Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

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Andre_Crom
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Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Andre_Crom »

Hi guys,

a recurring challenge for me is to write cool melodies which

1. do not feel cheesy
2. don't feel overly "melodic"
3. catchy and memorable
4. credible inside an underground techno context.

Johannes Heil is really good at that. Here's a recent example; where i both like the deep background line, as well as the lead.

https://youtu.be/H4hs91jtf3g?t=4m20s

How would you go at writing something with that feel, especially without big keyboard skills?

I found that with step sequencers like Max4Life -Rozzer, or with my Beatstep Pro, the results can get pretty chaotic, and often too melodic.

And when i write them with the keyboard or click them in, it often feels too predictable/cheesy.

Do you have ideas / suggestions?

Thx!

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rktic
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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by rktic »

Hi Andre,

I think one of my favorite quotes can be applied here as well:

learn the rules.
break the rules.

If you end up writing only cheesy stuff, find out what makes it cheesy. Then reverse what you learned to write non-cheesy ones.

Btw, what makes the Heil track particularly interesting is the space in between the sequence. With such an arp I'm likely to expect that it just keeps going and going. He's breaking with that expectation - voila, not 90s trance anymore. Just another way of above saying.

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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Oktagon »

It's a challenge certainly, my lazy brain has a tendency to fall back on the well trodden path whenever I try and force a melody and cheese is the predictable result. The problem I find with melody is there's no margin for error, if you get it even a bit wrong it really ruins the track.

One obvious thing is that a two bar loop without a chord progression is a lot easier to make non-cheesy than an eight bar loop with chord progression.

Another thing I try and remember is that creative accenting of notes can really elevate a simple melodic line. One thing I do with Rozzer is to map the midi CC to macro params to get some extra movement. Some randomisation of that can spring some interesting ideas.

Also a second part harmonising can be nice and allow your main part to remain more minimal.

youtu.be/cw-8cWKSjkg

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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Southpaw »

This is similar to the other thread in some ways. There are so many little paths you can end up talking about with this from just the notes themselves to the sound to literally everything about it.

You could just say, what is it about this that makes it cheezy, note everything that you think that includes and change it even if it means removing the melody altogether. That sounds counter-intuitive but sometimes just the fact that you put a melody in there can lead to a bit of cheeze. A single synth line playing a melodic phrase over and over screams 'melody' or 'lead line'. If thats what you want, work with that and make it less on your face or change notes, fight against something that seems obvious. If you walk away humming it or whilsting it, maybe re-think it from the ground up. I dunno, depends on what you want to achieve.

You could try what's called 'Hockets'. Break a single melodic line up and spread bit over different synths/sounds. If done right with a decent phrase, you could find you have also made some interesting call & response phrases with lots of sonic texture whilst taking away the brute force obviousness of an outright melody whilst keeping it in a more subtle way. That's one thing to try I suppose. Can be tricky for sure
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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by terly »

Learn your modes. Check out Scriabin for some interesting non-cheesy melodies and harmonies.

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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by buffered »

use tools to modify your midi data in creative ways.
play a very simple sequence into midi delays, filters, chord memorizers, randomisers etc.
Route these tools in strange ways to get interesting results.
In Reaktor you also have loads of great sequencers. Spiral is a good place to start.

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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by buffered »

and don't earn scales, it's a waste of time. Just stick to minor chords to avoid cheesiness. You can spend your whole life learning these things and in reality, you don't really need it....for techno.

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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Plyphon »

Just pick three or 4 notes and go for it.




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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Southpaw »

buffered wrote:and don't earn scales, it's a waste of time. Just stick to minor chords to avoid cheesiness. You can spend your whole life learning these things and in reality, you don't really need it....for techno.
This is a common misconception though mate. Major chords don't necessarily equal a cheezy majestic sound, a normal major triad yes, ie: C/E/G = ( majestic/cheeze) but once you start geting into 7ths, it's a different ballpark simply because you have a semitone gap between the root and the major7th.

ie: C/E/G/B/. If you invert that chord so that you play it in its 2nd inversion, like this: G/B/C/E, it's a bit more 'clustered'. It's still a CMaj7 chord but now it takes on a whole new character.

You don't always have to play a full chord. Like a nice tense chord might be to play 'D/Eb/G'. It's a 3 finger chord but it's not a triad as that's a root 3rd and fifth but that chord is a few notes from being another chord. And that's the relationship between major and minor chords.

If you play D/Eb/G in ascending order, you have this nice little tense tone, now add a Bb 4 semitones below and now add a C note 10 semitones below the Bb. Now you get C/Bb/D/Eb/G. Cm9 chord.

So for example, if you liked the chord D/Eb/G and were stabbing away at that, ....... for the uninitiated ( for want of a better word ) you might not see that is is a part of a structure and you may play a 'D' to 'G' bass or something but if you think further and see the chord as a little harmonic 'tree', then you can see that its roots would function better if you aim around 'C' as a root. But yeah, major/minor, they all merge at some point. :)
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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Mattias »

Southpaw wrote:
buffered wrote:and don't earn scales, it's a waste of time. Just stick to minor chords to avoid cheesiness. You can spend your whole life learning these things and in reality, you don't really need it....for techno.
This is a common misconception though mate. Major chords don't necessarily equal a cheezy majestic sound, a normal major triad yes, ie: C/E/G = ( majestic/cheeze) but once you start geting into 7ths, it's a different ballpark simply because you have a semitone gap between the root and the major7th.

ie: C/E/G/B/. If you invert that chord so that you play it in its 2nd inversion, like this: G/B/C/E, it's a bit more 'clustered'. It's still a CMaj7 chord but now it takes on a whole new character.

You don't always have to play a full chord. Like a nice tense chord might be to play 'D/Eb/G'. It's a 3 finger chord but it's not a triad as that's a root 3rd and fifth but that chord is a few notes from being another chord. And that's the relationship between major and minor chords.

If you play D/Eb/G in ascending order, you have this nice little tense tone, now add a Bb 4 semitones below and now add a C note 10 semitones below the Bb. Now you get C/Bb/D/Eb/G. Cm9 chord.

So for example, if you liked the chord D/Eb/G and were stabbing away at that, ....... for the uninitiated ( for want of a better word ) you might not see that is is a part of a structure and you may play a 'D' to 'G' bass or something but if you think further and see the chord as a little harmonic 'tree', then you can see that its roots would function better if you aim around 'C' as a root. But yeah, major/minor, they all merge at some point. :)
I agree, nice post.
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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by dubdub »

Personally, everything I write when I sit down on a midi keyboard comes out as cheesy, elementary-school level garbage. So I use this, it's the best chord tool for Ableton in my opinion, quick, fast, straight to the point and no BS. http://www.tetmusic.com/arpeggio_designer_features.html

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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Southpaw »

dubdub wrote:Personally, everything I write when I sit down on a midi keyboard comes out as cheesy, elementary-school level garbage. So I use this, it's the best chord tool for Ableton in my opinion, quick, fast, straight to the point and no BS. http://www.tetmusic.com/arpeggio_designer_features.html
Do these things force you to work in a single key? I noticed it has a function for selecting your key but you can get really interesting stuff when you jump between keys or use chords that do not belong in the key you're in.

If you're into samplers, there are lots of creative ways to get interesting riffs and chords going that you'd never stumble acoss in the normal way. I used to like making arpeggios, sampling them and then assigning each arpeggio to its own key in the sampler. They don't even have to be in the same key but it can help if they're closely related by say following the circle of fifths or something.

Anyway, you just start out with a basic synth patch cos youre not focussing on sound design here, just musical ideas, Make an arpeggio, not just 16ths, take some notes out for rhythm, copy it, invert it, reverse it, change some notes etc etc until you have like 5 or whatever. Sample each one off and put them in a sampler so you can trigger them with one note. Then play through them, jumping around from one to the other. You can land on some pretty unexpected ideas which you just don't come across normally esp when they aren't in the same key and they have different rhythms. Sometimes it's shit but often you can stumble across something really interesting even if it's just a small bit.

You can do the same with chords too, make different chords, assign them to keygroups and play some random stuff and you can arrive at things you just wouldnt get sitting at a keyboard.
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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by dubdub »

Yeah, it kinda does force you to work in a single key. It's not perfect, hence why I'm looking at one of these Kordbot things, but it's working for me right now. You can get some basic chord downs quickly and then record it in a midi clip and do inversions etc. on your own.

I dig what you can do with samplers harmonically but it does have a certain kind of harmonic feel, which is not always what i'm after.

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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Lost to the Void »

It's not just the notes or scales, it's then obviously usage that makes them cheesy.

Interesting melody but played via standard techno arpeggiators... Cheesy.

Changing how the notes are timed, can be just as effective.

Look to IDM for interesting ways to treat melody, slicing it, randomising portions of the melody, using BPM locked buffer fx, granular delays.
Or having a melody split over 2 or 3 synth to mess it up.

Indigo Kennedy is very good at doing this kind of stuff in a techno context.

But your average 4 note arpeggio is cheesy regardless of what notes you use.
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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by terryfalafel »

Some great info in this thread, especially from Southpaw. Could this be added to the archive?

Interestingly I do find the main synth part in the OPs original post pretty cheesy. It's not terrible but I wouldn't call it subtle or sophisticated. Just goes to show it's a subjective area anyway...

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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by msl »

or maybe just self-flagellate every time you catch yourself playing something cheesy?


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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Hades »

Oktagon wrote: The problem I find with melody is there's no margin for error, if you get it even a bit wrong it really ruins the track.
there's absolutely margin for error in melodies.
There wouldn't be any form of jazz or improvisation in general if you couldn't experiment with different ("wrong" ?) notes than what you'd "normally" expect.

A few weeks ago I watched a documentary about some of the greatest pianists from the 20th century,
and one of the very first things they (a bunch of famous pianist) always said when they were discussing one of the other greatest, was if they did or did not play many "wrong" notes. :|
So sad, really, but totally typical for the old school classical piano training shit.
I remember always being extremely pissed off when my old piano teacher used to literally yell at me "what are you playing boy ??!!! That's NOT on your sheet music" whenever I played something else.

Problem is that the melodic parts in techno are usually so simple that any type of "wrong" note will get noticed a lot sooner.
Oktagon wrote:
Another thing I try and remember is that creative accenting of notes can really elevate a simple melodic line.
accent is nothing more than a simplified version of velocity.
I mean, all you can do is turn it on or off.
Unless you're talking about an old school drum computer or a 303 or something, what you really need to look at is having enough velocity modulation going on. We should always try to remember that "real" instruments, at all times play every note with a slightly different velocity (unless you're talking about instruments which don't have velocity, like an organ), and drummers hit their drums a little different every fucking time.
So it's our job to try and inject more "human" movement/nature/spirit/whatever you want to call it into the electronic machines that we use to make our music with.
It's programming, it's boring as fuck, but you can clearly tell when people have forgotten to add some velocity modulation. It's like one of the first things that you hear that gives away the age of a track : not enough velocity changes, because a lot of the (really) old synths didn't even have velocity (Juno 60, 101, just to name the first 2 that come to mind). Nowadays production standards are much higher than they used to be, so a bit of that old school flavor once in a while never hurts, but if you go totally old school, it's just gonna sound poorly produced compared to today's standards...
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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

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buffered wrote:and don't earn scales, it's a waste of time. Just stick to minor chords to avoid cheesiness. You can spend your whole life learning these things and in reality, you don't really need it....for techno.
well, that's a serious load of bullshit.

About 15 years ago I once spent a few months almost daily practicing to play my scales on the piano,
or better, the XV88 that I bought back then because I lacked the room/cash for a real piano back then.
(happy to say I got a proper piano nowadays)
After practicing, I used to put on a string sound, or whatever other patch that seemed nice,
and I forced myself to start improvising in this or that key.
I had slowly been trying to learn improvisation for a few years before that, but before I tried out this method,
I was only able to improvise on music I already knew how to play for years, kind of as if you'd be doing a solo on a guitar or something.
Knowing my scales and having thousands of non-piano sounds at my fingertips just totally brought it to another level.

I do agree however that you can just as well use one of the Ableton's scale plugins so that you can just happily keep on clicking in some white notes and the plugin will automatically transfer all of your notes to the scale that you just chose. That's a great luxury. But if you don't know your scales, I would most certainly use that MIDI fx.

Also, if you don't know your scales, how are you supposed to be able to tune your percussion to your track for example ? Of course a lot of techno sounds are out of tune, but you can't deny tracks do tend to sound better if you have at least your kick tuned to a note in the scale that you're using !
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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Hades »

dubdub wrote:Personally, everything I write when I sit down on a midi keyboard comes out as cheesy, elementary-school level garbage. So I use this, it's the best chord tool for Ableton in my opinion, quick, fast, straight to the point and no BS. http://www.tetmusic.com/arpeggio_designer_features.html
that actually looks like an interesting tool, with some proper adjustments here or there.
I always found arpeggiators extremely limited 90% of the time.
You'd usually get far better results recording their MIDI output and then start spreading the notes over several sounds or start deleting some of the notes.
Live's arpeggiator for example is in serious need of an upgrade. It's extremely limited and gets boring in no time.
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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Hades »

terryfalafel wrote: Interestingly I do find the main synth part in the OPs original post pretty cheesy. It's not terrible but I wouldn't call it subtle or sophisticated. Just goes to show it's a subjective area anyway...
I totally disagree ;)
When I first clicked on the link and only heard the track starting from the point André wanted us to hear,
I kind of felt the same,
but when you listen to the track in total, how he slowly builds up to this moment where he releases this totally old school trance lead on you, then it all comes together perfectly.
I honestly think it's one of the best tracks I ever heard from mr Heil.
It's a modern day interpretation/salute to the old trance days, back when trance was a lot more darker,
and far closer to techno (say 93 till 96 or 97 max).

I grew up on that music, and Belgium was, back then, a pretty good country for proper trance.
So yeah, I got a special place for that music in my heart, and it always puts a mixed feelings smile on my face whenever I hear some DJ put on some "rediscovered" old trance track into their sets.
I never stopped playing those tracks, ever. I don't need to rediscover them at all.
And I actually have more respect for someone making a modern day version of this than the nth DJ that just considers himself highly original by incorporating an old classic trance track into his set, like say mme Kravitz playing "the house of house" and people going totally crazy as if it's the first time someone invented the wheel... :roll: :|
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