5 Tips For Creating Memorable Vocal Melodies

hey you songwriter artist producer out there it's time for another creative session in the studio yes it's a good day in these creative sessions i'd like to take you behind the scenes of a project that i'm working on with the goal of inspiring you and teaching you a thing or two that you can add into your production process and today we're gonna focus on writing vocal melodies so i'm gonna share five tips that can help you come up with really awesome vocal melodies for your song and i don't like to waste your time so let's dive in so let's start off with the instrumentation with the music first we'll get that out of the way real quick then we'll move into vocals so i started with the beat machine kit you can find it under the electronic drum kit and beat machine if you're a garage band or logic user nothing fancy here i just like the way this kit sounds it's definitely a blend of pop and trap it sounds like this so nothing fancy at all just get my basic beat down then we'll move on to the bass and i use the agile synth bass and if you follow me you know i use this bass a lot so i go under synthesizer it's under bass the first one called the agile synth base it just has this kind of smooth warm low end that i like so again nothing too fancy there and then i brought in the beautiful melody which you can find under synthesizer classics go to the top again so maybe that's the key to great instruments is you go to the top of the menu and you just choose the first one these are for melodic stabs which i enter at the beginning of each bar [Music] yes so liking that a lot three elements in we're feeling pretty good i'm liking it so then we go down we have just a few more things i brought in another synthesizer called the dream dancer which is actually in that same menu under synthesizer classics you go down to dream dancer and i did this little arpeggiated thing wait yeah all right and then lastly for instrumentation i have the air bells so the air bells are actually a synth bell how about that you go under synthesizer bell you got these cool options and again i i picked the first one i'm telling you that's the best one to go with so you can hear it in the background it's just a light little pluck little [Music] stab so again just add some texture just some depth to it that i think is really nice it fills in the space in a nice way so that's it for instrumentation and before we jump into the vocals if you missed my last video called 25 advanced tips for garageband users please go check out that video i spent so much time on it and it's not just about you watching my video i'm saying i put so many tips i cram them down more than 25 advanced pro tips into one single video so if you missed that i would go back and check it out and that's why i only had one video last week because that was a beast baby it was a beefy beast to edit that thing all right so now let's get into vocals how to create how to write vocal melodies that fit with your song well my first tip is i like to actually create a track that has a lot of processing on it that helps me be and feel creative as a singer so if i hit b on my typing keyboard you can see here that i have some processing of course that processing is going to have some reverb it typically has some echo i do eq compression pitch correction and i'm not going to go into detail on how i do these because i have a whole in-depth video on how i mix vocals up at the link in the description so go check that out if you want to know how i do all this but this is kind of the first step for me as i create this track with processing in it and sometimes i'll sing on this track so i can hear that processing those effects but a lot of times i'll actually start with it this is becoming a common problem i need to learn to turn my monitor off before i start filming so what i'll do is i will actually create a dry track this has no processing on it and so a lot of times i'll just sing on this dry track to make sure my timing's right and to make sure my pitch is on par okay so sometimes when you try and sing with pitch correction on it actually you actually sing more out of pitch than you normally would because you're hearing the pitch correction but i know a lot of us singers we love reaver so if you want to hear reverb as you're recording but you don't want the latency that slight delay you can actually on your dry track just add some of this master reverb right here and you won't incur latency so you've got some reverb but it's still kind of dry and then you can still drag that down into your highly processed track all right so tip number two and this is a biggie folks it's a biggie it's really big i will come up with two maybe even three individual unique vocal ideas for each part of my song meaning for my verse here i will create two sometimes three ideas that i will then interchange out and see which one i like best so in the case of this song my first vocal idea was over here so here's idea number one [Music] [Music] so i was like that's cool i like that idea i like that but then i think it was later that night or something i actually heard this line in my head and was like yes that's so cool so i recorded it into a voice memo and then i came back into the studio the next day and recorded this so if you can hear the last third of the vocal line is actually wow something really weird is happening with my voice i don't know what it is so this last third right here is actually the same as my first idea and so that's what i'll do i'll record one two three different parts and then i'll kind of merge them together and go okay which of each part do i like best and kind of create this grand take from all three of my takes and i also like to do this with other singers in the mix at times so i'll export them an instrumental version i'll mute out my vocals and i'll say hey you seeing over the top of this let's just see what you hear not hearing my idea and then after they sing and they come up with their ideas i put them with my ideas and sometimes we merge our ideas together to become this really cool sound alright so my next tip in coming up with vocal melody parts and this is so crucial you need to pay attention you need to pay attention pay attention you need to learn the art of da da da yeah that's right you need to learn to say da da da a lot and what i mean by that is sometimes i can get stuck as a singer not having all of the lyrics perfectly right out there in front of me to sing and so what i'll do is i'll sometimes say you know what i'm gonna hit pause on lyrics for right now and i'm actually going to focus on the vocal melody not on the words but on the melody that my voice is going to sing so in this case i'm not really saying a lot of english i'm just singing syllables and words that help me find the right cadence and melody for this part [Music] so i mean there's some words in there but they're not really ones that i'll keep and with this i want to say that lyrics are so important and there's a time when we need to really focus on lyrics but there's also a time when we need to focus on the melody of the vocal and i think we get really distracted and hung up with trying to basically do two things at one time you're trying to come up with lyrics and a melody at the same time and that can be really tricky and so i like to sometimes separate those out focus on my melody first and then be a poet later and really find the words that fit within this kind of boundary line that i've now created so the last two tips for creating vocal melodies that fit your song kind of go together and i want you to have this picture of a t in your mind uh one side would be the rhythm or the cadence of the vocal and then this side would be the pitch or the melody of the vocal itself and for the cadence or the rhythm or the timing of the vocal that's gonna fall heavily or lean heavily on the beat of the drums so let me solo the drums let me solo this lead vocal and i want you to hear how i'm emphasizing certain words when there's a certain emphasis on the drums happening you didn't know i don't have remember don't make sense rhythmically as a vocalist i'm trying to do this dance with the drum set okay with the drum groove these two should really work well together okay but then let's talk about the melody itself and how do i know which note to sing well that's where we can go to our bass instrument and just start singing melodies over the top of your bass line because the bass line is well it's the bass line it's kind of the foundation melodically of your song so if i know i'm seeing it in line with this bass line then it's probably going to fit with the rest of my instrumentation [Music] so it's hard for me to tell you exactly what to do to come up with a melody line that fits your song but these are definitely some tips some hacks that i use when i'm writing a song i'm thinking about these things and needless to say there is a lot of trial and error but the more you do it you start to actually kind of hone in on drum beats and melodies and it actually gets easier and a lot of fun to write melodies that really fit with the context of your beat and your instrumentation [Music] so that's it for this video i hope it was helpful leave a comment below if you learned something cool or if you have a question and then i want to do something a little different i don't normally ask for this kind of stuff but i'm just realizing that man it is pretty tough to create youtube content to create tutorials and then also get it out there so if you're enjoying this content if you feel like you're growing as an artist as a producer then i'm just simply asking you to share it with some friends that's really it because the more people that are connected here to the studio the more content i can create so that's it and spiel thank you guys for those of you who do like and comment and you share it and you're engaged really appreciate you guys and i'm looking forward to making more videos soon peace

Channel: The Songwriting Studio

Views: 22,108

Rating: 4.8500552 out of 5

Keywords: garageband, garageband tutorial, recording vocals, vocal production, garageband songs, garageband beats, garageband pop, garageband trap, creative session, songwriting studio, dean, music production tutorial

Id: m8-zP24yZBQ

Length: 11min 3sec (663 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Back2funk]

Great vid. Very helpful as always. After a very long break from music making, I got back in to it this year in a big way. I’m finally at a point where I feel I’m back to my best after many instrumentals, so I’m trying my hand at vocal tracks again. I’m currently trying to come up with a melody and struggling a bit so this should help me out a lot. Thanks for sharing.