absolutely love with a strong Melody and working out which of these techniques I've shown you today they're using and when and why they're using them then you can create your own Melodies that will be appropriate to the genre and the vibe that you're going for so I really hope you've enjoyed this today guys let me know in the comments if you enjoyed this video what you found particularly useful and more importantly what you want to see me cover on this channel and if you want in-depth coaching with me and to take your music production to the next level perhaps get signed to your favorite music label like like many of my other students do check out my music production accelerator program I've included the link below this video and please like this video If you enjoyed it and subscribe to my my channel hitting that notification Bell to make sure you never miss a video thank you so much for watching I'll catch you next time until then cheers and happy producing [Music]

Channel: EDM Tips

Views: 500,850

Keywords: making melodies, how to write melodies, writing melodies, 3 tips for writing evocative melodies, great melody, how to write a melody, melody writing, how to make melodies, how to write a tune, how to make a melody, how to write a catchy tune, how to make a melody for a song, making better melodies, melody writing tutorial, counter melody, how to make beautiful melodies, how to make catchy melodies, how to write unique melodies, Ableton Live, abletion live tutorial, EDM Tips

Id: rXJka9Rb0Bo

Length: 23min 59sec (1439 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 18 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/willdarling]

Thanks for sharing! Hope you enjoy :)