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Looking for help writing melodies
Question for bardic/musician friends: does anyone have any resources for how to write melodies?
I've gotten pretty decent at writing poems, and that's mostly because I've learned the building blocks of how it's done. I know, for example, that ballad meter usually works better for me for sillier or lighter pieces (like The Rubber Duckies of Dione Sidhe or The Shrieking Monkey Debacle) but iambic tetrameter works better for more serious pieces (Poem for the Plants), and dactylic tetrameter works well for more warlike pieces (like The Clash of Three Armies).
I know that the standard ballad meter rhyme scheme (ABCB) will make people focus on the meter (like in The Ballad of Marian's Scones), and I can play with that (like in The Man with the Long Bow, where "bow" is clearly meant to stand in for a naughty word that rhymes with quick, trick, stick, etc.) On the other hand, I can change up the rhyme scheme ever so slightly (ABBA) to make a poem seem much more courtly (The Lady Bardicci). Or I can deliberately enjamb most of the line to make a poem sound more like natural speech (The Tale of Reprobus).
These are all choices I make pretty early on in writing a poem, right around the same time that I choose whether I want it to be serious or silly, courtly or common, intricate or simple. I don't even know what the equivalent choices are in melody-writing, let alone how to pick! So... help please! How would I go about starting to learn this?!? Thanks in advance!
I've gotten pretty decent at writing poems, and that's mostly because I've learned the building blocks of how it's done. I know, for example, that ballad meter usually works better for me for sillier or lighter pieces (like The Rubber Duckies of Dione Sidhe or The Shrieking Monkey Debacle) but iambic tetrameter works better for more serious pieces (Poem for the Plants), and dactylic tetrameter works well for more warlike pieces (like The Clash of Three Armies).
I know that the standard ballad meter rhyme scheme (ABCB) will make people focus on the meter (like in The Ballad of Marian's Scones), and I can play with that (like in The Man with the Long Bow, where "bow" is clearly meant to stand in for a naughty word that rhymes with quick, trick, stick, etc.) On the other hand, I can change up the rhyme scheme ever so slightly (ABBA) to make a poem seem much more courtly (The Lady Bardicci). Or I can deliberately enjamb most of the line to make a poem sound more like natural speech (The Tale of Reprobus).
These are all choices I make pretty early on in writing a poem, right around the same time that I choose whether I want it to be serious or silly, courtly or common, intricate or simple. I don't even know what the equivalent choices are in melody-writing, let alone how to pick! So... help please! How would I go about starting to learn this?!? Thanks in advance!
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The best advice I can come up with off the cuff is that you should own a copy of A Mighty Wind and watch it with the intention of observing how the creators came up with the music they did and how that music pushes the viewer's mind in specific directions.
Thing is, you likely have all the knowledge already in you, but you don't have terms for the things you know so you can't communicate them even to yourself. So, for just a bit here, go with your feelings and your other senses. Consider what a song smells like or feels like or tastes like or looks like and try to group songs you know by similar senses.
The best advice I can give you is to listen to the music you know and find your own internal terms to describe what happens when you hear that music and work from there.
The next best advice is for you to stand by while I take a few days to think about the topic and see what I can organize for a simple shared language.
There is going to be a lot of you listening to stuff and making yourself answer "what am I hearing?" "what am I feeling?" "what am I doing?" but that is how we find the root of where music connects with our lives.
Above all else, trust your instincts. Be consistent with your self and your instincts will take you miles and miles.
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That said, while coming up with a private language might be useful, I'd be even more interested in learning the universal language, or rather the one that other musicians use. I know, for example, the distinction between major and minor, but I wouldn't know what would be accomplished by basing as song around, say 3rds or 4ths. Or around quarter notes compared to triads. Or even if that's where I should be starting.
All this is very useful, and thank you for taking the time to write it out for me. But I think my instincts aren't honed enough yet to work off instinct. Just like I would have sucked at writing poems "off instinct" before I knew about meter and rhyme scheme, but now things tend to come together organically and instinctively because I have experience. Gotta have the basics first! *grin*
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That being said; You might look into some of the 'classical rules of partwriting'- these have music theory's embedded about notes leading to other notes in a 'logical' method.
I had to think a bit to break down my own process; but here's what I tend to do when I do come up with words before the music is locked in:
I try to start by choosing major/minor tones - then just pick a note. Start singing all the words on that note- this usally helps me figure out the 'cadence', tempo, and rythem. (And whether the words are going to trip me up while singing). Since it gets boring singing one note, the note tends to drift up or down rather organically.
Depending on how I want the phrasing to go- or if I noodle something I really like, I'll repeat that (usually into my traveling tape recorder) so I'll remember it later. I'm also a sucker for a good chord progression.
After a while of doing this, a song starts to take shape along with tweaking with it to try to make it more 'singable' overall.
My songs "Ivy", "Lament of Blackjack's Lady", "Maid of Lorraine", and "(Working title:) What happens when...", "(Working title:)Scriptorium" were written this way.
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Yikesola! *chagrin*
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Music is a language with it's own patterns of behavior, and those patterns will change depending one what era and what genre you're looking at. For SCA purposes, I'd suggest making a study of those Playford tunes that are period and other dance tunes that fall within our period, to see what the trends are there (much period popular vocal music is based on dance tunes and rhythms). I'd do some reading on the topic of melodic mode and affect. I might even read some period treatises on musical composition, though those often addresses polyphonic and/or sacred music. Then I'd chuck all that and write something that pleases me, or at least that's what I'd do if I had an iota of talent for composition. Which I don't.