How to come up with a melody?

How to come up with a melody? There are many different ways – from purely intuitive to completely conscious. For example, sometimes a melody is born in the process of improvisation, and sometimes the creation of a melody turns into an intellectual process.

Try encrypting your date of birth, the name of your girlfriend, or your mobile phone number in the melody. Do you think this is impossible? You are mistaken – all this is real, but the problem is to make such a melody beautiful.

 Songwriters and ditties, and not just beginners, often hear from music producers, publishers and other professionals in this field phrases that the melody is not particularly attractive, the song lacks catchy, memorable motives. And you don’t need to be an expert to understand whether a particular melody touches you or not. The fact is that there are certain techniques on how to come up with a melody. Find, learn and use these techniques, then you will be able to create a melody that is not simple, but “with character”, so that it amazes listeners the first time.

How to come up with a melody without an instrument?

In order to come up with a melody, it is not at all necessary to have a musical instrument at hand. You can simply hum something, relying on your imagination and inspiration, and then, having already reached your favorite instrument, pick up what happened.

The ability to come up with melodies in this way is very useful, because an interesting idea can come to you suddenly and anywhere. If the instrument is at hand, and no one around you is against your creative search, then it is better, nevertheless, to try to play different versions of the future melody. Sometimes it can be like panning for gold: you have to weed out a lot of bad options before you come up with a tune that suits you.

Here’s one piece of advice! Don’t overdo it – just record good versions, without playing the same thing 1000 times in the hope of improving something. The goal of this work is to come up with as many “normal”, rather than “golden”, long melodies as possible. You can fix it later! One more piece of advice, more important: don’t rely on inspiration, but approach things rationally. Decide on the tempo of the melody, its rhythm, and then select notes in the desired range (narrower if smoothness is important and wider if volume is important).

The simpler the melodies you come up with, the more open you are to people

The simple truth is that novice authors often overcomplicate the process of writing a melody, trying to cram the impossible into one unfortunate melody. Don’t make her fat! Let there be one thing in your melody, but very bright. Just leave the rest for later.

If the result is a melody that is difficult to sing or play (and often even for the author himself), and which the listener cannot fully remember, then the result is no good. But conveying one’s feelings to the listener is the main goal of the writer. Try to make your melody easy to hum, so that it does not have large and sharp jumps up or down, unless of course you are trying to come up with a melody similar to a cardiogram.

The title of the song can be distinguished from its melody

The most “catchy” place in the lyrics of a song is often the part where the title is somehow present. The part of the melody corresponding to this place in the text should also be highlighted. There are several ways to do this:

• Changing the range (the title is sung using lower or higher notes than those heard in other parts of the melody);
• Changing the rhythm (changing the rhythmic pattern in the place where the name sounds will emphasize and highlight it);
•  Pauses (you can insert a short pause immediately before the musical phrase containing the title).

Combination of melody and text content

Of course, in a good piece of music all components are in harmony with each other. To make sure that your melody fits the words, try recording the melody on a voice recorder or computer. This can be either an instrumental version or a cappella (the usual “la-la-la”). Then, as you listen to the melody, try to determine what feelings it makes you feel and whether they match the lyrics.

And one last piece of advice. If you have been unable to find a successful melodic move for a long time; If you are stuck in one place and the melody is not moving forward, then just take a break. Do other things, take a walk, sleep, and it’s quite possible that insight will come to you by itself.