Im a bit confused when it comes to scales and melodies...

A

AD1

New member
What's good everyone?

I been teaching myself music theory for the last year or so

I'm confused about writing melodies and I know rules can be broken in music

Lets say a track I'm working on has an A minor scale when Im working on the melody do i have to play the keys in order or can I play them in any order as long as I revert back to the tonic or ?

That's what I'm a bit confused about

any help is greatly appreciated.

Peace & Love
 
Generally speaking, it's best to start and end each phrase on a note that belongs to the current chord, and make any long notes belong to the chord as well.

Rules of counterpoint say:

Move up and down by single steps of the scale at a time or
Make leaps of a third two scale steps)

If you make a leap larger than a third, you have to go back at least a little in the opposite direction.
So if your melody goes jumps up from C4 to G4, you then can't go up to A4 or B5 etc above, you have to go down the scale.

There are other rules but it's quite hard to explain them in a post

This guy did a fairly good tutorial on it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcqrGLvs95M&list=PL4CC5A9C4240016F0&index=2
 
AD1 said:
What's good everyone?

I been teaching myself music theory for the last year or so

I'm confused about writing melodies and I know rules can be broken in music

Lets say a track I'm working on has an A minor scale when Im working on the melody do i have to play the keys in order or can I play them in any order as long as I revert back to the tonic or ?

That's what I'm a bit confused about

any help is greatly appreciated.

Peace & Love
Click to expand...

scrapheaper's advice is definitely a good place to start. Here is a key to writing modern melody and/or chord progressions:

1) start on the root (otherwise known as the "tonic", or first scale degree)

2) move to the dominant (otherwise known as the "fifth" or fifth scale degree)

3)move to the supertonic (otherwise known as the "second" or second scale degree)

This movement of notes is known as a 2-5-1. It provides a very strong "resolution" or consonant sound (pleasant to the ear). When combined with the correct rhythm, you will notice that much of today's music is written in this format.

A good thing to do is to learn about various types of chord progressions and see how their movement dictates the mood. At some point you may want to explore jazz chord voicings because this will greatly improve your understand of how to communicate mood through chordal tone.

As far as songwriting, this guy has an excellent blog with great information for beginner to intermediate song writing material:

The Essential Secrets of Songwriting | Daily Articles by Gary Ewer

Be sure to check the archived blog entries for past topics.
 
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