How to write a GREAT melody

hello everybody today i'm going to be talking about how you write a melody hopefully how you write a good melody and i'm first of all going to be talking about uh the sort of theory behind it such as it is um then giving you some practical tips which you will be able to use in your music so that within one hour of now hopefully you will have written a tune you couldn't right now that's quite a big ask but i hope that by giving you one or two straightforward pushes in the right direction um you'll be able to come up with something new and interesting and different which you're not currently doing or trying to write a tune better than you're writing one at the moment now tune writing melody writing is something i've looked at before and i will definitely be coming back to it again because there's no one uh 10 minute video 20 minute video which is going to crack this because it's in some respects a lifelong study but i do have one secret and that is why i'm in the car on my way to a shop and i'll explain what it is those people have no idea they've just appeared on youtube oh my goodness grace they walk down the lane they wave no they're on youtube who knew so here is the secret ingredient garibaldi briskets you can't write a great melody without a garibaldi biscuit so with our garibaldi biscuits let's get back to the studio and get stuck in [Music] and so equipped with the sunglasses of doubt because when it comes to melody writing we're gonna need these and the biscuits of creative inspiration um let's get stuck in now there are things in life which i'm really really bad at uh like changing duvet covers [Music] nightmare um trying to put those springy sort of green screen things back in their foldy uppy thing and that's a nightmare too and actually doing nothing i'm very very bad at doing nothing but fortunately one thing i'm not too bad at is writing tunes and as that's what we're talking about that's a bit of a bit of a thumbs up to that now um let's start therefore with the first rule of tomb writing there are no rules this is a common problem that what people do is they listen to a lot of good tunes they think what of these tunes got in common uh they proceed by step therefore logical fallacy if i write a tune which proceeds by by step it will be a good melody wrong there are millions of really bad melodies which follow rules and therefore the rule if you want a rule which is a useful thing for getting to a finish point the rule is not going to help you so what i'd like to do is refer you to captain balboa from parts of the caribbean when he was talking about the pirates code the code is more what you call guidelines than actual rules what we're looking at today is more guidelines uh than rules but there are guidelines and the bit of melody writing i'm going to focus on today is repetition and variation so first of all we'll look at the theory and then i will put my money where my mouth is and write write a tune why why why put a credit card on your mouth guy it's like one of those really literal um stock image things where it says you know a man standing with lots of no way out signs and things like that no don't be literal guy right let us get this show on the road casting off the sunglasses of doubt um repetition and variation that's what's at the heart of this style of tune writing which is really based around motifs let's look uh very briefly at a a tune with which i suspect you're familiar by a master of tune writing okay it's the imperial march you can see darth vader you are not my son or whatever okay now how does that tune work let's look at the motif not very complicated but what he does there is if we take that tune that basic motif and break it down into two halves one is uh the tonal half and the other is the rhythmic if you start by playing that motif without the rhythm it's almost unrecognizable you say what i can't there's no darth vader marching towards me there mate whereas if you just play the rhythm [Music] i'd argue that there's more darth vader in that rhythm than there is in the tone so what i'm saying is that it isn't just uh the um the notes you play but the rhythm is a vital part of making your motif uh interesting so then what does he do this master of craftsmanship for whom the sunglasses of doubt never go anywhere near his forehead uh you repeat the motif but he starts okay we're in cma i've put this in c minor so it's easier to understand what's going on he repeats the motif so there's the first time now the second time he repeats it he starts on g which is um the dominant of c minor so he's starting on the on the the top note of a c minor triad [Music] but actually then what he does is he comes down keeping the same rhythm but he comes down an a flat minor chord so he's playing with um the chord shape as much as okay so you can hear that it's the same motif but he's changing one element and leaving other elements the same so you're changing the order of the pitch is where it starts uh you're keeping those three stain notes but then but because the rhythm's the same it's how you're getting the element of repetition without boredom because [Music] let me pull on the sunglasses of doubt if you just went board yet look even a great opening can turn into a rubbish tune if you don't add that variation just repetition by itself won't do it just repetition by itself won't do it just shut up guy okay so so there we have it so far so good but how you say to yourself how mr mitchell am i going to apply this to my own music it's a very good question and that's what we're going to come on to do next because i think there's enough faffing about as we say it may be time to embark on writing some tunes let's see how we get on now this kind of thing is exactly what we do in some detail in this course how to write music is my online course that takes you through every step of the process how to get going chord progressions tune writing developing and arranging your music six hours of exclusive video tutorials a course text packed with tips and a supportive online community get more out of your music and sign up today the way we're going to start this is we're just going to start playing looking for a motif most motifs you're looking between as a rule of thumb four five six seven notes something like [Music] that [Music] now i will play loads of these little motifs and go hate that [Music] it's not that they're wrong it's not what sometimes it is it's not that they're bad so sometimes it is it's that i just don't happen not to like them and this is an important one the x factor in writing tunes music in general is your taste it's what you like and you are the filter through which all this music passes and you make these selections so a lot of the time um it's your taste which is shaping the final product um so there's nothing wrong with any of these little this motifs doesn't ring my bell i'm sorry go away oh i know what's wrong we haven't grown man struggles with biscuits shock icarno that wasn't on the agenda right so i'm gonna have to cut into this otherwise i'm never gonna write anything any good today right so ah my secret ingredient right wrong and that's the secret of writing a great tunes okay okay i quite like that i mean it sounds a little bit little house on the prairie or something [Music] so that is such a western corporation now what you've noticed happening here already and oh blimey i've got creative inspiration stuff all inside my mouth um no i'm going to take off the sunglasses down because i think we're heading right now this is a very common tuned structure which you can use so so far you've got your four or five no no t motif i hope you're playing this at home you've given it a bit of rhythmic interest it's not it's okay we got that now we're gonna give this tune a structure and the easiest structure in the world and the one which you'll see all over the shop is phrase one ends on chord one phrase two ends on the dominant which in this particular case is going to be uh g because we're in c okay then we repeat phrase one again back to the tonic it's about to see then we've got to have a final phrase which brings us back down there [Music] so you've got phrase one which ends up on um tonic which are the home chord which is c phrase two which takes you to the dominant phrase three which takes you back to the home and then something which rounds the whole thing off different to the other two okay that is the shape of an awful lot of tunes and you can use that shape and you can there's all kinds of things you can do to make it more interesting but okay so let's look back at our tune now being a western i've gone to chord 3 which is e minor now this going b flat g here if i go to b flat that's called 4 of 4. if i'm in c chord 4 is f called four or four is b flat and then down to chord five that is about if i'm gonna write a western anyway sorry enough cut move on move on move on so look you can start to see the way okay how else could i vary this tune because that's just one simple way how you vary it how you develop it is kind of is where the fun kicks in [Music] so all i've done there is rather than go up up to f i've gone and then i've moved chord wise i've gone to chord three which is e minor so i've started on the e [Music] so it moves this fret this motif into a minor mode [Music] okay right start again let's do another one um better pull on these again i'm not sure this is going to work i mean i know this is uh it can be slightly off-putting because i've done this for a very long time and my brain is sort of directly wired to the keyboard which is really useful so i can think of tune and it sort of happens which saves an awful lot of hassle it doesn't always work but it sometimes does and i know a lot of you struggle with the keyboard playing thing or the improvisational thing i mean so you don't need to do that you can you know you can pick up the phone and do that i mean but more often than not i'm sort [Music] of it's fine it's fine it's fine but it's [Music] nothing raises to the forehead [Music] okay then let's transpose it up to the chord four f okay she likes i should explain sorry okay so [Music] so it's a very simple little mode it's got a rhythmic identity it's got a melodic identity [Music] now what i was doing here this is okay so so i'm going up to so i'm walking that g up so it goes this is a chord of g g b d okay i'm then raising the root so it goes a flat b natural d [Music] so you've got okay that's different but better if i had a if i had big if i had any hair big hair uh if i was called bob ross i said yeah that was a happy little accident i like that i like it because it's sort of palindromic it's got a nice shape and actually shapes are quite important with tunes [Music] so [Music] do you know and it sounds you know um do you remember chariots of fire [Music] with those geezers running in slow motion on the beach as they achieve it's that kind of tune so [Music] what do we think but if you want help with composition music technology sample libraries bringing it all together so you can write better music better songs then subscribe because this is what we do all the time and tink the little tinkly bell and then you'll get notified okay [Music] there's lots of ways this tune could have gone it just happens to have gone in a slightly chariots of fire sort of way but if i do this [Music] so and that definitely deserves the sunglasses of doubt uh do you know what oh you can't just drop creativity on the floor what are you thinking guy complete banana but i think you'll see that the the biscuits of creativity inspiration definitely work um so let me just sum all this up then there are no rules um there are guidelines and right at the heart of a memorable tune is repetition and variation there's infinite subtlety in there and you can pick that apart for weeks the harmony of your tune the chord progression is in constant conversation with the melody itself rhythmic identity of your motif is just as important as the pictures you use so start with a small number of notes create a motif that has both that has a rhythmic identity and then find ways of varying it the easiest way is to start with a phrase which ends up on chord one then repeat the phrase but make it end on chord five then repeat the first phrase which ends up in chord one again then find a way of producing a new phrase which then ends up back on call one that that little pattern has been repeated you know for millennia and you'll hear pretty much every day on the radio so look i hope you found that useful um i'd love to know uh what you think is your favorite biscuit in the comments on believe underneath of course um and i'd like to hope that you can um just follow your instinct cast off the sunglasses of doubt and write a tune you'll be proud of see you soon [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Guy Michelmore

Views: 399,045

Rating: 4.9331889 out of 5

Keywords: how to write a great melody, melody, how to write a melody, melodies, writing melodies, music, music theory, melody writing, songwriting, tips, how to write melodies, how to make melodies, composition, tutorial, how to, how to write a song, songwriter, song, tricks, tip, songs, hit, hits, how to write a tune, tune writing tutorial, guy michelmore, thinkspace education, how to make a melody, how to make a melody for a song, how to write a catchy tune

Id: 9LUQUk0hd10

Length: 24min 48sec (1488 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020