10 Melody Starters to Spark Inspiration
Who Doesn’t Love a Good Melody?
The best musicians become big because their melodies are memorable and awesome. They hit the sweet spot in how many notes, the types of notes chosen, and rhythm of those notes. They also tend to keep it simple – something you can hum. Ask yourself real quick what your favorite songs are. Do you like the melody in it? I’d bet my DAW licenses you do. If you are a music producer or song writer then we highly suggest you read closely to start writing melodies like your favorite artists.
So when we’re writing melodies, we’re either playing on an instrument, or drawing in our DAW. But here’s the thing, there are certain patterns that we can follow to combine together and make really catchy melodies with. This is of course going to start on the piano and we’ll make it easy by showing you in C Major (all the white keys). You’ll see that we have numbers moving left to right on the piano below to describe the different melody starters.
These melody starters systemize how to quickly get inspired and write catchy melodies fast. Here are the numeric sequences to combine together to make new melodies over a chord progression:
- 2-3-5
- 5-6-1
- 1-4-5
- 7-1-5
- 1-6-5
- 1-3-5-2
- 1-6-7-1
- 1-6-5-1
- 1-6-5-2-1
- 2-1-5
Melody Starter Experimentation
Pick a few of these, and sort them in your DAW. You may get inspired the second you play these over some chords. Don’t feel discouraged if it’s not perfect at first because a lot of this could turn into trial and error. The most important part is starting with a few of these melody starters to give you the momentum to finish music.There are several ways to experiment here, and we highly recommend you watch our video to see this in action.
Midi Note Length
Adjusting the notes length in these melody starters can totally impact the result. This is because the settings in the sounds you choose will impact how the midi will sound so it’s important to consider concepts like ADSR (attack, decay, sustain, and release). A slow attack will delay when the midi is triggered. A short decay could make the sound pluckier. A short sustain could make shorter notes sound shorter than their length. A short release will make a sound stop quicker when the note ends. The opposite holds true when these notes are longer. The flexibility you can achieve from choosing different sounds with these melody starters can get pretty cool when you flip through several presets after, or if you choose a sound first and then write your melody. Neither route is incorrect!
Rhythm
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Automation
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