2 many melodies?

1

187

Guest
Is it possible? 2 have one two many melodies in one song? I compose hip hop and I guess Im a melodic person (which isn't bad)BUT it's seems to take me away from what I want to do and thats hip hop! like I tend to make happy melodies that are more pop,heck sometimes I say to my self Im gonna make a banger today then walk away from the session with some classical folk,lol.Sorry I guess this is turning into two questions at once...

1 Why is it that I layer melodies to the point where it's no longer hip hop.

2 Why does it seem I make everything BUT hip hop

Two many melodies I think....

(discuss)
 
yo i feel ya
i do the exact same thing
but i don't care what it sounds like
as long as it sounds good that's all that matters to me.
cause in the end result it has a personality that only i could create.
 
lol,thats 4 sure it does sound good and like nothing else,but it's not hip hop! well not completely,there a trace.
 
lol man, I feel that. I do the same thing too. I always just blame it on skill level. Every beat I get ready to produce I'm like "ayo this ****'s gon' be baaannngin!" then when I make it my melodies get cramped, my instruments sound bunk etc and my sound doesn't come out the way I want....Stops sounding like hip hop and enters some slow melodic hippy trance vibe. I think it's cus I always try and drown out every bit of silence, when really it's the simplicity that makes a good beat bang. You gotta get rid of the habit of adding more seperate melodies. Get a main melody and work off that. Hear what the track needs before adding anything else. I know this sounds corny, but I usually think of a track like something I have to feed, like.. it's hungry. What kinda food does it want. You ever play those video games where you gotta give someone something to move on, but it has to be the right thing..if you give it something it doesn't want it starts feeling bad. lol. sorta like that? d=] (Quality over quantity thing)

You gotta keep in mind that you won't start sounding how you really wanna sound till you really get the feel for your work. Same goes for everything else.
I think of Albums as essays (or movies even). Each song is like a paragraph. If you read a lot of good writers, the **** just flows, has good vocab.. You want your writing to be like that, but have you ever started an essay and been like "aww ****, this is gonna be ill!" then it just gets all messy and never ends up sounding exactly how you want it to sound? Or if it's a long essay and you're just adding a bunch of filler to get the word count. You get the gist.

Sorry for all the cheesy analogies.
That's my 2 cents.
Peace.
 
187 said:
lol,thats 4 sure it does sound good and like nothing else,but it's not hip hop! well not completely,there a trace.
Click to expand...

if you like happy melodies and want to do hip hop, then do happy melodies with hip hop. Who says you have to follow some kind of formula?
 
Im not tryna follow any formula...It's obvious that "happy melodies" is naturally part of my soul,and they tend to come out threw music but it's not only happy melodies,I got these "beats" that are just way left field from what is hip hop,But I do have few beats that are what Im looking to do more of on a consistant basis.Im not sayin I don't like my happy ones,or melodic ones I just know that hip hop is based on samples,short phrases and stabs not 4-8 bar melodies,understand?
 
if you got all these tracks that ain't hip-hop, sample 'em. chop 'em up and use the pieces like you are sampling somebody else. then it will sound more hip hop.
 
I know what you mean.i think part of the problem is when you at home doing tracks all by yourself.i think that's important up to a certain point (for gaining the minimal level of composing skill required) but after that comes the real job i.e. producing a track for another artist.

i've noticed since i started working with someone else and incorporating their criticism into my work, that MAKING DOPE TRACKS IS EASY AS ****.

After all that time i spent composing "solid, complicated" beats (all of which the artist said he didn't like), i've realised that the tracks he AND EVERYONE ELSE likes are the most simple tracks ever.

Tracks which take me between 6-8hrs tops.Whereas I used to spend time maybe one week working on a beat.people (myself included) didn't like the older "complex" tracks as much as they like the new simpler ones.

I've now learned that the key is just the basic rhythm of a track.This actually comes from a combination of tempo and drums (i.e. how the tempo allows for the interaction of the kick and snare.)

This is the root of every track.We might think its the melody, but its actually the drums.they set the tone.I mean listening to Dr Dre one could be forgiven for thinking that melody is responsible for a dope track.

i would suggest that you focus more on rhythm i.e. drum pattern.once that's solid, simply avoid any melody/ies which obscure the "beat" generated by the drum pattern.resist the temptation to allow the melody to take the track in a different direction.only use what complements the drums coz the drums are what people will groove to.

even your drum pattern shouldn't be too complex.just a pattern that doesn't take much to figure out from a listener's perspective.like as soon as the drum comes on, you must groove to and feel the track without anything else (e.g. melody). The best thing is to try recording and producing someone else and you'll see what I mean.

I think as aspiring producers, working at home alone for hours, you get into the habit of overthinking things.
 
I would suggest you just stick to the script, do what you do, and that'll be your style, then when you get to go to a big studio and have your tracks mixed, you can work closely with the mixing engineer, on what to leave, when to do drops, stuff like that, and you'll probably have a vocalist by then who will be monopolizing some of those frequencies, you could end up making some great bridges or Timbo-style beat switches this way, and you may even be able to write songs for singers if you can do lyrics (even rap or write poems), you already got 'extra' melodies that you can lend to the vocalist
 
"you already got 'extra' melodies that you can lend to the vocalist"

^^^ I like that one,lol.Seriously good idea mabey thats what Ive been doing all along instead of writing the music Ive been "instrumenting" the vocals aswell who knows good theory tho.
 
glad I could help (yes its me, I got banned, look in Getting Started in see all the threads they closed)
 
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