Write a Good Melody
First, what is a good melody? Well, let's compare it to literature! Everyone knows that each and every word has its own meaning, if you put them together they can make sentences which can make stories. If you're really good, words can form a good novel. It's exactly the same with tones. Every tone has the potential of making you feel certain emotions, put them together and you they tell you a story through emotions. So whereas words gives tells concrete stories, melodies tell emotional and abstract stories! This is a guide to make them.
Contents
Steps
- Be patient! Never expect it's easy to make a good melody! Even a poor, poor pop-song is quite tricky, be extremely careful with going into genres like psychedelic-whatever if you haven't got the drive to take your time with a melody! Remember: Melodies are 100% mind-work (the guitar or the piano won't give you any melodies!) Take your precious time, and let the song develop in your head bit by bit! If you want to make a melody that's both good art, and catchy, then give it at least a month!
- Have an experience! Please, don't just make something! The complexity of the emotions are vital in terms of making a solid melody! You need inspiration and experiences to get the right mix of feelings! Something from your life will do, another great source is in fact dreams and nightmares...
- Focus on what you like! What sort of music do you like? Ask yourself: What do I want my song to sound like? This gives you a great starting-point!!
- Concentrate about emphasizing feelings through sound! Melodies are emotional text, remember? This is why you need an experience!! By the way, don't be afraid of using bottomless sadness in your melody, that's just a good idea!
- Try to make that first little tune. Just start somewhere, it's not going to be a legendary song straight away, but it can become one if you just have the drive!! A little advice for starting: Good melodies tends to use a lot of tones in a short period of time!! Try to make something that's not thudding!
- Sing the tune to yourself now and then. This process is the main part and helps your brain to find the magic in the tune you have made. The more you do this, the better the melody gets. (NB! Don't sing it out loud, sing it to yourself in your head during this process!)
- Let it naturally develop in your mind! Well, this is the result of the last step!
- If you got two or three of these tunes, make them merge! Sometimes the tunes sound too equal, but if you put them together you get one great melody, instead of a handful of bad ones!
- Try to fail with rhythms and instrument in your head! Trying and failing is 90% of the process, a boring fact, but it pays off!
- When it's there, sing it or play it to yourself! Now you know how it sounds like in the real world! Great!!
- Give it some lyrics as well! You should do this because you know what sort of word that fits to the melody!! (Of course, we all like instrumentals, but give them some lyrics if you feel that's appropriate)
- Obviously, practice makes perfect! Surprise?
- Let your dearest ones listen to your song! Not everyone, please, but someone who can give you their honest and constructive opinions!
Tips
- Never give up!! You will improve with practice!!
- Try to not be artificial!! I know many people like ballads and stuff, but to me it's only the melody that can properly emphasize the emotions!! Remember that when you're making them!
- Make many melodies, as well as giving it all on each one of them!!
Warnings
- Don't pick the genre or style of your melody/song just because of what's popular!! This is stupid and dumb!! Be creative.
- Always check your songs for plagiarism!! What I mean by that is that there is a big chance that your melodies are embarrassingly equal to one or a few other melodies! It might not even be on purpose!! There is absolutely nothing worse than copy/paste songs!
- Drugs don't improve anything.
