# How to write long and catchy melodies ?



## ZosterX (Aug 31, 2020)

Hi,

I always been very instinctive when it comes to write melodies. I have my chord progression chosen and then I write down my melody by playin and singing on my keyboard, and then i got it very quickly. But it's always like short melody, and repetitive at the same time.

Here's one my track:  (theme starting at 1:06)

I find it catchy and very cool, but like I said, it sums up to be a loop in my view.

And here's a example of a quite long melody : 

I never find the way to get such long melodies without loosing myself, so any tips on that ?


----------



## ansthenia (Aug 31, 2020)

I find the best way to write a long melody that stays interesting is to plan the form beforehand. Plan where the climax of the melody (highest note it reaches) will be, plan when it will move up (build tension) and when it will move down (release tension), plan some ideas for its rhythm, and plan where it will repeat parts of itself and where it will do something new. If all this is planned out well and you've eliminated weaknesses in your plan, it's just a matter of finding the notes that follow this plan.


----------



## Farkle (Aug 31, 2020)

ZosterX said:


> Hi,
> 
> I always been very instinctive when it comes to write melodies. I have my chord progression chosen and then I write down my melody by playin and singing on my keyboard, and then i got it very quickly. But it's always like short melody, and repetitive at the same time.
> 
> ...




I'm not sure I understand where you find this melody by T Bergersen "long". It's a LOVELY melody. But it's basically an 8 bar melody in aba'b', then a motivic variation of it for another 8 bars, then the main melody is repeated with flute and string accompaniment. Very simple form. Basically, what you appear to need help with is how to write an 8 bar theme. Which there are tons of resources out there, I talk about that in my Farkle Fridays (Vare and Theme I Ations). But basically, you should study 8 bar theme forms, and that will help you write "longer melodies".

Mike


----------



## giwro (Aug 31, 2020)

I always find it interesting how we have different ways to compose... @ZosterX says he comes up with a chord progression, then writes a melody...

I can’t really do that... I have to have a melody first, and then I come up with the chord progression (indeed, the melody influences the progression!) One of the things my composition mentors have always said is that I write good melodies...

So, just a thought - try writing the melody first.


----------



## JohnG (Aug 31, 2020)

I think to write longer melodies the main thing is -- to try to write longer melodies.

I'm on a project that allows me to write a melody that develops over a minute or more. Fun, but took some sort of under-the-hood shift in mentality.


----------



## SimonCharlesHanna (Aug 31, 2020)

As Farkle said.

Study music theory - particularly motivic development.


----------



## YaniDee (Aug 31, 2020)

SimonCharlesHanna said:


> Study music theory - particularly motivic development.


Bach was a genius at writing whole pieces from one or a few motives..
On a more recent note..


----------



## GNP (Aug 31, 2020)

In my experience, long melodies are never catchy, and repetition helps in making a melody catchy.


----------



## ed buller (Aug 31, 2020)

GNP said:


> In my experience, long melodies are never catchy, and repetition helps in making a melody catchy.




long and catchy

best

ed


----------



## purple (Sep 1, 2020)

Ask your favorite composers... (not literally)
Listen to a melody you really like. What is the relationship between each statement in the melody? What makes it cohesive? You may find that your favorite composers follow very predictable patterns and learning how they construct those patterns will teach you how you can construct your own. One thing I've learned as I got better at listening and analyzing that none of these guys are really magical. They just know how to very efficiently twist and reuse the ideas they establish earlier in the piece. Anyone can learn this including you!


----------



## youngpokie (Sep 1, 2020)

ed buller said:


> long and catchy
> 
> best
> 
> ed




That sounds like three motifs, each developed into its own melody - main theme, contrasting theme and a connector back to main melody, all by 2:40, no?


----------



## Dark Horse (Sep 1, 2020)

It's a well established fact that if you write as much as Bach did, you'll actually become Bach.


----------



## giwro (Sep 1, 2020)

purple said:


> Ask your favorite composers... (not literally)
> Listen to a melody you really like. What is the relationship between each statement in the melody? What makes it cohesive? You may find that your favorite composers follow very predictable patterns and learning how they construct those patterns will teach you how you can construct your own. One thing I've learned as I got better at listening and analyzing that none of these guys are really magical. They just know how to very efficiently twist and reuse the ideas they establish earlier in the piece. Anyone can learn this including you!



And, perhaps one of the best symphonic examples of this is the 3rd Symphony of Camille Saint-Saens - it is written in a cyclical format - he uses basically the same theme throughout the entire work, but changes it subtly (or dramatically) throughout. Every time I listen to or study the work I am simply gobsmacked at how one could be so creative!


----------



## PeterN (Sep 1, 2020)

You dont write great melodies, they are given. Its same with poetry and most creativity, this you cant just get your hands on unless you are existentially eligible. So how can you enhance your poetic skills? Which, by principle, goes hand in hand with melodic skills. You can try to use imagination and step with one foot to the other side. If you are latent psychotic it will help - most great artists are bipolar. Some do what Morrison sang about, break on through to other side - with drugs. But wouldnt recommend that, theres something fishy about it. Or you could do like the American taleban, John Walker Lindh, yes, one can just imagine what he could create after staying in a dark cave for a month while white phosphorous and grenades were thrown in.

Boring people usually write boring stuff, thats the base line.


----------



## purple (Sep 1, 2020)

PeterN said:


> You dont write great melodies, they are given. Its same with poetry and most creativity, this you cant just get your hands on unless you are existentially eligible. So how can you enhance your poetic skills? Which, by principle, goes hand in hand with melodic skills. You can try to use imagination and step with one foot to the other side. If you are latent psychotic it will help - most great artists are bipolar. Some do what Morrison sang about, break on through to other side - with drugs. But wouldnt recommend that, theres something fishy about it. Or you could do like the American taleban, John Walker Lindh, yes, one can just imagine what he could create after staying in a dark cave for a month while white phosphorous and grenades were thrown in.
> 
> Boring people usually write boring stuff, thats the base line.


Nope!

Don't listen to this, OP. It's not helpful. There is not a single person on this planet who cannot learn to write good, even great or catchy melodies. There is nothing special about the notes that Mozart or Duke Ellington or John Williams or any of "the greats" of any particular genre wrote. They simply knew what they were doing, and there is absolutely nothing stopping you from knowing what you are doing too.

Every single person who has been "musically gifted" got their "gifts" through practice and study, and that doesn't necessarily mean "formal" or "classical" training.


----------



## PeterN (Sep 1, 2020)

purple said:


> Nope!
> 
> Don't listen to this, OP. It's not helpful. There is not a single person on this planet who cannot learn to write good, even great or catchy melodies. There is nothing special about the notes that Mozart or Duke Ellington or John Williams or any of "the greats" of any particular genre wrote. They simply knew what they were doing, and there is absolutely nothing stopping you from knowing what you are doing too.
> 
> Every single person who has been "musically gifted" got their "gifts" through practice and study, and that doesn't necessarily mean "formal" or "classical" training.



No, dont listen to this guy.

Like your idol Zimmer says, music is a language, and if you have nothing to say, the result is blend as a cup of hand warm cabbage juice. And those who think they got something to say, look at that crap. The reason why there is so shit poetry out there these days, is bcs people are so boring - being a pot smoking gansta does not make it better, its boring crap too. Same goes for melodies or inventions in chords and melodies. These days we need to read books from 19th C to see what potential of inspiration humans can have - these days its mostly nice cover on outside, but inside crap. Find the inside, its hard work technically too, of course, but the more comfort zone you build around you, expect it to be the music of the sheep and not the wild horse. Its your choice, the poetry of the sheep or the bandits: the wolf and the wild horse.


----------



## BlackDorito (Sep 1, 2020)

PeterN said:


> No, dont listen to this guy.


Hmmm .. both of your posts here have strange and non sequitur assertions - you should stress that they are opinions. Not helpful ones, in my view. My experience is that if you can riff over a particular chord progression fluently, you've got a good chance to come up with a melody using unconscious processes based on your own particular musical enculturation. Spend enough time noodling and voila, a useful melody comes up. If you add to that conscious thought - using the 'rules' of good melody - you could probably do even better, or fit your melody to more situations. I usually end up just using the unconscious process.


----------



## PeterN (Sep 1, 2020)

BlackDorito said:


> Hmmm .. both of your posts here have strange and non sequitur assertions - you should stress that they are opinions. Not helpful ones, in my view. My experience is that if you can riff over a particular chord progression fluently, you've got a good chance to come up with a melody using unconscious processes based on your own particular musical enculturation. Spend enough time noodling and voila, a useful melody comes up. If you add to that conscious thought - using the 'rules' of good melody - you could probably do even better, or fit your melody to more situations. I usually end up just using the unconscious process.



Well, .... those are like basic melodies, they are not stories. They dont talk, sing, make a heart beat, or bring out any tears. Im probably messing too much in this thread now - apologies - and the point is made already - I just felt the need to defend melodies. Someone had to do it. Tragedies also have the ability to create melodies - I forgot to mention that. Or love. Melodies are stories, and you need to have a story to tell. It can create a melody. You can make one up of course, but its not a real story. Its not a touching melody. Point made.


----------



## Greg (Sep 1, 2020)

Try starting with a drone / rhythm and just doodling over that till a few bars make sense and build on that? Long melodies sometimes have little fragmented motifs that reappear as a smaller melody or rhythm to give the listener something to grab onto. Otherwise it might just sound like you're floating along improvising till you add harmony to give it structure. If you start with a typical chord progression its almost impossible to break out of traditional 4 bar melodies that we're bombarded with.


----------



## BlackDorito (Sep 1, 2020)

PeterN said:


> Melodies are stories, and you need to have a story to tell.


That's one of the hallmarks of the Romantic period (in Western music) .. telling a story. [Yes, it's a hallmark of many periods] Not to open a Pandora's Box of musical aesthetics - over which all of us armchair musicologists could battle furiously - but not all styles of music are associated with long flowing melodies. A great book: "Why You Like It - The Science and Culture of Musical Taste" by Nolan Gasser.

An interesting related question (for another thread perhaps): do you let melody drive your compositional process?


----------



## Living Fossil (Sep 1, 2020)

ZosterX said:


> I never find the way to get such long melodies without loosing myself, so any tips on that ?



Instead of thinking of a long melody as one long worm, try to see it as a composite of different phrases that interact with each other – those parts can reply to each other or they can develop one part from the other one. etc.

If your ideas come in short phrases, you can try as a first step to come up with short phrases that aren't finished on their own but rather evoke more phrases.
So you will end up with a longer organism.

(p.s. as an exercise you can look at long melodies you like and analyse their phrases, fragments motives etc. that build them.

You should also keep an eye on what's going on in the harmonic language.
Chords can finish phrases or make clear that there is more to come.


----------



## giwro (Sep 1, 2020)

Stephen Limbaugh said:


> As an organist I could see why you might be familiar with this work. 😉 Have you played it many times live?


I have not, but I have HEARD it live. It is one of the scores I come back to again and again to study - both for the orchestration and also for the sheer compositional genius.


----------



## ProfoundSilence (Sep 1, 2020)

I think it's worth mentioning that Scoreclub has one of the best put together courses on motivic writing.


----------



## purple (Sep 1, 2020)

Living Fossil said:


> Instead of thinking of a long melody as one long worm, try to see it as a composite of different phrases that interact with each other – those parts can reply to each other or they can develop one part from the other one. etc.
> 
> If your ideas come in short phrases, you can try as a first step to come up with short phrases that aren't finished on their own but rather evoke more phrases.
> So you will end up with a longer organism.
> ...



^This^

A big breakthrough for me was finding small scale alternative goals to achieve. I think "how to make a long melody" is the wrong question, because that question won't lead to a good melody. One of the methods I use is a simple question and answer sort of thing. Write a lick, and then see how you can answer that lick with another. Combine these in a way that provides a good sense of arc and direction.

Another I use sometimes is to take a melodic idea and stretch it over time, with the phrases getting longer and more intricate as more and more of the melody is included.


----------



## marclawsonmusic (Sep 1, 2020)

Why bother with melody when no one wants it? 

This is a question I ask myself a lot these days... seems I would do better if I learned to create synth sounds or recorded echos from a nuclear plant. I don't think anyone cares about nice melodies with development anymore.

The only solace I take is that this is what has been done in music for centuries, so hopefully it is still a valuable thing to be concerned about.


----------



## Saxer (Sep 1, 2020)

THIS is a long melody... no repetition until one minute. Nothing is predictable but everybody knows it and can sing along. Genius!


----------



## brek (Sep 1, 2020)

Many great melodies start with an initial statement of a short idea (just a couple measures long). So many people get hung up on this initial idea, but the secret is that the idea itself doesn't matter as much as what you do with it. 

_Excuse the oversimplification..._
After you put out your idea you basically have three options:

Repeat it
Do something different
Repeat it, but with variations.

Once you figure that out, then you run right back into those same options - with the additional option of a return to the original idea if you departed from it. And on and on it goes.

The _art _is in balancing the amount of repetition, variation, and contrast. A decent rule of thumb is to always repeat something, but never do an exact repetition more than twice in a row. Create expectations, but subvert them at appropriate times.

Two books I recommend:

_Analyzing Classical Form _by Williams Caplin for a deep dive and cataloging of melodic structures (though the purpose of the book is aimed at larger scale forms). In the interest of establishing a set of consistent norms it only looks at the music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, but these ideas can be extrapolated beyond their work.


_The Shaping Forces of Music _by Ernst Toch. Much less formal than the first one, but has some good insights.


----------



## Saxer (Sep 1, 2020)

As a creator you have to divide yourself into tree instances.

On one side you are the constructor. Use known elements to create something new. Creativity can be trained. Just combine new elements. Try to recreate the shape of the horizon you see in this moment into a melody. Or make a chord progression and start every phrase with a note that is not part of the chords. Dice note values. Play music backwards. Take the rhythm from one track and the notes from another. Put a melody on a different scale. Recreate a sentence as a melody. Or a dialog. Watch a jumping ball and think how it would sound as a melody. Be a child. Use all whats there. In short: combine things you know but in a way that you didn't combine before.

On the other side you have to be the judge. You listen to what the child is doing. Is it understandable? Is it fun? Is it interesting? Is it already done? Does it sound "wrong"? Does it trigger any emotion? Do I want this emotion? Is the whole thing good enough? Is it the same like yesterday? Or for this topic: is it long enough?

And as the third instance you have to be the cleaner. First job: get it out of the 8-bar in a DAW song status. Correct the bad connections between parts. Make sure there is a good ending. Give it a form. Perform. Development. Arrange. Mix. Bring everything into place until the judge smiles. For the empty parts: call the constructor again.

The creative process is a game or fight between all three instances inside you. Motivating the playing child to play "the right thing" is as hard as being free to play in front of a judge. And the more successful both of them are the more work for the cleaner is generated. The cleaner like to know where everything belongs. Hard job if it get's "too creative".

Sometimes it's good to outsource one or two of this instances. Improvise until someone says: "Hey, what was that? That was good!". Or record a thousand things without rating it. You can select later what's interesting. Or you let someone else choosing one to work on. Or you select things you like and let someone else create a complete composition or an arrangement out of it. Or you take motives from someone else and work as an arranger or orchestrator.


----------



## purple (Sep 3, 2020)

Saxer said:


> THIS is a long melody... no repetition until one minute. Nothing is predictable but everybody knows it and can sing along. Genius!



It had very clear patterns and an understandable musical grammar, though. The notes and the phrasing and the harmony during each section of the melody all work together with clear mountainous shape that is familiar and comfortable to those of us who grew up in "the west". This is a actually a great example of what I meant with my original post.


----------



## ZosterX (Sep 6, 2020)

Thanks a lot to everyone ! You all gave me really big tips, I'll try to come up with a melody, following your advices !


----------



## bill5 (Sep 11, 2020)

Dark Horse said:


> It's a well established fact that if you write as much as Bach did, you'll actually become Bach.







purple said:


> Nope!
> 
> Don't listen to this, OP. It's not helpful.


It's also not serious; I think we're being trolled.


----------



## SamC (Sep 11, 2020)

purple said:


> ^This^
> 
> A big breakthrough for me was finding small scale alternative goals to achieve. I think "how to make a long melody" is the wrong question, because that question won't lead to a good melody. One of the methods I use is a simple question and answer sort of thing. Write a lick, and then see how you can answer that lick with another. Combine these in a way that provides a good sense of arc and direction.
> 
> Another I use sometimes is to take a melodic idea and stretch it over time, with the phrases getting longer and more intricate as more and more of the melody is included.



This is very sound advice. It’s how I look at melody too - you really gotta play with question/answer, presenting the melody in new and interesting ways, countering it like a conversation.


----------



## Romy Schmidt (Sep 12, 2020)

Stay clear of the tonic.


----------



## Wally Garten (Sep 12, 2020)

ed buller said:


> long and catchy
> 
> best
> 
> ed




To be fair, that's a lot of repetition! By the third minute I was like, "Oh, Wagner writes using an arpeggiator just like me!"


----------



## bill5 (Sep 12, 2020)

Romy Schmidt said:


> Stay clear of the tonic.


[gin]You're insane[/gin]


----------



## Beans (Sep 13, 2020)

ProfoundSilence said:


> I think it's worth mentioning that Scoreclub has one of the best put together courses on motivic writing.



I'll quote your post, because it's worth mentioning again. I just "finished" that course last night, and it was fantastic. As a monthly service, it's expensive if you take your time; but entirely worth it.


----------



## JohnG (Sep 13, 2020)

marclawsonmusic said:


> Why bother with melody when no one wants it?



I agree, Marc, regarding movies and TV, at least in the main stream. 

Where I still see decent appetite for melody is outside the USA, and in games. There's also the "epic" category of iTunes music. I realise that some may sniff at or otherwise disdain the epic vibe. Fair enough -- it's all about taste, after all. 

Where I think people go wrong in dismissing epic, however, is to discard _all_ the old-fashioned feelings, like nobility, sacrifice, striving, overcoming difficulties. Those emotions, though they have been over-used and audiences have been pandered to for generations using them, nevertheless are part of us as people. 

Some people actually _do_ act nobly, or sacrifice themselves. Look at hospital workers during Covid, or soldiers / sailors / pilots. Sure, you can find fault with the mismanagement of the Covid response or reject the war, but there are still individuals putting themselves on the line out of a sense of something higher than their own personal safety or comfort.

I think part of it is sincerity. If you condescend to a type of music and then try to write it, you're doomed from the start. You have to look inside yourself and try to find an honest response.


----------



## ThomasNL (Sep 13, 2020)

Watch Mike Verta's composition 1 class. Goes perfectly in depth into how to write a catchy melody with examples. That really made it all very clear for me, and indeed repetition is the trick for good earworms.


----------



## bill5 (Sep 13, 2020)

marclawsonmusic said:


> Why bother with melody when no one wants it?
> 
> it is still a valuable thing to be concerned about.


You answered your own question  Screw mainstream.


----------



## marclawsonmusic (Sep 15, 2020)

JohnG said:


> I agree, Marc, regarding movies and TV, at least in the main stream.
> 
> Where I still see decent appetite for melody is outside the USA, and in games. There's also the "epic" category of iTunes music. I realise that some may sniff at or otherwise disdain the epic vibe. Fair enough -- it's all about taste, after all.
> 
> ...



Well-said, John. It is nice to know that there are options outside of the mainstream!


----------



## Karl Feuerstake (Sep 15, 2020)

PeterN said:


> No, dont listen to this guy.
> 
> Like your idol Zimmer says, music is a language, and if you have nothing to say, the result is blend as a cup of hand warm cabbage juice. And those who think they got something to say, look at that crap. The reason why there is so shit poetry out there these days, is bcs people are so boring - being a pot smoking gansta does not make it better, its boring crap too. Same goes for melodies or inventions in chords and melodies. These days we need to read books from 19th C to see what potential of inspiration humans can have - these days its mostly nice cover on outside, but inside crap. Find the inside, its hard work technically too, of course, but the more comfort zone you build around you, expect it to be the music of the sheep and not the wild horse. Its your choice, the poetry of the sheep or the bandits: the wolf and the wild horse.



If your attitude is there is no hope for creating great art, then for you, there will never be any hope of creating great art.


----------



## marclawsonmusic (Sep 15, 2020)

bill5 said:


> You answered your own question



For myself, at least! Cheers


----------

