A little feedback wold be good from people who read this thread, whether you like it, and would like to continue with something. Questions are welcome too.
When we construct a melody, we do many things in parallel. The most important thing is to keep in mind, what we want to express (a theme with feelings). Everything else must be only technical knowledge, what we have to adjust to the theme.
sometimes unconscious steps driven by just intuition and feel (very important).
(Listening music contributes to the unconscious part.)
If we hear a given chord progression, it's sometimes easier to invent a good melody. We can use it as an aid to get into mood.
-The melody is constructed from pitches distributed in time rhythmically. They have pitch and rhythm and dynamics (strong/mid/weak velocity/loudness). These are elements what we can play with. We'll see some examples later.
a.... b.... c....
a. Adding basic chord notes (tonic, 3dr, 5th, octave) - always a safe point, they will sound good, not dissonant. Can be in ANY ORDER, which can increase variety. Arpeggios are good tools if ... Dissonance needs to be resolved, otherwise it will lead to nothing and will give incomplete feel. Using it well gives variety.
-We can add even 7ths and 9ths, etc., they are in the pleasant harmonic series. But sometimes they are more dissonant to the tonic or the rest, and careful placement is required. However in bass melody adding major 7ths can be a good point if handled well.
e. Adding rhythm: Rhythm can give a style and character to the melody, and time signature has to be in connection with dynamic. Triolas and rhythm breakings are good colorizing effects.
g. Game with timbres: A good instrument can express the feeling some melody better. It's a whole topic called orchestration, may be covered later. But good to know, tweaking with tones/timbres (modes) of a single instrument (articulations) is a good way to express feelings, just as vibratos/dynamics.
Anyway, we will need a discussion about creating chord progressions, which is a bit simpler procedure IMO, of course it may vary person-by-person... My other plan for the future is to investigate, discuss masterworks of good composers together. Fortunately there is a homepage (http://soundcloud.com), where we can upload mp3, and people can leave notes in the different parts (times) of the music. We can put notes there for e.g. what technique was used at a given point, what makes the tune so good.
And the most important: even though there are some common patterns to all listeners, whether a piece of music "hits" the audience is only in small parts owed to its composition. It has to be presented to the correct audience, at the correct point in time. Much good music nowadays fails in that point, not in its composition, and this is beyond the composer's scope. Actually, they even lose against pieces that are much weaker being looked at with composition criteria.
this has changed a bit, as GT has become the most used editor i think.. but its fail.. you laptop lamers have no excuse, a c64 cost very little money, and its no problem to get one - and then you get the real sound. why do you keep using a pc program, and upload sid files made with psid64 ?
