This Skeleton Can Write a Better Melody Than You
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- Опубликовано: 12 июн 2024
- How to write a melodic skeleton to give your line satisfying structure and contour.
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Got it. To write better melodies, become a skeleton. Always knew flesh was weighing me down.
Glad my point was clear
Sounds like you made a joke
There's no bones about that!
@@jamesgrey13 bone-
hard
Conciousness is also kinda overrated
"I hear a lot of melodies from student composers that seem to go nowhere. They just aimlessly revolve around the same pitch center and don't have a satisfying contour and basically they just feel stuck".
Wow, never have i ever felt so targeted in 10 seconds of video !
Great stuff as always Ryan, thanks for this video !
I felt called out 😅
Keep working, it's just a momentary phase of learning ! Then, get ready to fly when you've got it right !
Step 1: opening pitch on I chord (principal notes):
Root =Stability/Tension
3rd=Least stable/most mobile
5th= Controlled Tension/Balanced force
Tip: Don't overthink your selection
Step 2: melodic cadence (last 2 notes):
Option 1: II - I
Option 2: VII - VIII
Steps 1 and 2 set up the beginning (step 1) to reach a goal to achieve (step 2 )
Step 3: outline a contour
Draw in the air then sketch on the staff then fill out with notes in between
Tip: Don't overthink your selection. See it as a guideline to help give direction but you don't have to be so strict with it.
Step 4: Write Melody (9-16 notes)
Write 4-5 at a time
Wide leaps (try to prep and resolve)
2 leaps in a row, one of them should be a 3rd
Avoid leaps of tritone or where lowest and highest notes =tritone
No tones should appear +3 times in a line
Prepare and Resolve wide leap
Pre= step into 1st note then leap into opposite direction
Res= Step away from 2nd note in leap in opp direction
Hit Apogee (do not approach or leave by leap) and Perigee once (okay to approach/leave by leap)
Make it singable
love this!
I believe for the apogee, the guidance is, “do not approach AND leave by leap,” but doing one OR the other is fine.
Root would not be a tension note. It'd be a resolution note, so that's wrong.
Option 2 there is no Roman numeral VIII. 8 is One or root.
@@AFRoSHEENT3ARCMICHAEL69 right thx
I like to think we all have a skeleton within us
As a wise Count once said, bones, bones, bones, bones, there're bones inside of you. Bones, bones, bones, bones, more than just a few.
If you will it, it is no dream.
This video came in like a message from the universe. I was just struggling to write a melody because of structural problems. Hope this video helps!
Thank you for this one! There’s a piece I wrote a while ago where I was really unsatisfied with the most important section. I’ve gone back now and wrote a couple drafts using this technique and it’s helping tremendously.
I've already experimented with drawing contours on staff paper, but those "rules" you mention, and that concept of a skeleton with those chosen notes as anchor points sounds great! I'll try it out! Thanks, Ryan 🙂
This is still by far the best music channel on RUclips. The man just doesn't miss
I have the same feeling. This is my most favorite RUclips channel regarding to learn composition in the philosophy of building (up) music for "programmed music" (theater and film music or for emo-athmospheric creation by music sculpting).
👉 You’ve got your first 8 bars! But now what?? ruclips.net/video/P4482yK_s4o/видео.html
LOL That Skeleton could before I took your course, now I can give him a run for his money. You helped me learn to write better melodies-Thanks Ryan
Plz more like this! Thanks Ryan!
Thanks for another great video Ryan. I really appreciate content like this from you. As a beginner, it is sometimes hard to zero in on some important/key messages from books like this. So getting a viewpoint on topics like this feels like a jumpstart. I'm still primarily focused on the Hooktheory books right now, but Harmony Through Melody is in my library and once I've started reading in earnest I'll be paying particular attention to the points you've made. Looking forward also to your new short course! Nov 1st! See you there 🙂
Thanks Mark! I've only read the first dozen or so chapters but it's a good book. Definitely a different tone than the HookTheory ones for sure
Thanks Ryan! I’m pretty devoid of musical talent, and have been struggling to add intentional decisions into my writing process. I’ve tried learning species counterpoint, which is quite similar to this idea(writing a cantus firmus and all that) but still didn’t have an order of operations to work from, now I do. Thank you!
Huh, this is really interesting. Until recently I've been mostly self-taught on the compositional front, and I'd observed some similar phenomena to this, but articulated it very differently (and more clunkily).
See, first of all I'll usually find myself writing out a melody with sentence or period form or whatever. Most of the time it's just jamming out on the piano, but sometimes it's inside a DAW (the former are usually more organic, and the latter more complex, so I usually clean up the DAW-originating melodies by playing variations of them on the piano until they feel right).
What you're calling the "skeleton" here I've been calling the "macromotif," generally comprised of the downbeats across a phrase or two. This is based on the idea that the "real core" of your melody is actually what it is when you've gotten rid of as much as you possibly can, yet keep a semblance of its identity. In this framework, most of the melody is extraneous distracting decoration, and it should work to some degree even without all that stuff. Ideally, this should be interesting in its own right (and I like to mess around with it to make it somehow match a motif in the melody). If the macromotif is just "C C C C" then maybe it's not as interesting as it could be if it were "Eb C D Eb" or something. Sort of like the same principle behind sequencing, just a little less restrictive.
The nice thing about this approach is I can take a melody, look at the macromotif, decide if it's working or not, tweak the macromotif, and then adjust the other "distracting" notes as needed to keep some semblance of contour. It's also useful for figuring out the harmony--the "distracting" notes absolutely matter (especially for arpeggios and things), but writing the harmony based primarily on the macromotif can limit how much is in my brain at one time.
Of course, I proceeded to take this to unhealthy extremes, such as "what is the macro-macromotif for the entire piece, using only the "down-downbeats" of entire phrases?" and "can a symphony actually just be one single note as a macro-macro-macro-macromotif?" and "really how many notes are ABSOLUTELY required for this melody to be required? Throw them all out!" and things like that. This method also has trouble with melodies that don't have important notes on downbeats. And is a little varied depending on whether maybe you actually can't just get away with beat 1, but also need beat 3, and also 2 and 4 for that matter, and really everything except the 32nd flourishes are important, but this other one doesn't need that...and of course, what would you do going the other way? A macromotif is made of motives, and motives are logically made of micro-motives, and at that point how far do you take it?
Figured I'd share this just in case it interests anybody.
This is where you start having to balance all that thinking out with just do what feels good, man lol
For the melodies that this doesn't work for, I would try to replace the downbeat by the upbeats or some other beat and see if that works, cos if the melody makes sense then there should be a way to simplify it
A very good and interresting lesson! Thank you.
This is the kind of lesson on melody that my hyper-analytical robot brain has needed for the past 5-6 years. Really great stuff. Oh, I also love that you used that piece from the 3D World soundtrack too; recognized it instantly. This is the first video I've seen of your channel, and I think I may be sticking around for a while. lol
Even if you wanna get wacky with the notes, doing this is such a good way to get used to stucturing a dynamic melody that takes you to places you can understand relative to everything else.
I used to get SO lost in the sauce trying to be interesting while also moving around, it'd sound okayish, then I'd listen back later and I'd just hate it. A good exercise from there is to really listen to chord progressions and drone notes over it to see how they sit in the harmony, as one of the notes you might want to focus on when moving around. Then you listen to how other notes interact with those, choosing based on color but also coherent movement and motives etc. (Just to immerse yourself before you write with your preferred method)
Este é um dos melhores canais de música e composição no RUclips. Aprendo muito aqui, parabéns!!!
Accurate and useful, I agree, great stuff
1:00 - In terms of starting on the tonic, I suspect an exception that would not change things much, would be starting on an anacrusis (pickup note/figure) into the tonic, such as a leading-tone or dominant landing on the tonic.
Very interesting topic, thanks
Hey nice video! One important thing you forgot to mention was to attempt to create a rhythmic arc that starts at rest and shows effort to reach the high and low points, and then slows to a halt at the end! Love the video!
IMO opinion those videos about composition structure / form are the only ones worth watching in this channel. You inspired me to read books on those topics. Keep it up!
I feel like creating a catchy melody is really easy, but harmony and good voicing is the tricky part. This melodic skeleton seems a bit too mechanical to me, but maybe I'll try it out one day because trying new things is a great way to get creative inspiration.
I have the opposite problem. I have a lot of trouble coming up with a good melody but once it’s there, the harmony comes naturally.
"This melodic skeleton seems a bit too mechanical to me, but maybe I'll try it out one day because trying new things is a great way to get creative inspiration."
Yes, I'd take that as an exercise. I don't know if I could ever use that technique to write an actual melody, but that's because I'm already able to think of the macroscopic "skeleton" while I'm already in the process of writing the melody on the more microscopic level. Even though I always write "note-by-note", I'm always mindful of what the bigger melodic gestures are, their origins and destinations, and overall "contour" (which I do visualise as lines and shapes, though in a more abstract way). For people who are unable to do that, and are trying to write their "masterpiece" after studying music theory for three weeks by writing note after note, according to "what theory says", it can be a good idea to apply these exercises until they're able to hear a melody as a holistic object.
But as a compositional technique, yeah, this is heavily flawed. It tends to put individual pitches as more important than phrases and gestures, and leaves rhythm pretty much as an afterthought. But then again, the video did not really elaborate the step of transforming the skeleton into the actual melody, so it's likely that those issues are examined, so I'm not gonna judge.
Awesome content! The pacing was a bit fast for taking notes; I rewound and paused it quite a bit. I’m really excited to apply this technique. Thanks so much!
I thought we where summoning a melodic skeleton to help me write.
Not only am I disappointed, that trip to the cemetery is time that I am NOT getting back.
I should have watched the whole video first...
Ouch, that burn!..
Hey Ryan! I've been struggling with writing longer music and my problem with the ABA form is that I have the structure but it's not as long as I would like it. And I don't know how I should continue after that. Could you help me out somehow?
Also, your channel is a huge help and the best at helping beginner composers! Keep going!
What is the score you use in the example at 6:45? I really like it!
Shifty Boo Mansion from Super Mario 3D World:
ruclips.net/video/bSCCEQCp2vk/видео.html
" Harmony through melody"book will check it out
Please tell someone which piece is this at 6:51 ?
"No tones should appear +3 times in a line"
*Drake has left the chat*
[5:40] "Avoid highlighting tritones"... Yep, but the example doesn't highlight a tritone but a diminished fifth, which in tonal music tends to be felt as expressive, doesn't it?
You can see that in addition to the global highs and lows, each of the four segments in this period (6:46) have their local highs and lows.
According as you suggested sir, the melody won't sometimes/always sound similar? Cause one could follow the rules and then repeats
5:05 A wild Gondor theme has appeared!
Basically, writing a good melody is hard.
I’m thinking that the skeleton concept could also be used to chart out the advice you give us regarding the structure of pieces, forms of sections, starting notes and cadences suited to each section, and so forth. I learn a lot from the videos, but retaining it all is another thing. So I’m going to give this idea a try. It would also be something I can scribble on as I work my way through your channel.
If that idea catches your interest you should check out Schenkerian analysis
@@RyanLeach Done (book ordered).
"Avoid highlighting tritones"
Metal composers: "No, i don't think I will"
Great video. But wait, what was the score playing at 06:46?
shifty boo mansion from super Mario 3d world
Would these rules/guidelines help with creating different kinds of moods and energy with the melody?
How much could these be played around with in the purpose of creating, say, an purposefully unsettling vibe (like going through a dark cave in an RPG and you want to music to help put the player more on edge)?
Would that just be more picking a minor mode/scale and then applying the same guides?
I think that's more mode (not just major and minor but other modes too), tempo, register, etc.
For example if I had a track for a dark cave I might actually want it to be somewhat stagnant for tension.
I will create a list of all the rules you mention and try to follow them as closely as possible.
Speaking of skeletons (horrible segue, sorry not sorry) - since you sometimes cover games and anime on your channel, have you ever considered doing a breakdown on the music of Undertale/Deltarune? Even as a layman, I've always found it fascinating how Toby fox can take a leitmotif and rework it into different contexts that completely transform how it makes you feel even though the notes themselves are mostly the same.
Thanks for giving people a box to think inside, makes it easier for talented people to stand out from the crowd.
🔥
Anyone else hear Ryan’s melody in B Phrygian?
The problem becomes when I need to bridge two sections in the middle of everything. Then I often end up with one melody that works very well in itself, but doesn't connect very well with the continuation; perhaps you don't want a very strong candace right before a seccion that contains several pronounced candences, for instance. So then I fix the problem and the music flows much more smouthly, but now my melody is weaker instead! Damn it!
Ryan: Stick to the Tonic when starting a melody
Liszt while writing his Faust Symphony: we don't do that here.
not really what I said though
Some people say that to make a melody you should think of it in two parts, the note you want to hit and the passing tones. I don’t really like this approach since it makes it feel like some notes are more important than others. Every note is equally important. You can also make a good melody by not following a single rule in this video, but it is a good start.
Strawberry Fields - "Liv-ing-is-ee-zee-with-eyes-closed" Whoa! 8 notes of the same pitch in a row! >:-(
Yes that point about repetition was about the underlying backbone of the entire melody, not the individual phrases themselves
Why do I feel like I'm just back in my counterpoint class here, lol...
I was hoping for some clarification on the "do not approach or leave the apogee by a leap" advice, maybe I'm misunderstanding what is meant by "leap", but it looks like you do approach the apogee by a leap at 7:37 ??? If I'm not mistaken, the apogee is a 6th higher than the previous note, or a 5th higher than the note before that, so I guess this means we are PREPARING the wide leap, so is that why it doesn't count as an "approach by a leap"?
it’s not “approach OR leave” it’s “approach AND leave”. So if you have leap on one side, step on the other
@@RyanLeach Thank you for the quick response! I guess I misheard or misunderstood when I first watched the video, appreciate the clarity!
Wow! Interesting and surprisingly this correlates with Hindemith's teory of main tones of melody (I don't remember the actual name). It was very interesting and fascinating to watch!
Thank you Ryan for all the videos!
Have the god kings of all the god kings sent you here to teach us these amazing foundational principles?
Patching some holes in my foundational knowledge, many thanks!
No examples on melodies that sound "stuck" why not?
3:24 - Not important, but I just noticed the Chinese characters in the composer-name place (upper-right): 西木康智, which I would translate as something like, “Westwood health wisdom.” Just curious what that refers to…?
It’s the name of a Japanese composer, Yasunori Nishiki
@@RyanLeach, aha! I read it in Chinese (my wife and I speak Mandarin a lot at home, Austin). Anyway, just curious! Thanks.
I don't get how this approach can be used with motifs, I guess it's possible but how ?
near the end of the video is an example of using the skeleton as the scaffolding to put motivic ideas over
@@RyanLeach You mean the part where you're talking about the notes of the skeleton as anchors ? I didn't think about that, I will try it right away ! It's crazy how many times you can watch a video looking for something and not finding it when it's just under your nose ^^" Thanks for the fast answer !
@@RyanLeach Also, how would you handle a more motif-driven way to build melodies ? I don't think you've already made a video on that one, I'm really interested in the answer, either here in the comment section or as a whole video on the channel ^^
What if emphasizing the quirky, out-of-place character of the tritone is the whole point, like in the opening to the Simpsons theme?
These are guidelines for beginners to craft reliably solid background structures, not strict rules for writing melodies
@@RyanLeach to be fair, that was a rhetorical question, playing devil's advocate
0:15 sans?
Not sure that the skeleton can write melodies as fleshed out as mine
That's a fact
Why is this book so expensive???
isn't this just the first step of writing species counterpoint?
‘Harmony through Melody’ £73 for a book?! Exsqueese me?
in my view, a sense for melody is what a composer should really aim for, and likely that is precisely what the authors developed and relied on in order to suggest such a method... the video does well in presenting the method, but it seems likely that such methods can actually work against the development of a melodic sense, of hearing one's own « mind's ear »... in other words, it might lead one to overly rely on recipes, rather than on striving to hear what music wants to say...
I disagree with your dismissal of their process as “overthinking it”. Sure, you could just pick one of the three notes to start with, but the problem with most people who try to convey how to write music is that instructions like this are usually just given without discussing WHY you do something. And I’m someone who needs to know why in order to understand something. I can’t understand something unless it can be quantified in concrete, logical terms.
So for me personally, it’s really helpful to know that 1 and 5 are the most stable, and 3 is the least stable because that is useful information to help you map out where you want the melody to go. It gives it context and helps you understand the concept of tension and resolve.
Taylor swift does a lot of one note melodies focused more on rhythm. It seems to be quite common now with many artists. What’s your view on this? Pros and cons?
melodies with lyrics seem to play by different rules, probably because of the whole extra dimension of words and the sound of a human voice
@@RyanLeach do you know of any good resources that cover pop melody structure in the same depth as you cover? Are there any similarities as well between pop songs and scoring?
Great video but I feel like this really only touches upon classical music.
I’m not a classical composer, I do film and game music. Would apply to any instrumental style I think
@@RyanLeach Perhaps. I'm personally more interested in composing for pop and EDM, which from my experience require a bit of a different process.
I just listen to a ton of different types of music, steal some intervals i like, hum them a bit, mash them together, and to add interest i think of notes that would harmonize with the intervals i have and i swap them out here and there. Basically all you have to do is not be afraid to hum while doing the dishes or sing do do do in the shower for 25 years. Also you should have some idea of what picture story or emotion you are trying to convey before you start writing or it isn't going to evoke anything in the listener. Compelling is always more important than correct.
I like your video, but depending on the experience level of the composer, this can be spurious and perilous advice.
1."singing your melody."
-this is very good advice IF the composer is experienced with deep listening and singing strong melodies. Dance of the sugarplum, Yesterday, Gaston, take your pick. The problem is, those melodies, like all great melodies, are not all intuitive. There is a lot of counter-intuitive stuff. dissonance, arpeggios, implied harmony. The problem with "sing your melody" to a very inexperienced composer is that usually what "just falls out of your head" and is intuitive and easy to sing tends to be awful. It tends to be in a very small range, all stepwise, static, predictable rhythms and accents. So I believe this advice should come with the caveat. Learn and sing and listen to a lot of great melodies for a good long period before attempting to trust your own singing along as you write.
Don't get me wrong. Melodies should, at the end of the day, "feel" and "seem" intuitive to sing like they've always existed and just fell out of you in the shower. The irony is, it's often highly counter-intuitive and requiring of immense craft to make music seem inevitable.
2. target notes/contour without knowledge of harmony.
-Assuming we are writing tonal music, you cannot separate harmony and melody. The tonic-dominant relationship that creates the glue in a basic tonal system needs to be understood before tasking an inexperienced composer to focus on contour and target notes.
In my opinion, an inexperienced composer must first start with tonic-dominant exercises, composing little "phonemes" of music that clearly implies a tonic, using tensions and resolutions to a dominant, then using tensions and resolutions back to a tonic. Then expand this into a tonic-subdominant-dominant exercise. Eventually you can try minor tonality with harmonic minor, and some secondary dominants so the composer gets an ear and a sense for gravity around tonal centers and accidentals.
The reason this is so important is evident in Ryan's melody at the end. I mean no offense, but although his melody follows the rules of the exercise, the example melody he wrote is unmemorable, kind of herky jerky, and, despite having a contour/a beginning, middle and end and a resolution, it doesn't sound musical. It sounds awkward. IMO the main reason for this is lack of implied harmony. There is no sense of tonality or harmonic progression. If you sing Yesterday, "all my troubles" is already throwing in sharp notes that imply a secondary dominant, which creates a n inevitability and excitement towards a destination.
I'm sorry to get into the weeds here. I just want to caution beginner composers and songwriters that this exercise does not paint a complete picture, and without understanding the fundamentals of 1st species counterpoint(which just means one note against one note,) in 4 voices, they won't get the benefit of this exercise.
I know I'm typing into the void here and nobody cares, but it's just my two cents from one trained composer to another.
This is solid advice, thanks for the pointers.
well, this sounds more counterpoint rules...
Hey nice video! One important thing you forgot to mention was to attempt to create a rhythmic arc that starts at rest and shows effort to reach the high and low points, and then slows to a halt at the end! Love the video!