Writing quality melodies can seem daunting at times…
With so many different factors and techniques, it can be difficult to know where to start and where to go with your melodies.
However, with some guidance writing great melodies is a piece of cake.
So, we decided to break it down for you…
Tip 1: Choose the “Correct” Chord Progression
The most beautiful part about music, is that you can tell a story without a single word.
By choosing different chord progressions, we can convey different emotions to the listener.
So, before you even begin writing melodies, you must determine what emotions you want the listener to feel, and choose the progression that achieves this goal.
Think about your house. The foundation, walls, roof, and rooms are your chord progression. The furnishing and décor are your melodies. You can’t have a good home without a good foundation.
In our example, we wanted to create a happy, uplifting chord progression.
So, we used:
Fmaj – Cmaj – Amin – Gmaj (IV-I-vi-V)
Building this progression is simple:
- Layout the root notes (F, C, A, G)
- Use the 3-2 chord strategy to create the major chords
- Simply add a note above your root note with three blank notes in-between, then add another note on top of that with 2 blank notes in-between. For example: Fmaj = F-A-C
- Use the 2-3 chord strategy to create minor chords
- For example: Amin = A-C-E
Typically, major chords create a happy sound and minor chords have a darker sound.
Tip 2: Change the Rhythm of your Progression
Changing up the rhythm of a chord progression adds another flavor to it.
Referring back to our house analogy, changing up the rhythm would be like knocking a wall down to renovate your house. We aren’t tearing down the house, we are simply changing the layout.
In our example, we shortened our second chord and shifted the 3rd and 4th chords to the left. This spiced up the progression.
Now that we have our foundation, let’s make some melodies.
Tip 3: Use Melody Starters
Think about the last time you moved out. After cleaning out all the furnishings and décor, your home felt empty and didn’t feel like home anymore, right?
Well, a chord progression without a melody is going to feel empty as well. The melody turns a house into your home.
With the chord progression laid out, we know what emotion we want to invoke in our listeners. From here we can build on that emotion with our melody.
To begin writing your melody, refer to our melody starter guide.
Niko has played through thousands of popular songs and created a guide containing the most common patterns used and the emotions they convey.
To understand how to build the melodies based off the guide, you need to be able to count notes. And it’s actually a very simple process:
- Find the root note of your key
- For example: if you write your progression in Cmaj, start counting from C
- Count every white note until you get to 7
- Now you simply match the numbers in the guide with the notes on your keyboard
In our example, we used the 1-5-1(CGC), 1-7-5(CBG), and the 5-6-1(GAC) melody starters.
Tip 4: Balance your “Steps” and “Leaps”
An important aspect of melody writing is balancing your steps and leaps. But what are they exactly?
A step refers to moving up or down the keyboard by one note. A leap refers to moving up or down the keyboard by multiple notes.
Too many steps in your melody can result in it sounding like classical music, which is not what we want when writing modern melodies. Whereas too many leaps will make your melody sound all over the place.
This is why balancing the two are so crucial to writing melodies for modern songs.
In our example, we start our melody with a leap, then follow it up with a series of steps.
Tip 5: Directional Movement
Think of a picturesque landscape with mountains and valleys. Got that image in your head?
Good, now simply track the skyline with the notes in your melody and boom, you just created a great melody.
The movement of the notes along the skyline is directional movement.
A good way to create directional movement is through octave jumping.
Octave jumping is simple:
- Choose any note in your melody
- Move it up or down in the scale to the same note
- For example: move C5 to C4
- The number after the note refers to the octave
Octave jumping creates a huge leap that “opens up” your melody. In our example we octave jump from G4 to G5 and another time from C5 to C6.
Tip 6: Repetition and Variation
People enjoy repetition. But too much repetition can get boring.
Therefore, we want to create a melody that has repetition with slight variation. Think of the repeating part as your favorite ice cream flavor and the variation as the toppings. The toppings can change but we want to keep the ice cream flavor the same.
To understand repetition, we must break down our melody into eight measures. The measures are typically displayed on the top bar of your DAW.
In our example, you can see the repeating parts of the melody labeled with the letter A. Each different letter represents a different melodic pattern.
Whenever you write a catchy pattern in your melody, feel free to use it again later.
Tip 7: Amount of Notes
More notes do not equal a better melody. Sometimes a simple melody fits the situation best.
Returning to our house analogy, too much furniture and décor will make your house feel cluttered. You want to have the right furnishing in the right place.
Sometimes if your melody is sounding cluttered, you may need to go back and do some “spring cleaning” by removing any unnecessary notes. Many catchy melodies are simple.
Tip 8: Substitute Chord Types
We can change our chords by adding or subtracting notes to it.
For example, we can go from a power chord (2 notes) to a major/minor chord (3 notes) to a 7th chord (4 notes) and so on.
Adding more notes to your chord will add more texture, removing notes will “open” your chord up.
Tip 9: In-Chord vs. Out-Of-Chord
Think of each chord in your progression as a neighborhood.
In our example we have an F chord. The F chord’s “neighborhood” is FAC. The notes that are in the key of the song, but not in the neighborhood of the chord, are considered out-of-chord notes.
In our case, we are in the key of C, so the out-of-chord notes would be EGBD.
Using out-of-chord notes will add dissonance (tension) to your melody. Too much dissonance will make your melody sound off, whereas not enough dissonance will make it sound boring.
Certain out-of-chord notes will add too much dissonance in some situations. In our example we go from C to B, and it adds too much dissonance, so we will avoid using that note.
Tip 10: Grace Notes
Adding grace notes is a very simple way to spice up your melodies.
To create a grace note:
- In a sequence of two notes, take the first note and duplicate it
- Take this duplicated version and slide it just before the second note
- Its important to turn off your snap to grid in your DAW because we want the grace note to be off the grid
- Taking it off the grid allows us to move it closer to the second note
Additional Tips
Bonus Tip 1: Layer your Sounds to Cover the Entire EQ
As we create our song, we will have to layer multiple patterns on top of each other. To ensure the song feels full, you will want the sounds to cover the entire EQ (equalizer).
The EQ will show the frequencies that your sounds are covering. We want to ensure that we fill each frequency in the EQ.
Sometimes the layers’ frequencies will conflict, therefore we want to EQ out any conflicting frequencies.
In our example, we boosted the high frequencies of the song. Often, pianos can sound dull and most of their frequencies will be mid to low range.
Therefore, we can add layers on top that have high frequencies and boost the high end in the EQ to make the song sound brighter.
Bonus Tip #2: Use Filter/Volume Automation to Slowly Bring in Elements
Fading in different elements of your song is a very subtle effect that will make your songs sound much more professional.
With All These Tips and Tricks, Your Melodies Will Stand Head and Shoulders Above the Crowd!
