Ideal Music: Melody

For an artist to understand his craft he has to have a vision or ideal of what he thinks music should sounds like. I’ve been thinking over this for the last week so I decided to write a couple of blog post describing what my ideal music should sound like.

I’ll start with melody which is the most important element of music. (at least in my ears) When people hear songs they usually hum back the melody. For me a melody line has to have these features.

• Unique yet memorable: Melodies should be unique, yet memorable. Have you ever heard a song that you loved the melody yet couldn’t remember the song 2 minutes after listening. That’s a unique melody with out memorable parts.
• Flowing Movement: Melodies should move, but in a flowing way with very few note leaps (unless to set a specific mood),
• Transformation: Melodies should move and transform into other melodies to keep the song from getting stale yet have a related stem that bring them all. Classical music usually takes transformation to its extreme making it difficult for average people to follow, but Pop & Hip hop music tends to lack this feature repeating a phrase multiple times with little or no variation. Ideally there should be a balance between movement and stable parts.

 

There we go my ideals on melody. I’ll probably revisit this late, but for now next time I’ll be writing my ideals on Harmony & Accompaniment.

Don’t forget to check out my playlist for my “Daily Music Making Challenge” Where make a short 1 or 2 minute instrumental a day