So far you’ve learned how individual notes affect a melody based on where they lie in a measure and how they relate to the underlying chords. However, perhaps one of the most challenging parts of writing a melody is linking the individual notes together in a way that both expresses what you want, but moreover, does so in a musically coherent and appealing way. In this section we’ll discuss a few ways to achieve this in your melodies.
An important principle to keep in mind when writing melodies is that people like to hear a combination of both the old and the new. To strike this balance, it’s important to develop and repeat melodic themes and introduce variations on melodic patterns. If your melody never repeated material, there would be no sense of familiarity or satisfaction from predicting tensions and resolutions and the song would sound random. A pleasing melody will set up some predictable patterns, intermittently introducing more interesting and new patterns, and then surprise us by breaking patterns at key points in the song. Most people have pretty good intuition for this. When a song repeats the same thing over, and over again, we get bored. Conversely, songs that lack patterns don’t use enough familiar repeating elements to create a memorable sound. These songs lack the “hook” that causes the melody to get stuck in our heads. There are several easy ways to incorporate themes and patterns in you melodies to create a pleasing sound.
One way to start forming a coherent and cohesive melody is to establish some rhythmic consistency. Repeating rhythms contained in your melody can be used establish a theme to be reprised. Consider the chorus of “Umbrella” by Rihanna:
Lyrics
When the sun shines, we’ll shine together
Told you I’ll be here forever
Said I’ll always be your friend
Took an oath imma stick it out to the end
In this song, the harmony changes slowly enough that rhythmic themes are repeated over each chord. If you look carefully, you should be able to see that the rhythm of the notes and lyrics over the first three chords are exactly the same even though different notes are being sung with different lyrics. The rhythm over the last chord breaks the pattern and provides a nice contrast with the repetition that occurs immediately before it. This technique is often applied less strictly than in this example. Often songs will start with a rhythmic idea and then vary it, making slight changes to fit the lyrics better while keeping the general pattern in place. Umbrella happens to follow an A A A B grouping, but other rhythmic patterns are possible, and the length of the pattern need not last for only one chord. In “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga, the rhythmic patterns are each two measures in length, and the pattern loosely follows an A B A B grouping.
In the next section we’ll show how songs expand on the idea of repeating rhythmic themes to include the notes as well.
Next up: Melodic Themes