One of the biggest challenges we face as music producers is to create tunes capable of capturing the listener’s attention. Making sure our tracks are kept interesting is an integral part of the composition process.
However, writing melodies can be a real challenge. It’s very often a creative stumbling block with melodies that sound bland, boring and predictable causing a lot of music producers to abandon their initial idea and start a whole new track.
There is so much information around the subject but very little of it breaks the process down to the specifics required for dance music production. This gets even more frustrating and difficult to understand when tutorials use complex and stuffy ‘classical music’ jargon.
Music theory is an area that fascinates me and for all of the reasons above, I decided to create a ‘Melodies & Riffs’ pack. In this pack I go deep into creating unique melodies that fit perfectly with edgy and dark underground club music.
POLYRHYTHMS
One of my favourite ways to explore melodic ideas is using rhythm and one great technique I often make use of is ‘Polyrhythms’.
In essence, a polyrhythm consists of two different rhythms playing simultaneously. Creating different rhythms in your track can be as simple as changing the length of the loop that is cycling over.
In the video above part of the Melodies & Riffs Pack, I go over this technique in detail.
The fun comes in when we stop these two rhythms from looping over the bar perfectly. So for example, if you make one rhythm a bar in length and the other 3/4 of a bar you will end up with two rhythms drifting out of time but at a constant rate. It sounds very cool!
There are no limits to how many notes you can use. I personally prefer running with a slightly longer loop length than 1 bar . You can create patterns that play beautifully together and are constantly interesting without having to do too much work. This is great using arpeggios, riffs or other melodic patterns. The melodic ideas is almost constantly reinventing itself; bar in, bar out.
THE END RESULT
With a couple of minor tweaks, you can come up with melodic ideas that evolve and maintain interest for long periods of your arrangement.
Understanding music theory massively helps with pushing through creative blocks. It’s for this reason that I made available the Melodies & Riffs Pack and the Harmonies & Chords Pack for all Finish More Music members to watch for FREE.
