How to Make An Incredible Melody

C

caycay

New member
Im generally trying to get better at making really good melodies....I was wondering if anyone had any tips to writing really great melodies?

I know some tips are: rhythm, repetition, using call and response, and shape...

I was wondering if there was a certain shape that a melody would have that would make it sound better?

Also, I wondering if there are any other tips to making really good melodies?

Any help appreciated
 
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For me a once a melody gets going it just finishes itself. Its all about getting the start flowing. But I'm sure other peoples heads work in different ways. Try listening to a song you like and take the first 2 or 3 notes of a melody and completely change it for yourself. By the time your done it won't even be anything like the original, let alone a steal. Assuming you at least used some form of creativity..
 
Learning a little bit of species counterpoint can help. You don't need to know how to write fugues, but some little rules like compensating for leaps, passing notes, putting dissonances off the beat and consonances on the beat, good shape etc are really helpful.

That, and knowing how to write good chord sequences
 
scrapheaper said:
Learning a little bit of species counterpoint can help. You don't need to know how to write fugues, but some little rules like compensating for leaps, passing notes, putting dissonances off the beat and consonances on the beat, good shape etc are really helpful.

That, and knowing how to write good chord sequences
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and do not forget that part of the art of species counterpoint is to put dissonance on the beat and resolve it off the beat

see this much earlier thread on the subject

https://www.futureproducers.com/for...esign/countermelody-counterpoint-what-374547/
 
Teksaur said:
Huh? All this dissonance this and counterpoint that I making my head spin. lol
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Counterpoint is difficult and complicated to learn, but it's worthwhile.
Essentially, it's the 16th century method for writing multiple singable melodies that can be played at the same time and sound independent from one another.
The obvious example of this is pachabel's canon in D major, but there are thousands of others.
Make sure you know your intervals first, then go and have a google or a youtube about 'first species counterpoint'. Then write some simple first species counterpoints.
Then move onto second species, third species, fourth species, etc.

The species counterpoint rules aren't the only method of melody writing, but they are helpful and once you know the rules, you can make exceptions.
 
that is because of your stated knowledge not because of your demonstrated skills

ps I dispute that counterpoint is hard to learn

it is repetitive, it is tedious at times, it can be annoying when no solution is to be found to following the rules, but it is not hard if you can understand simple instructions and injunctions and already know and understand intervals and their construction

2ndly, counterpoint has three golden ages: Renaissance (16th C), Baroque (17th and 18th C) and 19th/20th century; each builds on the former and extends the craft into newer more chromatic directions
 
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