How to Craft an Unforgettable Melody

by the end of this video you'll learn the three ingredients that make up great Melodies how to create a Melody from scratch and how to make sure your audience remembers it if you're new to the channel welcome I'm Zach Heidi I'm a composer and a content creator here on YouTube and I do weekly tips and resources for composers like you so first things first there's some basic principles of what makes a good Melody now Melodies can vary we can have really really short condensed motivic Melodies but we can also have really long expansive Melodies so the advice varies but there are three basic principles that you almost always follow the first one is called the whistle Factor the whistle factor is making sure that you're staying within a reasonable range that could be whistled by somebody typically that range is about an octave and a half so if our melody was in C major we typically want to go no higher than this G or in some cases no lower than this F and if you think of any good Melody they almost always follow this principle if we take Somewhere Over the Rainbow [Music] right there's a lowest note so there is our range if we take Star Wars there's our range if we take Harry Potter right so there's our range so always staying within an octave and a half it's a really good principle it's going to make sure that it's singable the next principle is to use melodic and rhythmic motives together now if you don't know what a motive is or a motif it's a short musical cell just like we've got cells in our bodies music has cells it has little ideas the most classic example would be Beethoven in all the ways that that gets varied through the entire piece so this variety is what helps us recognize the cells of a piece of music in the same way you want to make sure your Melody actually has cells baked into it the cells can be melodic in other words pitch based but they could also be rhythmic and a really great example of This is Indiana Jones if you think of Indiana Jones [Music] motives but we also have a rhythmic motive bum bum bum bum so you can see that we have identifiers for both aspects of that music that helps to make it memorable finally the third principle is to make sure you have some Rising Motion in your Melody if you were to draw out most Melodies you'd see this you'd see a rise it would hit its peak and then it would gently drop off you don't want the peak to happen halfway through because you've already kind of used up the excitement of your piece and that are now just decaying so you want to build to that moment near the end and then just have a slight drop off a great example of this is John Williams ET theme watch and see how it rises through the duration of the melody [Music] so builds and builds and builds finally has a very slight Decay at the end of that although the next time it goes so there's even more build so quick recap keep your Melody to an octave and a half make sure you're using some motific cells in your ideas and make sure you have a rising motion with all that in mind let's talk about different ways you can approach creating a Melody because sometimes you get stuck and you don't know where to start but before I do that I want to give a shout out to the sponsor of today's video Spitfire audio they are running a spring sale which includes several bundles where you can save 50 to 60 off and some really good vsts in there like the olafur Arnold series which they sent me the Eric Whitaker choir the firewood piano and more my favorite patch right now is the chamber grid from the Olaf Arnold's chamber Evolution series I'm really into this I immediately added into my template you can play a note and there's all these like micro tunings but you can also go in and change with different effects so you can make it subtle you could add some thrills and for a composer like me who just needs something really quick that has a really evocative sound this is a great fit if you're in the market be sure to check it out I've linked it in my description and it's running until May 4th now back to the video the first thing we could do is start off with a very small idea a small motive and use that as our building blocks for the melody so I'll give you an example let's say I want a little idea that goes like this okay so I'm going to want to follow my ear obviously but try and use this as the shape pay attention to the shape the intervals and the Rhythm [Music] so you have a second part I actually used the Rhythm from the first part and we have a rising motion now this isn't the end of the melody maybe I want even more rise so the second part goes oh so I'm building as I go [Music] so I changed it a little bit but you see the idea I'm working with these small melodic cells and rhythmic cells and building as I go that's a great way to write a melody it'll include you know needing to know a little bit of Harmony as well but that's the basic principle the next way you could write a melody is actually starting with a shape a very basic shape and embellishing it as we talked about you know most shapes are going to do this as the melody goes so we can work that shape and then sort of elaborate Now to create a shape in music I'm just going to play something and kind of play a gesture [Music] laughs so I'm keeping it mostly to just chord tones but this is our shape you can see we kind of rise and then fall and then rise back up again so what we could do now is actually start to embellish this and ornament it a little bit so instead of maybe [Music] maybe we go [Music] so it's the same shape but I'm embellishing [Music] oh foreign I'm using my ear basically to lead me but I'm also using the shape to guide me [Music] one final way you could create a Melody from scratch is to start with a cool interval an interval that kind of inspires you lots of great Melodies start off with really noticeable intervals if we take some John Williams music yet again and we pay attention to some of those intervals in the beginning thank you right we start with this great interval or we also have [Music] so or we also have so instead of starting with a shape or a motivic idea we could use an interval as our gestation for the melody so let me start with an interval that inspires me maybe a minor seventh so that might Inspire ideas foreign [Music] so you can see I'm using that interval to lead the idea and the interval is really the motive now the final aspect and maybe one of the most important is how do you make sure your audience actually remembers your Melody you can't force them to memorize it but you can build elements into your music to make sure that it works and this is going to start to border on a little bit more abstract thinking of composition but for me this has always worked and so I have to recommend it to you all the strategy that I use other than the craft of what makes a good Melody is to misremember your Melody and adjust accordingly let me show you what this looks like in action so let's say I'm writing a melody thank you [Music] so I've written this melody now here's what I want to do I want to walk away from this melody in fact I am going to walk away from this melody for 30 minutes and I'm going to come back and I'm going to try and remember what I did so goodbye okay we're back now I don't remember the melody at all so I will have to listen for a second just to get an idea but I'm not going to pay too much attention to it so I'm just gonna listen for a second and say okay now here's what I want to do I don't want to review the melody anymore I want to actually try and play it again the way I think it went and we'll notice what changes [Music] now let's compare what I did now to what I had originally and see if I was close [Music] now let's listen to the new one [Music] so I'm more partial to the new one and I think that's because what happens over time is as we get these ideas in our head you know we want our audience to memorize it right we want them to remember it well if we can't remember our own Melody how could we expect anybody else to remember so the idea is to sort of use your memory as a process of extracting what's memorable about your Melody and that takes time right you have to make sure you have space and time away for your Melody to make sure it really sticks so this is the way I like to work I like to misremember and adjust accordingly you might still make tweaks you're a craftsperson so obviously you're going to go in and adjust things as you need to but memory is a wonderful tool to make sure your piece is memorable now the next part of this process which is not part of this video is I'm going to actually orchestrate this melody if you want to see that I have that available on my patreon which I hope you'll check out thank you again to all my patrons you are the ones that helped me make this content so I appreciate it very much and if you found this video helpful and inspiring please do leave a like subscribe for more and be sure to check out my free composer newsletter which is linked in the description

Channel: Zach Heyde

Views: 253,069

Keywords: composer, music, music composer, film composer, animation composer, fantasy music, dnd music, animation music, commercial composer, trailer composer, commercial, trailer, how to, tutorial, composer react, composer reacts, music breakdown, music analysis, orchestration, composition, logic pro, mattia chiappa, guy michelmore, marc jovani, cinematic composing, thinkspace education, media composer, media music, film music, orchestral music

Id: YHyJLxvCUQ8

Length: 11min 57sec (717 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 24 2023