Writing melodies that are too "obvious"

[sweepstakes]

Also on that Terry Riley video, check the piece that starts at 37:04. At 39:12ish you'll start hear the girth I'm talking about. 

[auxien]

Also on that Terry Riley video, check the piece that starts at 37:04. At 39:12ish you'll start hear the girth I'm talking about. 

#commentsthatcouldalsobeonPornHub

[sweepstakes]

 

Also on that Terry Riley video, check the piece that starts at 37:04. At 39:12ish you'll start hear the girth I'm talking about. 

#commentsthatcouldalsobeonPornHub

Good JI really is pornographic.

[drukqs]

I'm really interested in seeing how some of those chords look on an oscilloscope or some similar way of measuring the sound. I want to see things line up as you say they do, that sounds fascinating. Whenever I try to make two out of tune notes go together like in fm8, well, they don't sound good. Maybe I haven't spent enough time doing it but I'd really like to see someone doing it.

[cruising for burgers]

As far as I know, that's it, lol. BUT there's a lot more you can do with that. For example dividing the octave based on harmonics (just intonation) instead of equal intervals (equal temperament like your standard 12-note Western octave). Or stuff like this Wendy Carlos...

 

51-note octave if I remember right. Sorry for DailyMotion but I guess this isn't on YouTube.

 

And here's some Terry Riley with some just intonation piano which sounds gorgeous to my ears.

 

Certain chords sound impossibly beefy in JI because the harmonics line up instead of getting muddy like we're used to hearing.

 

Also Aphex Twin has done this quite a bit throughout his career. And Balinese gamelan and pelog use 7 and 5 note octaves, respectively.

 

There are really weird convoluted ways to do it with a regular synth, usually involving pitch bend. Some of the old Yamaha FM synths provide a way to do this, and the Korg Monologue can also do it, either a custom 12-note octave or even the entire keyboard.

thanks for the insight! appreciate it :thumbsup:

but, how can a 5 or 7 note octave be considered microtuning if there's no intervals smaller than a semi-tone on them?

Microtonal music or microtonality is the use in music of microtones—intervals smaller than a semitone, also called "microintervals". 

[cruising for burgers]

btw, about the importance of music theory and whatnot, doesn't richard say all the time that he doesn't know shit about theory? is he trolling?

[d-a-m-o]

btw, about the importance of music theory and whatnot, doesn't richard say all the time that he doesn't know shit about theory? is he trolling?

 

I think he is

[auxien]

I don't know if it'll be helpful, and I'm sure it's not exactly unique, but I often don't really think of my process as 'writing' melodies. To me that implies a blank paper where one begins to try to express a melodic idea and expand upon it, and that's just not how I write. In fact, thinking of it can hinder the process of writing for me, I found. That's one of the reasons I really put down the guitar/bass years ago. It's almost always a blank slate sort of affair with them. To me, that's usually more harmful than inspiring.

 

In my mind and how I work over the last few years, I think of 'writing melodies' more as digging or excavating or perhaps (when I'm feeling particularly proud) sculpting them. I rarely, if ever now, craft a melody from scratch independent from any other influence. I'm always in the midst of crafting a synth sound, programming drums, modifying a chain of effects, or something of the sort, when melodies are suggested or necessary just to continue in that process: who wants to just listen to C4 on the 1 and 3 of a beat for 15 minutes while finishing a synth? Sometimes I need something short and quick and acid-y in feel for a bassline sound I'm trying to find, or a sparse mid-high melody with varying long and short decays and releases...whatever the sound and feel I'm going for (or is evolving as I experiment with the sounds) is ultimately from where the melodies are found. Buried in the swells between drum hits or interplay between long-delayed samples, whatever, that's where they usually come from for me. It also feels much more organic and that's a large part of what I try for when writing music in general.

[Guest]

Consciously making terrible melodies and harmonies can clear some of those familiar instincts and plant unintentional ideas. Just don't stop when things get difficult or boring, it's always worth it.

[thawkins]

To be honest I think sacrificing the aristocracy in order to prevent further unnecessary bloodshed in larger-scale war is a valid strategy. I have always been terrible at chess, but I guess the crucial difference with music is that chess has a fairly straightforward "winning" condition, it's less clear how to "win" in music.

 

 

Ah, OK, I appreciate you clarifying that. Yeah I was definitely overreacting there, I misunderstood that you were just speaking from your own experience with chess and not trying to say you are better than people who don't know theory at all. It's just frustrating enough when trying to learn something and there's something about theory where 1) nobody can seem to explain it well (or simply, anyway) and 2) they claim that it helps hugely when writing music or melodies.

 

 

I think maybe a good way to describe musical theory is that it's not meant to be a "predictive" theory (i.e. the general relativity theory) but instead it is a way to organize and systematize working with music. So one simple and stupid example of theory helping speed things along is when you're at a rehearsal with your bandmates and you want to explain the chord progression or something so that what everyone is playing actually sounds together as you intended. If everyone knows their Cs, Ds and Es and has some idea about intervals then you can do it much faster than playing the tune yourself repeatedly until the others get it.

When I am working on my own, I find theory to be helpful in just making quicker sense of what is going on. For instance, without the backing of theory, I would not have a good association of how intervals change the sound, and instead of transposing the piano roll down by an octave to get a bassier sound I would have to trial-and-error around like a dumbass.

But that's all the basic stuff which everyone probably already gets if eventually if they are using a DAW for a longer period of time. In general I think it's both important to read about theory and then try to apply it, because without using it and getting results your brain will not ever learn the parts that matter and instead of bicycling you would be stuck mentally moving one leg at a time and thinking what the hell.

So yeah, musical theory for me is a framework to understand and thing about music, not really a place to look for inspiration or solutions in. That's the way I see it at least.

 

Oh and by the way, I don't really get that "purity" argument. I basically understand what you are referring to, but then if I think about it a little further, then essentially every piece of musical gear that I buy (especially keyboards and guitars) has literal centuries of musical theory and development baked into it. In that sense "pure" to me means going into the woods and discovering your own thing from first principles. I guess you mean "pure" is basically learning by listening and osmosis.

[sweepstakes]

but, how can a 5 or 7 note octave be considered microtuning if there's no intervals smaller than a semi-tone on them?

 

Microtonal music or microtonality is the use in music of microtones—intervals smaller than a semitone, also called "microintervals".

Honestly I'm not sure but I think it's kind of an odd fit as a label since some of those traditions go back a thousand years or more, whereas 12TET only came around the time of Bach. As far as traditional cultures with more than 12 notes to a scale, there's a 24-tone Japanese scale for one. But I think the term is generally applied to anything non-12TET. Those in the tuning club usually refer to specific tunings (that Riley piece lists the ratio of each note, which is common) instead of "microtuning" as a whole.

[sweepstakes]

I'm really interested in seeing how some of those chords look on an oscilloscope or some similar way of measuring the sound. I want to see things line up as you say they do, that sounds fascinating. Whenever I try to make two out of tune notes go together like in fm8, well, they don't sound good. Maybe I haven't spent enough time doing it but I'd really like to see someone doing it.

Listening back to that Riley piece yesterday I felt like the natural resonance of the piano body did a lot to beef up the harmonics. Now I wonder if lots of acoustic instruments with resonating bodies were designed to ring more to compensate for the inherent beating of 12TET and therefore might get pretty vicious with a good squall of harmonics going through.

[bendish]

id rather let the interactions of sounds incidentally create 'melody' than intentionally create it. 

[YangYing]

My rule of thumb is not knowing what I'm doing.

[fxbip]

This is what worked for me:

 

1-All chords are usable.All of them.Yes all of them even that one.Just depends on the context.

 

2-Make free flow melodies without using a chord contour.Like not only making melodies out of a 3 notes chords.Free melodies are more interesting imo.Use all kind of leaps and interval.

 

3-Experiment with scales and modes.Modulation.

 

4-Chromatism.Try to use it.Compose melodies using intervals instead of staying in scale.

 

5-Improvise on keyboard.Record improvised lines in tracks.

 

6-Experiment with rhythm of melodies.Not only putting notes squarely on the first beat.Off beats melodies,weird rhythm,swing,try it all.

 

7-Microtuning.

[fxbip]

I went to school for music and took up to college senior music theory so I know a lot. Its just the use of it is hard make stuff I havent heard a million times. I need my songs to make sense harmonically its just a pet peeve when I hear a song where i can just tell who ever made it has no sense of how notes fit together at all. But music is so much more enjoyable when artists can take common motifs that you recognize but then spin it to something interesting and fresh that still has the same feel of outer movement. I used to write lots of counter points and such but im trying to learn more about using alt chords and being able to substitute for tension and then resolve things more dramatically.

You need to kill counterpoint when making electronic.

Counterpoint works for 18th century.If you follow counterpoint you will sound like 18th century.

Not for good electronic.

imo.

Electronic is a bit like free jazz in the sense that melodies should be flowing freely without having too much thinking about harmonies.

It will be felt if you respect harmonic rules.Music will be squarish and less organic.

[thawkins]

 

I went to school for music and took up to college senior music theory so I know a lot. Its just the use of it is hard make stuff I havent heard a million times. I need my songs to make sense harmonically its just a pet peeve when I hear a song where i can just tell who ever made it has no sense of how notes fit together at all. But music is so much more enjoyable when artists can take common motifs that you recognize but then spin it to something interesting and fresh that still has the same feel of outer movement. I used to write lots of counter points and such but im trying to learn more about using alt chords and being able to substitute for tension and then resolve things more dramatically.

You need to kill counterpoint when making electronic.

Counterpoint works for 18th century.If you follow counterpoint you will sound like 18th century.

Not for good electronic.

imo.

Electronic is a bit like free jazz in the sense that melodies should be flowing freely without having too much thinking about harmonies.

It will be felt if you respect harmonic rules.Music will be squarish and less organic.

 

 

Sorry, I do not buy that.

 

It is probably personal preference but I care little about music that desperately tries to be something new on a theoretical basis - by that I mean atonal music, modular synth music, analog-tubes music, pentatonic music, microtonal music, 440Hz music, vinyl/tape music. The common theme in all those examples is that they try to tag/differentiate themselves before I have even had a chance to listen to the damn thing. By putting your music under this sort of label, it feels as if you are trying to tell me that "this stuff is objectively better than the rest because reasons" and personally I would like to not have to evaluate the theory and techniques of making music along with the end result itself.

 

What I feel you are trying to tell me is that there is some new set of techniques that will make my music more "free" and "organic", but having played keyboards for 20+ years now it is already organic as hell to me. I do think it is worth to learn new techniques and ways to think about composition but on the other hand I feel that if I started out with discarding all my "traditional" knowledge and turned to  microtonics and whatever else, then I could never call the result organic, mostly because the process itself has been artificial as fuck instead of building and evolving (which I consider hallmarks of organic-ness).

 

I think you are probably right though that the availability of any kinds of theoretical mathematical tonal whatever frameworks right now is probably going to reflect in music sooner or later. But the way how music (and other creative stuff) acquires meaning in culture is through the use of context and dialogue with existing stuff, so therefore I find it very difficult to think that I could create something really good by starting from theory and looking to build something exactly opposite or drastically different from existing stuff. I find this kind of thing is interesting only as a science project, but for me personally it is important for it to have some deeper story or emotion to give. I think this is why I enjoy glitchy and cutting edge electronical music more if it is a tribute or cover of some other song I know, because otherwise it is often just some construct in a void and I can not relate.

 

I think I should probably listen to more IDM though.

 

Edit: sorry if this all seems kind of harsh, I do see a lot of point in looking at new ways to think about music and composition. It's just my personal impression that a lot of this IDM stuff is way too heavy on the theoretical side and not enough telling a relatable story side.

[xox]

Im still waiting for an electronic music equivalent of appassionata or grosse fuge...

 

sean pls

 

Edit: ae came closest but still not there imo

[Tricone RC]

Get some key changes in there. 90% of melodies you hear in this kind of music sound like you're just button-bashing chords in the same key*. Don't do it like Plaid though, they just button-bash the key changes themselves

 

Oh and don't just ratchet the key up one notch near the end and think you've done something clever. Leave that shit to S Club 7

 

 

*disclamer: I've never actually studied music so this might not make sense innit

[thawkins]

Get some key changes in there. 90% of melodies you hear in this kind of music sound like you're just button-bashing chords in the same key*. Don't do it like Plaid though, they just button-bash the key changes themselves

 

Oh and don't just ratchet the key up one notch near the end and think you've done something clever. Leave that shit to S Club 7

 

 

*disclamer: I've never actually studied music so this might not make sense innit

 

I think messing around with key changes is cool and good. Especially if you've already got a good melody and rhythm loop but it is missing some variation.

[YangYing]

something I always do is detune and automate pitch.. it's tricky to make it sound good but I love making it work

[Real Human Bean]

Oh and don't just ratchet the key up one notch near the end and think you've done something clever. Leave that shit to S Club 7

Nonsense. Truck drivers gear change is the best change.

 

[Guest Chesney]

 

 

I went to school for music and took up to college senior music theory so I know a lot. Its just the use of it is hard make stuff I havent heard a million times. I need my songs to make sense harmonically its just a pet peeve when I hear a song where i can just tell who ever made it has no sense of how notes fit together at all. But music is so much more enjoyable when artists can take common motifs that you recognize but then spin it to something interesting and fresh that still has the same feel of outer movement. I used to write lots of counter points and such but im trying to learn more about using alt chords and being able to substitute for tension and then resolve things more dramatically.

You need to kill counterpoint when making electronic.

Counterpoint works for 18th century.If you follow counterpoint you will sound like 18th century.

Not for good electronic.

imo.

Electronic is a bit like free jazz in the sense that melodies should be flowing freely without having too much thinking about harmonies.

It will be felt if you respect harmonic rules.Music will be squarish and less organic.

 

 

It is probably personal preference but I care little about music that desperately tries to be something new on a theoretical basis - by that I mean atonal music, modular synth music, analog-tubes music, pentatonic music, microtonal music, 440Hz music, vinyl/tape music. The common theme in all those examples is that they try to tag/differentiate themselves before I have even had a chance to listen to the damn thing. By putting your music under this sort of label, it feels as if you are trying to tell me that "this stuff is objectively better than the rest because reasons" and personally I would like to not have to evaluate the theory and techniques of making music along with the end result itself.

 

Good post! I too am turned off by sales techniques, because that's what they are. Yes, all these different ways of getting results are valid but not special, it's all just music and if you like it you like it, if you don't you don't, no one other person will have the exact same reason behind their taste as you.

[Auditor]

Guys, geez. It all depends on what you are trying to do with the song in question. Composing a tune with a free flowing melody, as fxbip said, works well in some contexts. In others, bringing in some classically uniform techniques such as stating a theme, variations on the theme, and recapitulation will work great. A lot of electronic music doesn't have to stray away from a single key or have any kind of development. Personal preferences will dictate how they are received, as well as the current mood of the listener. 

 

There are no rules, but I think one thing that has been stated in this thread that I completely agree with is that learning theory is not going to hinder your creative output. My opinion is, if you are going to dedicate a serious amount of time to making music, why not learn as much as you can about it? 

[Guest Chesney]

Agree, learn all you can and want, it will help if you want it to. That's not what I was saying personally, I just liked what Thawkins said about tagging the process to a product to sell it. You shouldn't need to be told how the person made something, it does not matter. It smacks of elitism and desperation to stand out.