My Grandma always warned me to beware of the theory fanatics!

A more realistic approach for me would be something like this ...

Website:

https://www.hooktheory.com/

Example: Hey Jude

https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/the-beatles/hey-jude

Example: Strawberry Fields Forever

https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/the-beatles/strawberry-fields-forever

 

Last edited: Jan 6, 2022

It's been two days and you still haven't realized that OP didn't ask a thing about "music theory".
The thread is about intentionality in composition and observed principles of human perception.

 

Dear justwannadownload,

I dislike your engagement style, so please ignore everything I say from now on.

Thanks,

Zen.

 

Intentionality can not be taught and transmitted to others easily. The only means of conveying characteristics and similarities among human beings are sperms, which unfortunately don't do much good when they come to music. Because even prominent composers have not been able to convey their inherent characteristics to their children, let alone to others.

 

This is mutual. Let's blacklist each other and don't spoil the fun for others.

Perhaps, but it still can be learned. In fact, the way we use sounds to make up words to then convey meaning is already a learned intentionality. Yes, being a language, it requires lots of practice. No, it doesn't mean it's some unique or unobtainable absolute.

All in all, intentionality wouldn't've been one of the core merits of music making were it so ephemeral and unachievable.

Here are three things I feel are important to compose intentionally. Learning what tension and relief is, learning how different intervals and chors feel like, and learning how different chord shifts feel like. Then you only have to have something to say.

The last one can't be learned conventionally, but it'll come by itself, provided you didn't have classical instrument training (because it consists of rules upon rules upon rules and aims to make you into a musical instrument operator rather than a composer).

 

Last edited: Jan 6, 2022

Every artist is a completely separate world. Every artist builds his own world. It's true that sometimes they're using common materials, but how they use materials and the end results depend on billions of brain cells that work differently in every individual.

Most of the time, worlds don't have much in common, and it's almost impossible to convey the profile of one's world to someone else.

We shouldn't have to make the error of thinking that common materials lead to similar results. The results don't have much to do with materials, and they depend on every single person who uses those materials.

 

I'm still reading through "How to devceive your brain into to believing you have more talent and ability than any talented person ever in any subject or ability, in only 7 days for mere mortals"

 

Thank you. I think it's for the best since you are already on a warning, and we clearly have a different opinion regarding the importance of music theory in the music creation process.

 

Last edited: Jan 7, 2022

Few music follow this sensation. Maybe less than 10 percent of the whole music.
I don't know who put forward this phenomenon for the first time, but to get ourselves caught up in this phenomenon is nothing but limiting ourselves.

 

This is a hot argument for many.
I'll share what I learned by myself throughout the years.

- Steps should be countered by leaps in the other direction and vice versa. Melodies that stay in the same few notes or jump all around are not memorable.
- Motives. A mini pattern in the melody, repeated and transformed and used, but still with similar characteristics. This makes the melody easier to hum and remember.
- Ranges should not be too large, as it makes it awkward to sing it, and harder.
- Tension and resolution is stuff you probably already know.
- Rhythm... pauses are as important as the notes between them.
- Whatever plays together with the melody is equally important.

These are just few "rules", but the topic is very subjective and very genre dependent. Also, it is less "mechanic" than other musical processes.

The obvious tip would be to study, recreate, and really STUDY melodies you like. I used to put a melody on the piano roll, play it back with the keyboard, writing down the motifs and the rhythm, the spaces, when there is most tension and why, how come I like this part, why there is a jump here and why it works so well in this context, etc.

Cheers

 

interesting question. i knew a few people who studied composition and there's definitely stuff to be learned about what melodies are and how they are created exactly. to the point you can do a style copy of classical composers and stuff like that.

despite this, the 'real' secret for me would be, what is it exactly that makes the melodies of #1 hits so catchy to the point i have to listen to it over and over again and perceive it as pleasing? that might be something different from just how to create melodies.

 

Yet at the same time, base human psyche is, to a meaningful extent, universal to the whole species. Our perception is rooted in an objective world we evolved in. There are very basic things that feel pretty much in the same vein for all humans, Like a minor second sounding incredibly tense, and perfect fourth sounding so neutral it's almost ethereal. And then there are chords and progressions building off of these basic things.
Every artist will use these basic building blocks in a different way, just like every writer uses words differently. This is not what I argue against. There are basic building blocks to learn, that's what I'm saying.
In all honesty, an idea that there aren't seems like magical thinking to me. It's just plain ridiculous. We wouldn't've been able to enjoy music written by other people were that the case.

Spoiler

Sometimes tho I am on the verge of believeing there actually aren't. Oh well. Time to go check the blacklisting settings for real.
For the record, again, this topic is not about music theory in the first place.

 

Last edited: Jan 6, 2022

This fact exists in comparing artistic works and artists' attitudes. Everyone loves Similarities, but as you can see, they takes up less space. More space is dedicated to dissimilarities. Teaching Dissimilarities to people is almost impossible.

 

Music not following tension and relief would be like tonic and 4-on-the-floor only. Because tension and relief is already there even if we introduce only the dominant and a snare drum on 2nd and 4th beat. Dramatic crescendos with tritones resolving into tonic chords isn't the only form of tension and relief, you know. In fact, literally any kind of movement in music, be it melodic, harmonic or rhythmic, is based on tension and relief. It is tension and relief.

There's certainly a block or two missing in our discussion. This have nothing to do with what I'm saying : ( I'm not arguing even remotely against this.
Intentionality is about being able to have, and act on, an intention in general. Not the intention - an intention. Just to know what you're doing and why. That's it, that's all I'm saying.

 

Last edited: Jan 6, 2022

I give up, have a nice night.

 

I studied art in a formal setting and the syllabus included practical, theory and art history. It is important to know how these separate areas interact with each other. Creating art (and songs & stories) comes from within, not a bunch of text books, and the first paintings predate any formal framework by a few hundred thousand years. You can view language and music in a similar manner, since they have the same development history. The person who invented the first bone flute did not need a stone tablet containing some music theory in order to play it, and singing and chanting is even older than the bone flute.

This is my big picture view of art and creativity in general. I am not against music theory, but we should be aware of it's role and purpose. I like to use art as an example for creativity, because the same skills are transferable to making music. i.e. techniques such as sketching musical ideas, creating sound palettes, painting with sound, etc.

But most of all making music should be fun, and music theory is not fun. In fact, it is a creativity killer, so it's best to do them on different days

 

Last edited: Jan 7, 2022

Doesn't exist. Lol, an exhaustive list of all melodic figures in one video course. I'd buy it for sure though.

But jokes aside, learn transcription.

I want to let you guys in on a little "secret": The thing is, not only are all music theory video courses inferior to the actual books, but in the case of melody you'll quickly find yourself in an age old dispute in musicology, right at the heart of the fucking beast.

"Melody is a paradoxical discipline. Because the only constant factor in it's development is the millenia old complaint about it's non-existence."
- Carl Dahlhaus, Melodielehre (translated)

A good melody is the bare minimum for a regular tune.
Why is there no systematic teaching for learning it, unlike with harmony and counterpoint where you could trace everything back to Rameau and Fux? Musicologists don't know the answer.

Be the change you want to see in the world, learn transcription, transcribe and analyze your favorite music, make exercises out of them, get them in your fingers.

I want to expand on "get them in your fingers": 1st Movement of Moonlight Sonata was "quasi una fantasia" as Beethoven wrote, an improvisation with minor editing, he pretty much just hit fucking record capture, let that sink in for a moment. If he was still alive they'd all be flipping burgers I tell ya.


Use your knowledge from harmony to make sense of everything melodically by shifting your focus from vertical to horizontal on the time/note axis.

I'll try to translate what Johann Nikolaus Forkel, the student of Bach's son wrote:
"Harmony is not only accompaniment to a melody but our actual means of reproduction of all artistic expressions, our linguistic wealth so to speak. It goes without saying that, in order to meet that requirement, it has to be interwoven with multiple melodies" That's actually how powerful that concept we learned from Youtube is
Keep in mind that this excludes motivic energy to an extend. A very baroque view of music.



For the sake of completeness I wanted to add something:
Transcribing and playing your favorite licks/passages through all keys is mandatory as I said. You'll learn holistically (rhythm, phrasing) how a convincing melodyline.
But also making your own exercises/etudes and exercising them in all keys. Your very personal signature take on musical concepts like "figurating chord notes", "extended harmonies", "pentatonics" etc. with the underlying goal of creating melodies from such. You'll learn which notes work with which chords.

Comparing those two, they are as complementary as it can get, so it goes without saying that all decent sounding musicians used both ways, most perhaps unknowingly, at some point of their life. Or at least tried to :P



And for the nerds who actually took this post serious:
Pitch class sets are all you need for disassembling a melody, watch this.

 

@Coreal What exactly do you disagree with?

Bold of you to assume OP plays an instrument.
An even bolder assumption would be that such a formulaic approach to learning improvisation will be actually useful to anyone but music instrument operator. I'm not using the term "a musician" on purpose, because they only know how to follow instructions and repeat after others (and even this they have troubles with), thanks to formal education. You're coming from similar education, I believe?
Anyways. Furthermore, this approach is constrained by a very narrow harmonic style of 18th-ish century European composers. Music has gone far since then, despite all the efforts for the opposite by multiple parties (including white suprematists, lol).
Formal music education is indeed a great evil. It traumatizes people. For example, our friend @Zenarcist here is so mangled by the experience he can't even realize the topic is not about music theory. It also turns out that I only can't see people I ignore once I'm logged in. Duh.
No sane person would argue that learning on examples among other things is important. But your suggestion is a crutch for those whose legs got taken by "music theorists".

 

In a thread where the most any of us can do is express only personal preferences...

I agree with the comments made in the thread that lean towards
"do it subconsciously; absorb tons of music and let your urge to express yourself guide your improvised melodic composition"

But also...

Great video, and it might even be the most precisely focussed answer so far to the OP's question. (if explored)
But I can imagine that video getting negative responses and strange prejudicial criticisms/comments;
so I will try to pre-empt some of them.
For example,

• "That stuff is too nerdie-techie" - not really, a few new bits of vocabulary perhaps, but the ideas behind the words are actually not difficult and the guy presented those useful ideas very clearly.
• "That's horrible Jazz" - Jazz is not my favourite choice either, but all the ideas in that video are genre neutral.
• "Man - thinking like that is such a creativity killer" - not at all! This is just a separate activity to composing. The guy's 'map analogy' is really valuable. Maps don't tell you where to go - that's your problem which only your creativity can solve. Maps don't dictate which route to take - that's your problem which only your creativity can solve. Maps DO provide valuable information about what's out there, and that information might enable you to use your personal creativity to explore the musical terrain in more interesting ways.
• "It's far more important to hands-on absorb music than understanding all that theory stuff". I agree - that's absolutely true - but it's not an either-or choice. Actual music explorations are your important journeys, but music theory maps can still help you figure out where you've been and might even influence where you might want to go next.

Whatever works for you is great - It's nice to remember that this applies to everyone else too.

 

Last edited: Jan 7, 2022

Your intentionality sounds a lot like music theory to me ^^

Before you say: "B-but wait you can't just systematically capture the feelings to be able to reproduce them if needed" - yeah I can dude that's literally the whole point of composing.

Why don't you, instead of performing these insane mental gymnastics, just take a fucking book and read it.
And no I hate academia too, you black and white thinker, but your attitude isn't better than theirs to be really fucking honest with you.
Sorry for the harsh words but I really hate when things don't change for the better when they can. So much potential thrown down the gutter for fucking ego shit. These smart people hurt me bla bla get the fuck over it and beat them with your music after you've improved. Show them that you can beat the victims mentality.