The Secret to Writing Great Melodies

what the 50 of the most popular Melodies ever written have in common it turns out there's one connecting X Factor and after listening to over 50 of the most famous ever Melodies I saw it again and again and again so in this video we're going to explore what that one secret X Factor is what it means for your music and I'll give you one simple hat for how you can harness it to create insane catchy Melodies first though I want to tell you about our brand new updated course music theory for producers 2 over 8,000 students have been through the the original version and it's helped them get signed to labels such as spinning records Armada and unity and many many more it's now completely redone and twice as effective so you can check it out below this video but first we need to quickly Go Back to Basics and understand a little bit of music theory because the answer to this problem wasn't what I expected so a Melody consists of two parts first is the Rhythm which is to say where the melody notes land in relationship to your Beats and second the pitch of each note of the melody which is pretty self-explanatory so initially I thought the X Factor lay in one of these two things that is to say are there certain rhythms that catching Melodies are hitting that normal Melodies just don't or are they using specific notes that non- catching Melodies just don't use it makes sense right if they're the only two parts of a Melody it has to be one of those things right turns out it was neither of those things let me explain we'll look at a couple of examples to help our quick side note if you work out with the xfractor is whilst we're looking at these examples let me know in the comments below training or analysis and listening skills is one of one of the best things you can do as a musician okay track number one not one of my favorite tracks but it has got an undeniably catchy Melody so I've drawn in the midi notes Here For The Melody and the chords so let's just have a quick listen and I've got them falling on a 44 beat with a kick drum you'll all recognize that so first thing let's look at the rhythm of this melody it's a very catchy Melody and why is that rhythmically so we can see here we've got 1 2 3 4 that's the normal beat on the 44 where the kick drum hits but we can see the melody notes are hitting 116th just before that beat in fact we've got a 16th here then we skip 26s then we've got another one there we skip two6 another one there and then we revert back on the third beat so let's have a listen to that again here what [Music] happens it's called syncopation and let's listen to it if it didn't have that so I'm just going to adjust these over here I'm just moving all the notes to land either on the beat or halfway between the two beats and now we've got [Music] this it's just a bit you know boring so having that syncopation really adds to the groove so there might be something in that now let's look at the pitches of the notes that he's using well if these bottom notes here are kind of the bass note and the middle note of the chord this top one is really the melody this track is in c minor and we can see how many of these C notes being hit in that Melody line so if we delete these other notes this is the melody on its [Music] own it's like four notes in total and most of it is just the root note of the track and then the third in this scale which is the e that's it and then you've got a couple of variations at the end so it's simple and it hits a lot of the route now to the track so there could be something in that but now let's look at the second track now the second track isn't one of the most po Melodies ever written but it's a personal favorite of mine so I wanted to look at it and this is the melody so with that in mind let's look at the rhythm of this melody Okay so we've still got some of these notes hitting just before the beat and that's giving it that syncopated feel again so that's both Melodies that have this you'll also notice that as with the first Melody this melody is repeating and it's quite simple not only that but we're hitting a lot of the same notes not so many as a root note we're hitting a few though but then we're just hitting the second position of the scale and then that third again again there could be something in that so what conclusion can we draw from these two examples well both use pitches from the key that you're working in but that's pretty much normal all melodies do that okay so what about Rhythm well both use what is known as syncopation that is to say the notes of the melody are playing a different Rhythm to the underlying beat which creates creat this really interesting Groove so that's the answer right syncopation wrong cuz let's look at this third example now this third track will be recognized by everyone so let's look at the melody within this I'm going to hit scale mode and we can see all of the notes in this melody are falling within that scale ah so many family weddings with this tune now in this instance this melody is a lot more sustained we don't really have that syncopated Rhythm that the other two did apart from here and we can see this note's hitting just before the beat and this one too is coming in a little bit before the beat and that's giving it that syncopated feel but mostly it's just not they're just three beats long one beat long another three beats long and then this one is 6 and 1/2 beats long anyway now let's look at the pitch if the track is in B major oh there's only one of the root notes being hit there we do however hit this third for a lot of this melody so that again is something the other two Melodies had in common okay the pitches are all in key so nothing unusual there but the melody rhythm is hitting on the beat which means it's not syncopated which means my thear is wrong at this point I was about to give up I listened to and analyzed 50 different songs and the secret X Factor was still eluding me so I decided it was time to take a break have a cup of tea and go for a walk in my local Woods [Music] whilst out I got deep bloody artists so we've got this beautiful field with these lovely flowers these lovely grass you got all these little insects crawling around and the thing that makes them beautiful is that they all work together in harmony I mean if the flowers were on their own without the green to contrast them it wouldn't look so nice and vice versa so it's all about the relationship I think that's it so with this realization in mind I rushed back home got back into the studio and started listening through these 50 tracks again and like Jim Carry and the number 23 I started to see patterns everywhere it turns out the idea that thinking syncopation was what made these Melodies catchy was right what do you mean what do you what do you mean what do you mean just not necessarily the syncopation of The Melodies themselves so let's get back into the door so first first we don't need to do anything with shape of view by edum because the Melody's already got that syncopation built in so let's go over to lean on yes we have some syncopation [Music] here but if we look at the underlying chords as well that has got a different syncopated Rhythm more like the shape of you one so now we've got two different syncopated rhythms playing over that standard 44 beat and that gives it some real Groove so now let's hop over to the dancing queen and see if we can figure out where this syncopation is happening well I've also worked out the chords and the Bas line of this so let's go into the chords and have a listen with the track playing straight away we've got that same syncopated rhythm in the chords 16th and then another 16th we're skipping two 16s to that next chord skipping two6 to the next chord and the next one so even though the melody doesn't have syncopation the underlying chords do not only that but if we look at the Baseline as well I've worked that out and again we've got this snation going on as well as lots of the root note being [Music] hit nice and it turns out this rhythmic relationship was present in everyone of the 50 Melodies I'd analyzed and another commonality which wasn't present in all of them but it was in many was Heavy use of the third position in the scale so knowing all this how can we use this to create simple and catchy Melodies well let's get on to that simple trick I promised you I like to think of this as having a really recognizable logo it should work in both color and black and white if the ratios or shapes are wrong it's not going to be a good logo and it's the same with Melodies so many times I've seen producers get rid of a Melody that almost works they've got the pitches that work with the chord progressions it's all in the same key and it sounds good but it's the melody Rhythm that they haven't got right so here's the trick for how you can design your melody in black and white to make sure it's really strong and then move into the color of the pitches as we saw syncopation is the key here either of the melody notes themselves or the underlying drums baseline or chords that's why we have to write a melody around something and before you say sometimes Melodies just come out of thin air that's right they do but think about it you always have an internal metronome playing sub consciously so in that instance you do actually already have a beat around which you're Imagining the melody anyway let's get back to the door so the way that we're going to teach this is to look at a pre-existing Melody the kind of which I hear a lot from new producers so let's have a listen to it it's got the chords and the bass as [Music] well so it's not bad we're hitting the right notes but it's just not very exciting it's not very captivating or memorable so let's break it down into both the Rhythm and the pitch and see if we can see what the problem is so if we transpose all of the notes of the melody just to the root note of the track then we've got them all falling on the a because the track is in a minor natural this allows our ears to focus just on the Rhythm in other words listening to the melody in black and white let's have a listen so it's not repeating itself and there's no syncopation it's very on the grid which gives the whole Melody a robotic feel and if we look at our base again it's falling exactly on the beat exactly the same with the chords as well and altogether this gives it a robotic feeling so let's use what we've learned today and improve this melody rather than throwing away something that's almost good so first let's just tweak the Rhythm slightly what I'm doing is I'm adding some syncopation by moving some of these notes just before the beat and I'm making sure I'm repeating the Rhythm as well just to make it more more memorable than sticking people's heads what I've also done is for the base and the chords is just move over the start point of the second chord and the fourth chord and the second bass note and the fourth bass note to come in 1/8 before the bead so Al together we've got this effect with the tweaked Melody and the cords in the base with the melody just hitting the root note of the track still and that's the hack if you can get the Melody sounding great on one note and dancing around your other elements you know that you're going to end up with a really nice melody great so now we've got the melody Rhythm sounding good let's move some of the pitches of these notes if we go over to this version we can see that I've moved some of the notes off the root of the track and I've hit scale mode to make this easier so I can just move the notes like this up and down from the root of the track which in this instance is a because the scale of the track is a minor natural and what I'm also doing is I'm using a lot of these third positions because if you remember we we saw those in a lot of the examples as well so now we've got a combination of syncopated Melody Rhythm and we're hitting a lot of the root notes and a lot of the third position notes so let's have a listen now and repetition and a little flourish there at the end and already this is way more memorable than what we started out with nice but the wild card I want to show you is that with the abat trct if we remember the melody wasn't particularly syncopated all the syncopation came from the other elements we can do that too so if we go to this last example of this melody I've got it a lot more sustained and there isn't much syncopation in there let's have a listen to that just with the kick drum so there's syub there at the end and we've got a couple of notes hitting an eighth before the beat so there's a degree of syncopation in there but really all of this groove is going to come from the base and the chords which I've added a lot of syncopation to just like in the abat trct and now let's listen to the difference I love it so to summarize the simple hack try and write your Melody all on the root note of the track Focus focusing just on the Rhythm your black and white mode then using scale mode in your Daw move the pictures of each of the notes until you got something that sounds repetitive and memorable using a lot of the root note of the track you're working in and also that third position so using the xact of syncopation in either the melody itself or the underlying elements is the key to a catchy Melody but only if you get the pitches of the notes right as well and to do that we have to go back to First principles and ask ourselves what is a Melody actually for well an amazing Melody should take our listeners on a journey and give them a truly emotional experience Rhythm alone just ain't going to cut it and there are three other factors that you have to nail if you want to create truly memorable and catchy Melodies pitch being just one of those three factors now I put them together in this video here which is going to show you how to craft five distinct emotional experiences with your Melodies but before you head over there if you found this video useful please subscribe to my channel and give it a like if you enjoyed it it really helps me out and I really appreciate it thank you so much for watching and I'll catch you at that next video where we're going to unlock emotions in your melodies

Channel: EDM Tips

Views: 35,165

Keywords: how to make melodies, how to make good melodies, how to write melodies, how to make better melodies, how to make better melodies fl studio, how to make better and more full melodies, what makes some melodies sound better than others, how to write better melodies, hack melodies, melody tutorial, beat melody tutorial, piano melody tutorial, music theory, how to write a melody, melody writing tutorial, melody writing, EDM Tips

Id: OUQES9iXk_E

Length: 14min 35sec (875 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2024