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Forums - Music techology
Subject: Creating a Melody
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Original Message 1/11 18-Aug-98 @ 07:57 AM - Creating a Melody
I've got Soundforge with ACID and TB Pinnacle soundcard. I create dance music using cd-roms from ACID loop libraries to Big Fish Audio. My question is how can I create melodies? For instance a long piano synth melody. What software or hardware do I need to create melodies? Don't know how to play a keyboard so that is out of the question. Do I need a sampler or what? Help!
Message 2/11 18-Aug-98 @ 08:20 AM - RE: Creating a Melody
Learn to play an instrument.. Trust me.. If you learn to play one well, it's not very hard to pick up the rest (Ok, well maybe bagpipes are a bitch to learn, I don't know) Fuckin A.. Buy a keyboard, and learn to play the motherfucker... Everything I've ever learned to play was cuz I got one and forced myself to learn it, cuz I needed the sound (Ok, wit the exception of piano lessons.. But I blocked those out for years, and rote teaching didn't do half of what composing and then forcing myself to play pieces did) If you got a sampler, but you couldn't play it with a midi controller, you'd just be cutting and pasting.. Now, I think that's fine for some stuff, but my melodies need to be played in live.. You know, little mistakes, accents, everything, adds to the soul of the musician coming thru in little bits of the melody.. I mean, what good is a melody if it's a string of notes? It needs to tug at you, to seduce you into the rhythm, and what better way than to have played it yourself and put a little bit of yourself into it, over entering notes and values into a sequencer? But that's just my opinion, and I'm very opinionated..
Message 3/11 18-Aug-98 @ 09:24 AM - RE: Creating a Melody
in fact, you can get by with a cut-down version of piano playing. just learn to play in one key - say G. learn what chords sound good together and stuff, and what scales etc etc and then because you're a midi-piano player you can just transpose up and down when you play.
cheating, yeah, and someone'll kill me for it, but its a good start point. you'll soon get bored with the basic stuff and expand into other keys anyway. and after all, we're not all jazz virtuosos.....
cheating, yeah, and someone'll kill me for it, but its a good start point. you'll soon get bored with the basic stuff and expand into other keys anyway. and after all, we're not all jazz virtuosos.....
Message 4/11 18-Aug-98 @ 06:18 PM - RE: Creating a Melody
JAWA
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Nah that sounds fine man...... Jazz Virtuosos aren't all they're cracked up to be anyway, bad hairdos, sandles, big beards, crap in bed and all that......... Aaaaaanyway........ learn a little bit of everything, that's my motto, be a Jack of all Trades master of none type of player, and you'll find that as you progress with your tracks you will end up teaching yourself everything else as you kinda need it...... it is actually possible to know too much music theory because you'll find that nothing surprises you anymore...... maybe, perhaps, sometimes eh?
Message 5/11 18-Aug-98 @ 10:37 PM - RE: Creating a Melody
Well if you're only going to learn one key you might as well learn C, ie, only play the white keys. After a while you will start to feel really adventurous and play the black keys, maybe by accident at first, but then you will start to do it deliberately.
Try starting at different keys and then playing eight consecutive white keys. If you do this for a whole octave you will have played all the "modes" of the C major scale, ie scales within the scale. I find these to be good starting points because they have such distinctive flavours or colours.
There's just no way around it though, you're going to have to learn keys, even if it kills you.
Try starting at different keys and then playing eight consecutive white keys. If you do this for a whole octave you will have played all the "modes" of the C major scale, ie scales within the scale. I find these to be good starting points because they have such distinctive flavours or colours.
There's just no way around it though, you're going to have to learn keys, even if it kills you.
Message 6/11 18-Aug-98 @ 11:12 PM - RE: Creating a Melody
Here's a easy way to make sure you stay in key....
Take some index cards and tape them together end to end(4 should be enough). Line up the left edge of the index cards with C on your keyboard. Now take a black marker and mark the location of each white key from C up to whenever you run out of index cards. You have now mapped out the Major scale. No matter where you put the index cards on your keyboard, the marks will show what keys to use to stay in key. Connect the marks to make chords.
To get the Minor scale, do the same thing but start from A instead of C.
Take some index cards and tape them together end to end(4 should be enough). Line up the left edge of the index cards with C on your keyboard. Now take a black marker and mark the location of each white key from C up to whenever you run out of index cards. You have now mapped out the Major scale. No matter where you put the index cards on your keyboard, the marks will show what keys to use to stay in key. Connect the marks to make chords.
To get the Minor scale, do the same thing but start from A instead of C.
Message 7/11 19-Aug-98 @ 10:07 AM - RE: Creating a Melody
a couple of tricks....
a) kilo mentioned this. instead of just nicking a hook line from that hit song you're trying to rewrite...
sample/record the hookline and get it looping - then try positioning it in different parts of the drum loop you have running alongside it. big repositions like half a bar will just change the emphasis whereas little repositions - say half a note or less - can give it a weird offbeat swing feel. you can use the offset function on a sequencer to the same effect. i noticed how useful this was when i was doing a fast tempo dnb thing and positioned the high-hat track about a sixteenth out - gave it this mad choking-i'm-about-to-die-stutter feel that worked really well every now and then...
b) record your hook. reverse it. learn to play the reversed one. boring, but effective
c) i learnt this one at the weekend from a classical musician - i was helping her record a string quartet for a demo!!! - anyway, pthis music was all about recurring theme and stuff...
i) play the melody in a minor key (boring again). you could use something like a diatonic transpose/autoharmonise thing to do this
ii) THIS IS THE MOST INTERESTING. because its weird. but you have to be able to write music. write your melody on a score (you know, like proper music notation). turn it upside down. play that version. sounds properly weird.......
anyway, i rarely do any of these things but when you're bored they're amusing.....and you can always write a dissertation on your music like this girl that wrote the string quartet did and say that you were "reflecting the asymmetrical nature of life through a musical technique" or something equally as pretentious.....
a) kilo mentioned this. instead of just nicking a hook line from that hit song you're trying to rewrite...
sample/record the hookline and get it looping - then try positioning it in different parts of the drum loop you have running alongside it. big repositions like half a bar will just change the emphasis whereas little repositions - say half a note or less - can give it a weird offbeat swing feel. you can use the offset function on a sequencer to the same effect. i noticed how useful this was when i was doing a fast tempo dnb thing and positioned the high-hat track about a sixteenth out - gave it this mad choking-i'm-about-to-die-stutter feel that worked really well every now and then...
b) record your hook. reverse it. learn to play the reversed one. boring, but effective
c) i learnt this one at the weekend from a classical musician - i was helping her record a string quartet for a demo!!! - anyway, pthis music was all about recurring theme and stuff...
i) play the melody in a minor key (boring again). you could use something like a diatonic transpose/autoharmonise thing to do this
ii) THIS IS THE MOST INTERESTING. because its weird. but you have to be able to write music. write your melody on a score (you know, like proper music notation). turn it upside down. play that version. sounds properly weird.......
anyway, i rarely do any of these things but when you're bored they're amusing.....and you can always write a dissertation on your music like this girl that wrote the string quartet did and say that you were "reflecting the asymmetrical nature of life through a musical technique" or something equally as pretentious.....
Message 8/11 19-Aug-98 @ 08:54 PM - RE: Creating a Melody
hehe, did you flip the key signature as well, or leave it, ie in E flat Major would you instead have had flats on the f-c-g (equivalent to G major)?
Anyway, very, very fun ideas, bill.
Anyway, very, very fun ideas, bill.
Message 9/11 19-Aug-98 @ 09:46 PM - RE: Creating a Melody
rouge
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to create a melodies, you've got to have a talent.
You've either got it or you ain't!
You've either got it or you ain't!
Message 10/11 20-Aug-98 @ 09:22 AM - RE: Creating a Melody
yeah. but even if you've got the talent you can still do the stuff above. my favourite backwards song? the stone roses did some pretty damn good ones - Waterfall was a wicked melody anyway, and then they got another one when they reversed it. but that's probably me and my mancunian fascination...
and, has anyone heard "naxalite" by asian dub foundation? that has some beautiful backwards stuff as well....
hilevelt - i have no idea if you reverse the key too....the last time i read music from a stave (?) i was 16 and i was never any good at it anyway...but i guess you could try it....different lines of symmetry for flipping it might work too...
and, has anyone heard "naxalite" by asian dub foundation? that has some beautiful backwards stuff as well....
hilevelt - i have no idea if you reverse the key too....the last time i read music from a stave (?) i was 16 and i was never any good at it anyway...but i guess you could try it....different lines of symmetry for flipping it might work too...
Message 11/11 20-Aug-98 @ 01:57 PM - RE: Creating a Melody
A good place to look up music theory is some .mod tracking sites. Like the United Trackers. They have been writing stuff like this for awhile, and they usually start out pretty simple.
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