- Today I want to share with you five melody patterns
that will change your music production life forever.
Now these melody patterns can be used
in any style of electronic music and in pop music too.
And I'm also going to share with you a bonus tip at the end,
so you can customize them
and create any original sounding melody whenever you want,
to apply in your own music.
Now, melodies are super important
for carrying the song along,
whether it's with a synth or whether it's for the vocal,
the melody is what people are going to remember
when they listen to your song.
And that's why we're looking at them today.
Now I'm also going to share with you
which huge tracks these melody patterns been used in.
So you can relate to them and then, as I said,
apply them in your own music if needs be.
And if you're a new producer,
you can download my free music production starter pack
below this video as well.
So without further ado,
let's hop into the door and get it done.
First off, it's important to understand the note lengths
that we are going to be using in our melodies.
Like my bass tutorial,
which you can check out there or there, wherever it is,
this is the first thing we cover.
So most modern music has four beats in a bar,
and that sounds something like this:
One, two, three, four.
So the different lengths of notes we will be using
will be a whole bar length, so that's four beats long.
And that would be something like this.
We'll also be using a note that's two beats long,
which would be like this.
And the most important almost,
is the eighth and the dotted eighth notes.
So if you remember from the last video,
we had eight beats, which is like this.
So there are eight of those in each bar,
and the dotted eighth is basically
an eighth and a half long.
So if we just make that a half longer,
it's going to give us this syncopated groove effect.
And that's super important so remember that.
And you want to avoid using notes like sixteenths notes,
cause they're too fast generally for melodies.
So now we've covered the note timings.
Now let's look at the pitch,
the other constituent part of a melody.
So most melodies are going to be based on
a chord progression within your tracks.
So core progressions really are the underpinning
emotional foundation of a track,
and your melody has to work with those chords
to create the effect that you want.
So starting off with a really good core progression
is the most important thing,
and I've linked to a video for chord progressions there.
But we're going to be using the chord progression
from "Don't You Worry Child" by Swedish House Mafia.
♪ Don't you worry, don't you worry child ♪
So let's just listen to the chords there first.
(example chords play)
And to create the melody,
we need to be working in the same key as this.
So I know that this track is in the key of B minor.
So if you're using Ableton 11,
you can press the scale button,
select B minor and you'll see,
it's just using the notes from within that scale.
So you can do the same for the melody as well.
So you can just press scale B minor
and then press scale here,
and then all of these notes showing
are just the notes from within B minus.
So you're never going to go wrong
if you just use these notes.
But anyway, let's get into that first essential pattern
and it's using leap-wise notes.
So if we look at our scale here,
(scaled notes play)
step-wise would be going:
(step-wise notes play)
Like small jumps going in order.
Whereas leap-wise is where you make a big jump
(leap-wise notes play)
and that's what happens in this melody,
so let's have a listen.
(example music begins)
And you'll notice the second part here uses step-wise
and a good melody would usually use a combination
of leap-wise notes and step-wise notes.
And this is because it can sound a bit disjointed
if you're jumping around all over the place too often.
So you can see as well, we've got eight notes,
eighth notes, sorry, then we've got a half note there.
And that just gives a melody,
that's easy to see, easy to remember.
It's all the notes are within the key of B minor.
(example music begins)
Now the second essential tip for melody patterns
is to remember repetition,
people and humans love repetition
and they like it in nature as well.
So everything has to flow together in a natural way,
and you can see here, or you can hear in this track.
This bit will repeat
the second time the melody goes through.
(example music continues)
Repeat.
Very slight variation, lovely and simple,
and that's what makes a good melody as well.
And then we go into the main stab chords part of this track,
but you can hear the melody is still playing along,
but now we are just using dotted eighth notes
to give it that groove and that rhythm
that we spoke about at the beginning of this video.
So let's have a listen to it.
(example music plays)
You can see here again, repetition.
Three notes at the beginning, three notes there,
three notes there, and very close together as well.
Very few big leaps, lots of step rise.
(example music continues)
And it repeats through again.
(example music continues)
And then we go up at the end.
And that's another tip as well,
you can do a leap by a whole octave,
and that's going to add some excitement
and movement to your melody.
So these first two melody passing tips
are really using step-wise and leap-wise notes
and keeping everything within the key
of the track that you're working in.
So here's an example of a simple melody
using step-wise and leap-wise
by one of my students, Jack Parker
who's brand new track is out today.
So here's a quick example of his melody:
(melodic house music)
Jack's one of our master class students,
and if you want to check out the master class
to get results like that with your music,
there is a link below this video.
Okay, let's get onto essential melody tip number three.
This is the arpeggio style and melody.
And this is where you break apart a chord
and play it in notes.
So you can see here, we've got this chord,
an arpeggio would be playing these chords,
but as separate notes, like a melody, like so:
(example arpeggio plays)
and then you continue throughout the whole sequence.
And because this is now a melodic line instead of a chord,
this counts as a melody and a great example
of this technique is in Eric Prydz's "Opus".
(progressive house music)
And if you want to know how to make a track,
just like "Opus", you can check out the video
that I've just linked to up in the corner of this.
Okay, melody pattern number four.
And this is one of my personal favorites, this is the motif,
and this is where you have a repeating melody
that can just play whilst the underlying chords change.
And I just think this creates such a beautiful effect.
Again, you're just needing to use the notes
from within the key,
and it's usually a short, sharp motif that can be repeated.
So a great example of that is Boris Brejcha's
"To The Moon And Back".
(dance music)
So here's an example of me creating a motif melody.
Let's work in A minor cause it's super easy.
We can go and put in some bass notes using A minor.
We can press scale A minor there,
press scale If you want to fold it down,
or you can just use the white notes
from A up to A, super easy.
So this is the bassline that we've got:
(bass notes play)
Now to make a motif that works over that,
I'm just going to use the techniques
we've already looked at,
the timing, and using the notes from within the scale.
Now it's also worth noting that starting a melody
on the first of the scale,
the third,
the fifth,
or the seventh are all usually great notes
to start the melody from, they just sound good.
So let's start this one on...
and I'm going to be using dotted eights
quite a bit in this one.
Another quick tip, as well, sticking to one note
for several times within a melody
is a nice way not to over-complicate things
rather than jumping around too much.
And then when that one note gets boring,
you can then change it to another note in the scale.
That's a little quick tip there.
(notes play)
So let's just repeat that, and that's going to be our motif.
And you can change it on the last bar as well
to switch things up.
(notes play)
Now we are going to bring in the bass notes after this.
So listen to the change it makes.
(example music plays)
Now the last essential bass pattern that you have to know,
or way to use bass, is to use a bass melody.
And this is where the bass is used as the melody,
so you don't have a separate bassline and a separate melody.
The bassline is actually the melody.
Now there are some great examples of this
in all stars of dance music,
but here are three of the most famous examples.
So the first example is Benny Benassi's "Satisfaction".
(techno music)
The second is Oliver Helden's "Gecko".
(dance music)
And the third example of this is the Swedish House Mafia
and their track "One".
(progressive house music)
So using the key of A minor
as we were for the last example with the motifs,
let's just kind of give an example
of what a bass melody might look like
and how you might write one.
Now it's important to make your bass melody
bounce around your rhythm section,
like the rhythm of the bass melody, super important,
and if you want to learn how to make amazing basslines
you can click the link that's just popped up now as well.
So I'm actually going to base this similar
to that motif that we just did.
(notes play)
So that's what we're using as our melody,
and then we can switch it up a bit.
(notes play)
So you can see we're using step-wise and leap-wise.
Again, those always apply.
Always keep those in mind,
mixing them up to keep things interesting.
Now, if we take this download,
just change the instrument to a kind of bass instrument.
So let's use a simpler.
Just find a bass sound...
(man vocalizes)
Let's go bass.
(bass synth plays)
(example music continues)
So that's covering the job of both the melody
and the bassline, all in one fell swoop.
And let's get onto that bonus section.
So this is how you can spice things up
and make these melodies your own.
Whenever you're making a melody,
here are a couple of top tips you can have.
So let's just duplicate this melody for the sake of speed.
And we're going to use it in a different instrument.
Let's just put on a Serum.
(synth plays example)
This is Rocket Powered Sound by the way, this pack,
so you can check that out below this video too.
So we've got some great presets
but now what I'm going to do to spice this up,
a couple of things you can do.
The first is using pitch bends in your melodies.
And if you've got a vocal,
usually when, if someone's singing that melody,
there's going to be a degree of pitch bend
between those two notes, like:
(man vocalizes)
You can hear there's a tight, slight slide
like a portamento because that's how people sing.
That's just natural.
But what you can do here is you can add these in,
even on synth lines as well.
So if we want to make things a bit interesting,
we can add a little pitch bend.
(example music plays)
And this is a technique that was used
in Tiësto and KSHMR's track "Secrets".
(big room house music)
And if your pitch bend sounds a bit weird,
make sure that you've got it set to,
the pitch band range, to 12 semitones up and down,
cause that's an entire octave,
and that usually just makes it sound a bit better.
(example music plays)
The other thing that I wanted to show you,
the other technique was at the end of a melody,
like after it's repeated through once or twice,
you can have a little rundown,
one, two, three, four in sixteenths.
Now this is the only time
I really use sixteenths in a melody.
So in this instance,
let's go back here, and just put a little rundown,
(notes play)
to loop us back around to the beginning of that melody
and let's hear what that sounds like.
(example begins)
So you can see, we actually do go into those sixteenths.
So there you have it guys.
I really hope you've enjoyed this video.
If you have, please like it, share it with your friends.
And if you're a brand new to production,
subscribe to the channel because it makes you feel better.
It makes me feel better. And I think it saves baby kittens.
That's what I've been told.
Yeah, no, I'm pretty sure that's what I was told.
And you can also download that free starter pack
below this video too.
Thank you so much for watching guys, until next time.
Cheers and happy producing.