>> [MUSIC] In this video, we're going to talk about
melodic contour for storytelling.
Usually, songwriters are starting with a story.
They are starting with something they're going to.
You're starting with something that you care about.
You've got a story to tell.
Sometimes if you write a melody and
you don't think about the shape of it at all,
it just comes out with the words because you're
so excited about the story that you're telling.
But you can actually use the shape of your melody,
the contour of your melody,
to help you tell the story.
If you think about the song,
Somewhere Over the Rainbow,
it's such a huge song in
our society and everyone loves that song,
everyone knows that song.
The choice of the shape of that melody,
that first octave somewhere over the rainbow.
The whole shape of that melody is
showing you how far away that is.
That it's somewhere over the rainbow,
and we can start to think about
that in our own songwriting.
If you've ever heard Katy Perry's Firework.
If you were to draw a shape
of what's happening in the verse,
in the melody, and then you
draw a shape of the pre-chorus,
and then you draw a shape of that chorus.
The whole idea of you're firework.
It's almost like the melody in
the verse is like this little guy on the ground,
he's lighting the firework.
Then in that pre-chorus,
it feels like it's ascending,
it's just going up and up and up.
It's doing that great job of pulling you to the chorus,
then when you get to the chorus,
you just can feel those fireworks bursting.
Check out how the rhythm and the shape of
that melody are really supporting the story being told.
Working with a lyric,
let down the curtains,
let down my hair,
let down my heart,
let down my heart.
If you think about that, letting down the curtains,
letting down my hair,
letting down my heart, letting down my heart.
If we wrote that to a melody that had
a contour that moved up,
it would sound
like
this.[MUSIC].
It's not that bad melody,
but it's not really supporting
the direction of the scene taking place.
We're talking about letting the curtains down,
letting their hair down.
Let me just reverse the direction of that melody so that,
that contour is helping me tell that story.
[MUSIC].
Now, even though I'm saying,
let down my heart,
if my melody were to go up,
it would feel like an uphill battle,
like how hard that is to let someone's heart down.
It doesn't necessarily have to follow the direction,
it just has to follow the meaning and the emotion.
[MUSIC]. A song that
does this so well is Bonnie Raitt's,
I Can't Make You Love Me,
written by Mike Reid and Allen Chamberlain.
In the first verse, they're talking
about turning down the lights and turning
down on the bed and then how
they want to turn down the things
that she's thinking about.
It really follows the same pattern
that we just went through in the song.
Check it out, it's a really great example.
Another thing you can think about is not only the shape,
but also the rhythm of
the contour that you're working on.
If you listen to Shake It Off by Taylor Swift and you
think about what would the rhythm be if you were
just shaking water off your hands?
They really just capture that in that chorus so well.
Start to think about,
what is the shape of my language?
What is the shape of
the verb that's happening in the scene?
What's taking place in my scene?
and how can I translate that over into my melody?