Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

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

Post by Hades »

to answer to OP, André :

I honestly feel it's hard for me to try and give advice on something like that.
I suck at percussion, but I never ever had trouble to find extra melodic parts for my tracks.
Hell, the problem is that I usually have far too much melodic content in my tracks so they are constantly floating somewhere between techno and house. Not enough cheese to be house, not enough simple groove to be techno.

I've recently gave myself another go at trying to learn how to play boogie woogie piano, which is extremely hard to play technically, especially if you come from a classical piano training background, and the first thing I noticed after practicing for a few weeks, was that I was already coming up with new riffs for my right hand in my head all the time.
As if, when you just get into a genre deep enough, there is virtually no end to the melodies you can come up with.
(obviously, that doesn't mean my right hand was able to play everything that was inside my head, but that's mainly a matter of practice and muscle memory)
Not sure how much of my time I want to give up just for the practical side of things, but yeah...

What I was trying to say...
some things I thought of :
If you got trouble coming up with melodic content,
(which is, if you ask me, a problem many producers suffer from, they make these wonderfully well produced tracks, but there's not a single riff or proper chord progression going on)
try listening to classical music or jazz. A LOT !!! Seriously !
You don't even have to be actively listening. Just put it on in the background while you're doing the dishes or whatever...
These genres are so stuffed with melodic content that your brain will automatically suck some of it up as a sponge.
And the next time you're having difficulty coming up with a new melody, you can try all your usual methods, but your brain will guide you far sooner and on some sort of unconscious level than before you had all this input.

Next tip : steal !
One of my favorite Frank Sinatra quotes goes something like this :
"if you steal from one person, it's called theft,
if you steal from everyone, it's not called theft, it's called research" :D 8-)

I've had situations before where I made a track to only later realize I took the baseline from a track I knew. Happened totally subconsciously, and the groove was completely different, but yeah, that shit can happen.
But what you can do, is just take a great chord progression, and do some inversions or spread the notes so different sounds get to play them, or have the chords get played as arpeggio's.
Don't just blatantly steal, rework what was already great to begin with ! Recycling is the way to go.

I've even once bought some really old sheet music (100+ years old) on a flee market, and then played some of those notes to my 101, and it sounded absolutely awesome. Haven't used it in any track of mine up till now, but it's a technique I most definitely won't forget in the future.
(do pay in mind the sheet music used was from totally unknown pieces, usually even had things written on them like "dedicated to the ladies of the boarding school of mme blablabla. haha, puts a genuine smile on my face to be recycling that into techno music)

hope this helps in any way.
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Hades
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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Hades »

ow, and before I forget, Mr Heil was once briefly here,
and he gave us some Ableton MIDI fx rack to create new melodies with.
I never really used it, but I still have it on one of my laptops,
so give me a shout if you want it ! ;)
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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by gtsm »

Hades wrote:ow, and before I forget, Mr Heil was once briefly here,
and he gave us some Ableton MIDI fx rack to create new melodies with.
I never really used it, but I still have it on one of my laptops,
so give me a shout if you want it ! ;)
Yes, please share that! Creative melodies is also something that I struggle with.

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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by 1nfinitezer0 »

In terms of human replacement devices, err inspiration machines, there's aplenty"

Coldcut just released an m4l plugin for arp & riff generation
youtu.be/UoFRDC2MXA4

Then there was also the Liquid Music Wave DNA generator
https://www.wavedna.com/liquid-music/

And Xfer's Cthulhu Arp
https://www.xferrecords.com/products/cthulhu

---

Are there any rules as to what makes something cheesy or not? Seems like one of those problems with too many possible solutions to make generalizations, only contextual evaluations. ie, if it sounds cheesy

I often find I make cheesy melodies, and then I try to think of which notes I could just imply without actually having them in there, or start deleting or modifying the MIDI.

I really like follow actions with legato on between variations of clips so that I can try a bunch of ideas, but it jumps around pseuo-randomly and makes combinations I hadn't thought of.

Or automating Arps (you can put multiple in series if the earlier one has a longer step and note length than the ones after).

To capture theses - Pipe MIDI in to another track to grab the new modified sequences and then throw them back to the original instrument with all your MIDI plugs off.

---

Hades, I'd also be interested in what Mr Heil formerly offered if you're able to find it.

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

Post by Hades »

I'm gonna have a look at the studio laptop tomorrow.
It was a few years ago though, but I don't think I deleted it.
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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by gab »

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4688, do you mean this hades?
i hope you don´t mind that im sharing the old topic :)

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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Críoch »

Forgot about that.. Cheers!
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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Hades »

gab wrote:viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4688, do you mean this hades?
i hope you don´t mind that im sharing the old topic :)
I absolutely meant that one.
I was already gonna suggest to try to do a search if I wouldn't have found it on my studio laptop.
I downloaded it fine here (outside the studio) and could open it fine,
but still gotta test it. coffee first.

there's nothing wrong with sharing old topics man.
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Hades
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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Hades »

like I just said in the original topic :

ok, I downloaded it here upstairs, and indeed it doesn't seem to open to anything useful when you unzip it,
so it could be that it didn't work downstairs and I had accidentally opened the one I downloaded years ago.
Anyway, was pretty easy finding it back now I had the name, and now I know the old file works on 2 laptops.
Haven't tested it as of yet, but since it opens, I suppose all you need to do is follow mr Heil's instructions.
I've put the file in my dropbox if you want it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xehwf5cddxd6x ... 0.adg?dl=0
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Hades
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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Hades »

the thing works perfectly fine if you use mr Heil's instructions and the file I uploaded to my dropbox.
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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Críoch »

Yee - Haw! We have lift off. It works now. Cheers for that Hades. Will dig a bit deeper into it later on
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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Southpaw »

Hades wrote:
I've recently gave myself another go at trying to learn how to play boogie woogie piano, which is extremely hard to play technically, especially if you come from a classical piano training background, and the first thing I noticed after practicing for a few weeks, was that I was already coming up with new riffs for my right hand in my head all the time.
As if, when you just get into a genre deep enough, there is virtually no end to the melodies you can come up with.
Man, if I play stuff in, I can't help but sound cheezy, too cheezy for techno stuff anyway, for Deep House stuff it's absolutely fine and it's what it calls for but if I want to get a sound that is a bit edgier/experimental/Techno, I have to toss the keyboard aside and get step sequencers out. Even if I draw in normal midi clips I have this idea that it's all pre determined and I do not like this because I place notes where I don't really want to be placing them, I want to be suprised sometimes. I really like some of the results with M4L sequencers routed to a decent synth patch and then twisting the sequence up, maybe forward/reverse, doing a few sequences and altering step length, say a 5 step over a 7 step pattern in both forward and reverse over 4/4 time. It doesn't HAVE to be polyrhytmic but for me, it pulls me away from that phrase resolution that you associate with melody. Ie: With a normal melody, apart from the rhythm of it, it tends to need to make a point if done traditionally, and by doing that, the natural tendencey to make a riff that starts and has a resolving end point to complete the sequence and punctuate it. This in itself doesn't equal cheeze but it's easy to fall into cheeze because of it.

Sometimes I like things stipped back, other times I want to get something interesting going with just a single synth but when you're doing polyrhythmic stuff, you realy have to think about the notes you use as if they are out of scale notes and everything else in the track is running in scale, the out of scale notes might only work at certain points and the different step lengths throw that into chaos and also, any swing/shuffle too as sometimes you start geting shuffling downbeats if you have say a 7 step sequence or any other odd number.

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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Amøbe »

I don't know how much of an advise this is, because I really have a hard time shifting between making something melodic and it not being cheesy (at least to my own ears). But when I used to play noisy-indie-rock (very blatant ripoffs of LCD soundsystem) I once sat down with the singer of the band and tried to write down in notes melodies we thought where great and catchy. One thing that seemed to be common was that great melodies doesn't necessarily rely on melodic movement as much as rhythm. Also very often the movement seemed to be stepwise.

I don't know if that helps.

Next time I'll come back to the forum is to listen to some tracks in the feedback thread <3


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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by arkos »

Hades wrote: I've put the file in my dropbox if you want it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xehwf5cddxd6x ... 0.adg?dl=0
Since I am shite at writing melodies I thank you from the bottom of my heart :)
Nice one looks like something a musical retard like me could use :mrgreen:

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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by jacksonick »

Several chains of midi effects in a rack can be cool. Maybe some editing.

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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by intrusav »

jacksonick wrote:Several chains of midi effects in a rack can be cool. Maybe some editing.
Was just thinking this...
Put any kinda melody down, stick a pitch midi effect in front of it set to randomise and let it roll til something jumps out, chop it up again and work back from that with bassline, pads, etc.

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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Andre_Crom »

Thx for all the replies guys! Looks like this is a topic that many people struggle with. Gonna try that Johannes Heil device tomorrow...

Apart from that i think it's true what was said somewhere here, you need to analyze the "non-cheesy" stuff and understand WHY it feels not cheesy, and then can try to apply similar rules to your own music. I find that often it has something to do with

1. how many different notes are played (in techno, usually the less, the better)
2. the key
3. the preset/sound

But to understand this stuff in theory is obviously easier than to NAIL it yourself, like Johannes Heil etc do it.

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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Andre_Crom »

Hades wrote:
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: :|
... thanks for the "house of house" reference, i also heard this when i was probably 16, but then forgot it, one of the tracks that remind me why i started to love this music!

Even if Emmanuel Top probably managed to create even more timeless sounding music.

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Re: Creative techniques to write non-cheesy melodies?

Post by Hades »

Andre_Crom wrote:
... thanks for the "house of house" reference, i also heard this when i was probably 16, but then forgot it, one of the tracks that remind me why i started to love this music!

Even if Emmanuel Top probably managed to create even more timeless sounding music.
Ow Emmanuel Top totally rules. Pretty much all of his old tracks are great.

I was at one of my old high school friends place some days ago, and I saw he was throwing away some CD's.
He used to be totally into trance back in the 90's, and one of the CD's I saw was a Cherry Moon collection.
(the Cherry Moon was a legendary club back in those days)
(Top was on there as well btw) Brought it home with me, and sure enough, at least 3 great tracks that I had never even heard from.
I think the sense of groove was also a lot better than nowadays where for example all these big room techno tracks hardly have any groove at all.
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