In theory, there shouldn’t be a lot of difference between a melody that’s meant to be sung and one that’s meant to be played. Particularly in the pop genres, both kinds of melodies will usually display the following characteristics: The melody will usually move mainly by step (i.e., adjacent notes in a scale) with occasional […]
There’s no denying that the shape of a melody has a lot to do with the mood of music. However, melodic shape is a tricky one to calculate. It’s not based on a rule as much as it’s based on psychology. On a psychological level, we know, for example, that: melodies that are static, sitting […]
When you look at a typical verse melody, it’s probably most common that you’ll notice that the typical direction is upward, particularly if you compare the first few notes to the final few before the chorus hits. It’s time well spent to look deeper, though, at how good verse melodies move, because where the voice […]
Rhythm is a crucial part of the energy of music. When music is more rhythmically active, you feel an intensity that generates excitement, and that can be an important part of breathing life into a song. Trying to get a handle on writing song lyrics? Discover the benefits of making a lyrics-first method your new […]
The quality of a song’s melody rates pretty high when it comes to listing elements of a song that are most easily recognizable by people. It’s what we hum, so it’s important. How hummable are your song melodies? Here’s something you should try with any song for which you’ve spent any time at all working […]
This is something that doesn’t necessarily occur to casual listeners to pop music: the number of times we hear a melody that’s really just the same short 4- or 5-note cell that gets repeated over and over with different chords underneath. Like starting the songwriting process by working out the chords first? There are benefits […]
