>> [MUSIC] On the days when maybe
you're just brainstorming ideas,
maybe you have a big correct coming up and you just
want to have some cool things to bring to that,
or maybe you're just not feeling inspired.
The muse is off with Beyonce once again,
and you want to be
productive and you're not feeling inspired.
One of the things that you can do is again,
starting with some shapes, melodically,
maybe write a little melody that
is built on steps or one that's
arpeggiated or going back to
the static melody or just play
around with something that has leaps in it.
We'll just do a static melody for now.
[MUSIC] We'll just start with that,
and now let's do it by step.
[MUSIC] That feels nice,
it feels really like a question mark,
like so this is love?
We'll stay with that. [MUSIC] Let's
say that that's what you come up with
and that's the one we're going to work with.
We like that. This is love.
One of the most important things you can do to
develop your melodies is to repeat it,
because part of getting someone else to remember
your idea and to let
them know where they are in your song is to go,
Hey, here's an idea, and here it is again.
[MUSIC]
We know we can't repeat that again,
something's got to change.
But that's one way to develop it is to just
repeat it again exactly the way you have that.
That doesn't happen as much in verses,
as it does in a chorus.
Chorus is really about exact repetition.
I might want to do that again.
I'll keep that idea.
I'm going to keep that
rhythm and I'm just going to change
one melodic idea just to keep it interesting. [MUSIC] Now
I've just made that interesting.
I've kept the same rhythm and I just changed one note,
and that developed it into something else.
Another way that you can develop an idea,
is you can use a technique and they use
these developmental techniques
a lot in classical composition.
It's called retrograde.
I like to just call it, take
your idea and play it backwards.
[MUSIC]
You go up and you go back.
It's a really nice way to just play
with these ideas without having, again,
to be a lightning rod where you're just going,
Okay, come on, melodies, come through me.
It's on a day when you're just trying to either
prepare for something or just come up with some ideas,
and it gets you inspired.
Just by trying to do these ideas,
you can get inspired.
Repetition, sequencing it rhythmically,
you keep the rhythm but you
change the melody in some way.
Another way to develop your idea is to
play it one way and then just play it backwards.
One more developmental technique that you can
use is to just change the direction,
invert the direction that you're going.
If your melody moves up,
you could sing it
again and have a good down with the same idea.
[MUSIC]
The first arc went up and then I just
inverted that shape and now I went down, up.
That's a really nice way to create and develop an idea.
If you've ever heard Charlie Puth song,
Attention, the first verse,
all four of the first lines
descend in a really interesting way,
but they repeat the same direction,
and then in verse two,
he inverts the second line
and it's a really nice surprise.
It creates this surprising motion in the song.
You can take a listen to that song
and check out what he's doing there.
But it's a really nice thing for you to try as
a writer is just invert the shape
or the direction that you've just
written and it'll create something new.