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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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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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