Melodies?

[OlzaMK]

I need some desperate help here.

I understand the value of scales and chord progressions and I am really trying to understand how to go about doing it.

Should I just keep following these scales and hurting my ears until I get something that sounds good? Because I've been trying this approach for a year now and I still haven't progressed. Am I just not destined to make music?

How should I go about getting better at playing melodies?

-Attempt to copy some classical piece?
-Try and copy some shitty house song?

I'm just lost and frustrated and don't know how to go about improving if I don't know where to start.

I'll show you the most recent tune I made, this is not an advertisement, because I will admit that its pretty shitty. The progressions of this song is like 3 different notes. I try every day to have a different approach and I just try and jam on the controller, but I still get nowhere.

http://soundcloud.com/miketeskey/jzigler


The song is just some shitty nexus arp patch I used and its literally like 3-4 notes that I pressed. It seems when I try something more complex I get a steaming pile of shit.

Any ideas? Or am I just talking out of my ass?

[BeastModeForDummies]

this seems like advertisement i dont see anything wrong with that except there is no melody all of that sounds like background shit need to sit something on top of that and the only way you can do that is by messing around with what sounds good to YOU

gl

[OlzaMK]

its not advertisement, ill remove it if you feel that way. Im just lost. any pointers on playing actual melodies instead of just drawing out 3-4 notes in a 4 bar loop in ableton?


I can only seem to get results with automation and thats about it.

[BeastModeForDummies]

idk man most of the melodies i come up with i have beatboxxed to myself all day at work lol, creativity plays a big part, for me i have the opposite problem, cant seem to get out of my head due to "technical" difficulties

[OlzaMK]

That's a good idea, I'm going to have to try beatboxing a melody/beat out.

I pretty much set myself up to get flamed, but yeah I think im just going to keep jamming keys until I get a result...

[thawizardofahhs]

I would say spend some time without the keyboard,
Drawing in and moving the notes around while having a few bars looped.

Start with your root key (mine is usually A for some reason) as a whole note or longer phrase,
and just fill in or move higher notes around until you get a feel for what sounds right for your ear.

Just follow the "major triads", and don't do too much of the black keys until you truly understand where they should go.

This has worked for me while working on different genres I'm not used to (namely hip-hop and dubstep),
Since I mostly produce techno.

There are many tutorials on youtube for many different styles.
Based off of the sounds of your track you could choose from a few different genres for instruction.

It's probably not top tier advice, but hopefully that may help a bit. Like I stated, that's just what has worked for me.

[_TraX_]

It has to just come naturally, if you just try to force melodies out, nothing will come of it. Get ideas from songs you enjoy and expand on them. There was nothing wrong with your song, a very common chord progression, just expand on that, maybe get some sort of high synth and bleep out a cute jumble of tunes.

[ambinate]

i think part of it depends on what kind of approach you want to take. just writing more like you've been doing is good practice, you'll probably get better over time just through that. but you could also look into learning some music theory if you really want. if that isn't really your thing, though, just studying or straight up copying melodies from songs/artists you're into can be really helpful. copy a melody you like into your sequencer and see what makes it tick - where it goes up versus where it goes down, the rhythms it's using, just shit like that to try and figure out why it works and why you like it. then try making up your own version based on it and see what happens. you can end up coming up with some really cool ideas by starting out ripping someone off.

[OlzaMK]

Thanks for the informative posts everyone. Respect! I'm really glad I didn't get flamed on this one. Definitely going to bookmark this page and try as many different approaches as I can. I've been working in ableton everyday and I am definitely learning a lot. I just need to put all these new techniques into a song.

I guess I just need to keep doing what I'm doing and not feel discouraged about it. Because progress is progress.

Thanks once again.