Melody

With the core of the song harmonically structured, the melody can now exercise with a bit more freedom, sticking to the scale of course. A melody can be any type of instrument typically deviating from the chord structure to provide a counter progression that becomes a type of spotlight in the production.

A good melody is one that you can hum or whistle, a good melody will be instilled within the listener’s memory.

Melodies can offer pleasing intervals when combined with other harmonic elements such as a chord progression. With a lot to experiment with, a key piece of information is knowing the interval created by a melody against the primary chord progression.

Although the rule of thirds can keep you away from harmonic danger, sometimes a folded piano roll can hide important information should something begin to sound dissonant or has shifted in mood.

A minor interval may accidentally be combined with a major interval and could throw off a desired emotion.

At this point, its worth being reminded of the fact that although you may be in a major scale, various minor intervals are permitted.

As mentioned with harmony, the direction dictates much of the melody’s feeling. If there is an incline in harmonic progression , matching a similarly incline progression with the melody will aid the direction altogether. Counter melodies can offer further interesting combinations, such as a decline melody with an incline chord progression.

Whether you are frequently using melodies or not much at all, there should be a level of communication between that of the melody and the supporting harmonic progression. Often, allowing the melody to ‘revisit’ the harmony can anchor the two sections quite nicely.

Another method of linking a good melody is to follow the rhythm of the chord progression if not to use the previous method of ‘revisiting’ the chord progression by replicating a note.

As previously discussed, the use of MIDI functions within the clip editor allow you to experiment with existing notes by rearranging in various ways. Invert, reverse, double and halve parameters help when creativity is at a bit of a loss.