Today we’re going to look at movement from one note to another in steps and leaps, but before we do that, here’ s a definition:

Melody - a linear succesion of notes that the listener hears as a whole musical entity.

That’s just off the top of my head, I’m sure we could come up with more detail but at its heart, a melody is a linear sequence of notes that sound like they’re joined together. For a melody to make sense we usually use a set group of notes, for example the major scale. This post is all about how you can move from one note to another, and what you might think about as you decide which notes to use.

Disclaimer

The rest of this post is going to show some different ways of setting the same words and pick apart the different options in a considered manner. This probably isn’t how anyone would actually write a melody. Probably you’d get to the melody through improvisation and trial and error. That’s how I usually write as well, but taking time out to think about your options can be a great way of improving your melody writing when you do come to improvise.

Stepwise movement

Example one makes use of a line of lyrics I’ve had hanging around for a while, but haven’t done anything with:

‘They broadcast my birthday on a numbers station, I still don’t know what it means’

For this example I’ve chosen to use the key of A minor, so the notes we’ve got to choose from are A B C D E F G A

Download Numbers Example 1

This melody centres around an A note for the first four bars, during the A minor chord. It then moves down to an F note during the D minor chord and an E note during the E minor chord. There are occasional G notes, and only one instance, the movement from the G to E in the third bar, where the notes don’t move in step.

This works as the beginning of a melody. My note choices are based mostly on chord notes, and by sticking to mostly stepwise motion, I’ve created a downward contour that makes sense.

However, while the melody moves, it doesn’t have the breadth of emotion that it could have. If you want a more expressive melody, some well judged leaps are what you need.

Taking a leap

If I’m going to emphasise the emotion of the line, I need to decide which are the most emotive words. I think both the end of the line, and the words ‘numbers station’ are most important, which example two should emphasise.

Download Numbers Example 2

With this example, I’ve put a leap from the G to C for the word numbers, and a leap from A to E for the word ‘know’. A leap is more expressive, and having successive, growing leaps helps to create an emotional climax in your melody. A word of warning though – too many leaps and they loose their effect because the notes start sounding disjointed and note part of a sinlge linear melody. That might be the effect you want, but if not leaps need to be mixed carefully with stepwise motion.

A complete melody

Neither one of the two examples above work as a complete melody, they’re fragments really, but running the two one after the other has a pleasant shape that I think works pretty well:

Download Numbers Example 3

Conclusion

To sum up, whatever scale you’ve chosen, it’s important to have the right mix of steps and leaps. Most of your melody will move in steps, with leaps there to create a sense of growing climax – the larger the leap, the larger the climax. Too many leaps and the notes will sound unconnected. That’s the effect you hear when an instrument is playing arpeggios – for example the highest notes in each arpeggio might sound as if they form a melody, even though the instrument is actually playing a series of leaps. You might want an effect like that, in which case leap away. But for a linear melody, use them sparingly.

And for the comments

I can think of a few famous melodies that make use of a well placed leap in pitch. The opening of Somewhere Over the Rainbow is a classic example. What other examples are there?

Easier to define is an effective melody. An effective melody will:

• Mostly move in step (C to D) with only occasional leaps (C to G)
• Be rhythmically coherent – not using too large a variety of note values
• Have a well defined tonal character (major scale, minor scale, one of the modes)
• Have a clear structure, divided into clear phrases, often related to multiples of 4 (four lines of four bar phrases for example)
• Make use of call and answer phrasing (First half ends unresolved on D, Second half resolves on C)

Those sort of ideas will give you a melody that works, but we’ve all heard melodies that work without being outstanding.

What makes a good melody?

Gary Ewer has some good ideas here.

What would you say is the secret to a good melody?

I haven’t finished yet, I’m about halfway. However, I’ve recorded some sketches, so I thought I’d share the process with you.

Sketch one – The chorus melody

Something interesting happened as I was writing the lyrics. The music started to come to me anyway, even though it was just me, the pen and the paper. It became clear that the rhythm of the words fit with a 6/8 time signature, and would sound something like the first section off the video.

Sketch two – Verses, choruses and some instrumental ideas

I haven’t quite defined them yet, but there are going to be some twiddley guitar parts centred on arpeggios of the root minor chord and the second diminished chord.

The verses also use those chords, but with an extra major sixth in the minor chord to contrast with the minor sixth of the scale in chord 2. This allows me to emphasise those notes in the melody, moving from the B to a Bb and then A, G, D. A couple of chromatic notes give’s the music a dark feel, which matches the mood nicely.

Sketch 3 – Middle eight and final chorus

The middle 8 is longer than 8 bars, and takes a simple idea through three different keys. This matches the rising tension as they try to Exorcise Marjorie.

The final chorus is in the major key instead of the minor. That’s a simple idea but not one I often use. Marjorie is now free of her demons so the music reflects her new hope.

Hopefully the song will be finished some time soon. When it is, I’ll share it with you.

What he does is take a tiny melodic fragment from three well known songs and plays them one after the other in the same key to create a new melody.

Is that cheating? No, I don’t think so. After all, he’s only using tiny little melodic fragments that will have been used countless times in different melodies. It’s no different from using standard chord shapes or progressions. It’s also something I’ve never tried before:

Iron Maiden are one of my favourite bands, and one of the most influential heavy metal bands ever. A great post over at ‘Troll in the Corner’ got me thinking about them, and listening to some of my favourite Maiden songs.

Fear of the Dark, the title track from their 1992 album, the last before Bruce Dickinson left (temporarily) to pursue a solo career.

It’s far from Maiden’s longest song, but at seven and a half minutes it’s a masterclass in how to manage pace and momentum over longer periods of time.

I want to point out two great ideas that could be applied to songwriting in any genre.

• Changing tempo – changing tempo is one of Maiden’s trademarks. This happens several times in Fear of the Dark, most notably at 2 minutes into the video, and in the second chorus at 3.18. They almost always change suddenly, which isn’t the only way to do it, but changing tempo in your songs can be a very effective way of adding contrast.
• Harmonic rhythm – or the pace at which the chords change. The first verse (2.20) and the second verse (2.58) have the same melody, but listen to the chord changes. The chords change twice as often in the second verse compared to the first. This is another great technique Iron Maiden use to build the pace and interest within the second.
• A static riff over a moving bassline. That first riff at 2 minutes involves the bass changing chords while the guitars play a static three note riff.
• The ABA middle section. A common feature of middle sections in heavy metal is the ABA structure. In this song we have a guitar melody as section A, guitar solos as section B, then a modified repeat of section A with the added ‘Fear of the Daaaark!’ vocal.
• A riff and chorus you can sing along with – Maiden have reached the point where they can literally draw hundreds of thousands of people to concerts, but even in their early days they wrote songs that seemed designed for stadium audiences to sing along with. What does that involve? – lots of repetition, and often melodies based on either the first notes of the aeolian mode, or chord notes.

None of these ideas are unique to Maiden or to metal, and can definitely applied to songwriting in any genre.

Have you got yourself a copy of my ebook ‘Worksheets for the Songwriting Guitarist’? Sign up to the mailing list to get your copy:

It’s from this website.

First off, let me make clear that I have a very low opinion of sales pages like this one. I know they’ve been shown to work, that they’re ‘good marketing,’ but I really don’t like them.

However, don’t take that us an opinion of the book, as I haven’t read it, I’ve just seen the video.

A few thoughts occured as I watched, and I made some rough notes:

• The narrator equates artistic worth with ‘lyrical depth’. Personally I would argue that lyrics are not the main conveyor of meaning in popular song – meaning comes from other parts of the song as well.

• Suggesting that ‘Satisfaction’ by the Stones has lyrical depth is probably pushing things.

• The Cardigans hook is great, but I want more meat in this analysis. For example, the hook is not just the guitar part, it’s the combination of a relatively static two pitch guitar riff over a moving chord progression. The rhythm of the guitar riff – emphasising beats 2 and 4 like the snare drum, probably has something to do with it, as does the A A A B structure of the riff.

Hooks are generally good because they emphasise or play with our expectations.

Take that fantastic Satisfaction guitar riff – yes it has only three pitches and a really unique timbre, but we can say more than that.

For a start, the chords underneath are E and A. The riff follows the chords starting on a B note in the E chord before moving through a Csharp to a D. When we come to the A chord the guitar is playing a D, creating an A sus4 chord that then resolves to the Csharp and a straight A chord.

So it’s taken a suspended chord we’re very used to from choral music (and lots of other styles) and transposed it to a rhythm and blues setting.

The Kylie Minogue hook is worth mentioning because the meat of it is so wonderfully simple – all those off beat notes, plus a melody that traces a simple line between two chords that are a fifth apart – just like in Satisfaction.

I’ve only watched the one video from this website, and they definitely look worthwhile. Whether the ugly sales page is a good move is up to you.

This is the opening section of a new Ebook I’m writing ‘How to Harmonise’.

What Does Harmonise Mean?

The most common subject people search for on www.songwright.co.uk is ‘how to harmonise’. When I talk to people, they seem to mean two slightly different things by this: how to add chords to a melody, or how to add vocal harmonies to a melody. These are similar concepts that both contain the idea of harmony, or more than one note sounding at the same time. Both also pre-suppose the existence of a melody. The idea of vocal harmony, however, concentrates on linear movement – parallel lines of melody weaving together – wheras chords are a vertical idea – blocks of notes changing from bar to bar.

When I was studying music I was taught a hugely simplified history of how harmony developed: monks singing plainchant in medieval Europe moved from unison song, with everyone singing the same note, to two notes at a time. As music developed through the Rennaissance systems of contrapuntal music developed, with different lines of melody weaving together. As time went on this was replaced with a system that put more emphasis on vertical chords, and the whole tonal system of scales and chords came into being. Composers noticed that their interweaving lines came together to form specific groups of notes, chords, that sounded good, so rather than thinking only in terms of the horizontal melody, they could start by thinking of the chords then ‘fill in’ the appropriate notes.

I don’t doubt that this history is so simple as to be incorrect, but this book isn’t about history. The only point I want to make is that the two ideas, of vocal harmony and putting chords to a melody, are not in fact different. If you want to know how to harmonise vocals, you will need to know which chords are being used. Liewise, if you want to put chords to a melody, you will need to consider not only which chord, but how to arrange vocal melodies and other important elements (such as the bass line) to fit the chord.

Simply put, ‘harmony’ is more than one note at the same time. Usually it means combinations of notes that sound good together, but what we mean by ‘good’ can change – you might want your music to sound ‘unharmonious’ and discordant. Achieving that also requires a knowledge of harmony.

Some basics :- Intervals and Drones.

Harmonising At An Interval

Here are the first few notes of the major scale:

Ex1.

Download Example 1

There are lots of ways I could harmonise this. I could use octaves, the same note but at double the frequency. This is what you might hear if a male and female singer were singing the same melody:

Ex2.

Download Example 2

Another common harmony is in ‘thirds’. If C is the first note, E is the third along. If D is the first, F is the third. So ‘thirds’ simply means adding the note that is two ‘up’ the scale. You can find this easily by singing the correct ‘third up’ harmony note E and singing up the same melodic contour.

Ex3.

Download Example 3

You could also do the same by going up a fifth (ie treating C as the first and starting on G), or down a third:

Ex4.

Download Example 4

Ex5.

Download Example 5

This is a basic idea that singers might have started with when music was first developing and it forms one of the most important ideas for harmonising your songs. The important point to take away is the idea of parellel lines a slight gap apart. Harmonising with a third above is by far the most common form of vocal harmony in pop song. The concept of going up a third is also a vital one in forming chords, which we’ll come to later.

Drones

Lots of musical genres, for example Indian music, use a drone to provide a harmonic basis to a melody. The most simple version of a drone is a single note, plus its fifth, for example G and D. These could be repeatedly plucked on a string instrument or played as sustained notes. A melody can be played over the top.

Ex6. Download A Drone in G

Drones can be very effective for certain moods and they also illustrate a very important concept. Unlike harmonising at an interval, where we followed the contour of the melody completely, changing harmony note when the melody changed, here were have a harmonic layer underneath the melody that does not change at all.

Things To Try

1. Take a melody you know well and try harmonising at an octave, a third, a fifth and so on.
2. Get a drone going using a keyboard or sequencer, or just use the one I’ve provided in example 6. try improvising melodies over the top.

Mailing List

This post is just the first draft of the first page of the new ebook I’m writing called ‘How to Harmonise’. For regular updates (and absolutely no spam) why not sign up to the Songwright mailing list:

I watched Eurovision 2009 on Saturday. I even drank Bucks Fizz and managed to get through the interminably long scoring section without getting bored and turning over.

I’ve watched Eurovision for the last three or four years, and the standard is getting better. Now the rules have been changed to mollify the geographical bias of some countries, it’s nearer to being a song competition than it has for a while.

Were there any world beaters this year? No, even the best songs were merely okay. For this post, let’s take a look at the winner ‘Fairytale’ by Alexander Rybak to see if there are any songwriting ideas worth taking.

I know, I know. He’s obviously cut from the same charmingly-ugly mould as Zac Efron – he’s got the sort of face that little girls love and everyone else wants to hit. That was an unfortunate factor in his favour, as this probably wasn’t the best song of the night. However, it is a catchy little number.

• Chords: The song is in Dm and uses just the one chord progression: Dm Gm Bb A. This is a very strong, familiar chord progression. The basic journey from I to VI to V in a minor key (eg. Dm Bb A) has been used in countless songs and has a vaguely ‘folk’ feel to it.

• Bass Line: Again, very strong and familiar – constant motion from root to fifth and back again on every chord.

• Violin refrain: Another folky element, the violin refrain with it’s constant pedal note on the A string. This we hear at the beginning of the song and after every chorus, including a small solo section after the second. It usesjust three notes apart from that open string: E F and G.

• The Chorus Melody: Placed right at the top of Rybak’s voice, to make it sound passionate. This melody uses only E F and G and is simple and memorable enough to be catchy.

• The Lyrics: These scan well enough for English written by a non-english speaker. Personally I’m much happier when the lyrics are in native languages, but that’s just me. The verses almost tell a story. Well… in the first verse he’s in love with his fairytale, in the second they argue a bit… and that’s it.

• The Arrangement: There are some nice little moments, such as the pause before the second chorus. But like almost every song in this competition, Fairytale just fizzle’s out after the second chorus. There’s no attempt at a bridge or any real contrast and after the solo violin refrain it just leaps into another chorus.

If you’re looking for songwriting ideas to steal, the chord progression and bass line are up for grabs, as is the use of a recurring refrain. Placing the chorus melody at the top of your singer’s range can also be very effective if you want the song to sound passionate and heartfelt.

The ultimate effect of the song, given it’s week arrangengement after the second chorus, is to leave you feeling frustrated. Yes it’s a nice little chorus, yes the song mixes pop and generic folky elements well, but where’s the beef? Where’s the emotional journey. It might be pop, but that doesn’t mean you can short change the listener by not going anywhere.

To be fair, only a couple of songs in the competition did have anything to say after the second chorus, one of them Iceland’s contribution, the other the Uk’s, both of which I might write about in the next two posts.

I’ve been known to complain about songwriting er… writing. My biggest gripe is those posts that confuse songwriting with lyric writing and imply that all you need think about are the words you use.

But of course lyrics, while not the whole thing, are very important. So here’s a great post about rewriting your lyrics by Andrea Stolpe

Post 1 - Quick Rewriting Tips

I particularly like her advice on using specific, interesting verbs, rather than generic ones.

On the subject of lyric writing, Gary Ewer has some thoughts on whether lyrics should rhyme:

Post 2 -Should my lyrics rhyme?

He makes an interesting point about the dangers of rhyming for the sake of rhyming.

The danger of rhyming lyrics is when the rhyming seems forced. If you find yourself giving up on a more natural way of saying something in favour of a rhyming but forced lyric, you can make your song seem a bit corny.

I couldn’t agree more. After all if you’ve a word that absolutely conveys your meaning, that doesn’t quite fit your rhyme scheme, it will still often be preferable to a less expressive, but easily rhyming word. Rhyming itself can make a lyric seem easy and safe, which isn’t always a good thing.

Gary also makes the point that lyrics are not the only way of conveying meaning to reader. I’d go further and suggest that ini pop music the words are very rarely the primary conveyer of meaning. we get more musical meaning from melody groove and harmony than we do from most pop music lyrics, even when the words are well written.

But that’s a big subject for a bigger blog post.

Post 3 – A very good place to start

This post from Songwritten has some interesting things to say about melody, including a list of ‘Manic Melodic Methods’.

Melody is the most important part of your song, at least most of the time, and it’s always worth thinking hard about.

That’s all i have for this morning, but if you’ve seen any good songwriting articles recenty, let me know!

Oh, and you’ve got a copy of my free ebook, right?

Melodic Shape 1

Melodic Shape 2

Melodic Shape 3

They’re about three types of melodic shape that Jerry calls ‘Line’, ‘Circle’ and ‘Square’.

I’m not sure if I would have picked those particular shapes for his examples, but the principles he’s talking about are sound and should help you get a handle on the type of melodies you want to write.