major melody question, please help.

[russwasherejr]

I notice all my melodys sound like crap. I'm just completely stuck.

When making a melody does most of your melody have to contain chord letterings? For example, lets just get chords completely out of the way for now.

Say I wanna start in a Aminor, I mostly want to use the keys, a-c-e right? then d-f-g are all passing letters? this shit's so confusing to me. Every song I make just sounds the same to me and I look on youtube and i see people making songs in A minor and i'm like wtf.

If you can help i'd be appreciated.

 

[bandcoach]

So you have summed most of melodic theory in a few simple ideas:

• Chord tones
• Non chord tones and
• Passing tones, which can be broken into
  • accented (on the beat) and
  • non-accented (off the beat)

The crux of melodic writing is not to rely on any one of these 4 types of melodic function to the exclusion of all others.

In addition to these ideas the following three things come to mind

• Unison: repeating the same note
• Step-wise motion: moving up or down from the current note through a scale tone or a nearer chromatic tone (non-scale tone foreign to your current scale)
• Leap-wise motion: moving up or down from the current note through a chord tone or a non-chord tone or any chromatic tone that is further away than a step

Without an example of your melodic writing I am not sure I can offer much more

However, go and read through this thread and try to apply some of the tips to your own writing 14 tricks to improve your melodies

 

[Pumpthrust]

The OP is making this harder than it needs to be.
If you know your chords, it's easier to derive melodies from preexisting harmony than taking melodies out of thin air.

 

[bandcoach]

The OP is making this harder than it needs to be.
If you know your chords, it's easier to derive melodies from preexisting harmony than taking melodies out of thin air.

actually I thought that is what he had said initially that he was using harmony to derive his melodies

I notice all my melodys sound like crap. I'm just completely stuck.

When making a melody does most of your melody have to contain chord letterings? For example, lets just get chords completely out of the way for now.

Say I wanna start in a Aminor, I mostly want to use the keys, a-c-e right? then d-f-g are all passing letters? this shit's so confusing to me. Every song I make just sounds the same to me and I look on youtube and i see people making songs in A minor and i'm like wtf.

What he doesn't say (and what you assume to have been said but don't discuss either) is how he progresses from Am to any other chord - i.e. we only know that he is using an Am chord/key center but not what sequence or progression then follows it....

which is what led me to my own contributions

 

[Pumpthrust]

actually I thought that is what he had said initially that he was using harmony to derive his melodies



What he doesn't say (and what you assume to have been said but don't discuss either) is how he progresses from Am to any other chord - i.e. we only know that he is using an Am chord/key center but not what sequence or progression then follows it....

which is what led me to my own contributions

You're right, BC. We need an audio example.