Coming Up with a Melody Line

Although I don’t know a lot of composers in person, I do know myself fairly well. I know that I sometimes have some trouble coming up with a decent melody line for a musical composition. In most musical compositions, you will want to come up with a meldoy line first, then the bass line to complement it. Of course, that isn’t to say that starting with a basic idea of a bass line isn’t an equally good idea, but don’t expect to be able to come up with a great bass line on the first time through.

Here are some tricks that seem to have worked for me:

Hum a tune aloud: This can be replaced with “whistle a tune” or “come up with a random tune in your head”, but thr results of humming a random tune, if you know how to hum decently, are often quite surprising. Try to remember this tune and write it down. Once you have the first part of a melody, it’s much easier to think of a way to continue it.

Think about something you like: If you think about something you like, especially if it’s part of your surroundings, ideas for a tune, or at least a beat, should come into your head. Try to attach an emotion to the subject. For example, if it’s raining outside, and you like rain, you might want to compose a sort of jumpy (to simpulate raindrops), somewhat happy, somewhat sad musical piece.

Borrow ideas from another piece: You won’t want to steal an entire melody (maybe a part of it which you could add on to) but rather the general timing and beat of a piece. Just take a few bars from a piece you like, and think of another way that same beat could be used to create a slightly different emotion in the listener.

Come up with a bass line first: As I mentioned earlier, if you come up with an interesting bass line, you will eventually think of a good melody line to accompany it.

Practice improvisation: This isn’t a method I use a lot, but once you know of some interesting chords as well as theemotional effects of the chords if you listen to them in a certain order, you can become very good at improvisation. I will elaborate on the ideas of improvisation in the future. However, if you want to use this method, I suggest you record your piano playing on tape or a disc, or whatever you have handy (a phonograph, if that’s all you have, would even suffice). This is because, if you’re like me, you’re likely to forget everything you played shortly after playing it.

Once you have the melody of your piece completed, you can go on to do the bass line. I will probably cover this in the future. Maybe.

Ear Training: Musical Intervals

To be a good musical composer, you must have a good musical ear, or at least a good musical brain. You should be able to hear music in your head as you compose, or during the day whenever you think of music. Beethoven was deaf for most of his musical career. However, even those pieces he composed while he was deaf sounded good because he could hear music in his head, and he had perfect pitch. In fact, I think the fact that he became deaf after learning the basics of music may have freed up a lot of energy for his brain, allowing him to focus even more on hearing music in his head.

Most of us don’t have perfect pitch. There are courses on the internet that can claim to teach it, but I really don’t see the point in even trying to gain perfect pitch, especially if these courses actually cost money. For those of you who don’t know, perfect pitch is the ability to hear a note and to be able to name which note it is without using a reference note. My older brother has perfect pitch, which can sometimes be useful when I want to know the key to a piece I’m listening to. So, if I play, for example, a G note on the piano without him seeing which key I’m pressing, he would be able to tell me that it’s a G. He might even be able to tell me which octave it is, and he could definitely tell me if the note was a bit sharp or flat (in other words, if the piano needed tuning).

Some say that, although perfect pitch in itself is a rarity, perfect pitch combined with musical talent in a person is even rarer. Actually, if you look in the past, composers like Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt, Chopin and Rimsky-Korsakoff had perfect pitch, but those are just five I can name offhand, and there have been other composers tho didn’t have perfect pitch and still composed some beautiful music.

In other words, if you have perfect pitch, that may help you in your compositions, but really, perfect pitch is only the ability to understand a very technical part of music. Know that music is more than just a technical thing, and so as helpful as perfect pitch may be, even if you compose a really bad piece in a really good key, it will still be really bad piece.

If you don’t have perfect pitch, don’t worry about trying to develop it. Focus more of your energy on developing relative pitch. This is the ability to be able to tell what a note is relative to a reference note. In order to develop relative pitch, you must know about intervals between notes.

Because there are only 12 basic notes on most musical scales, there are 12 possible intervals with any one note as the base. In these 12 intervals, I’m counting the perfect octave, which is like a C followed by a C an octave higher or an octave lower.

Note: I will mention “whole steps” and “half steps” between the two notes in each interval. A whole step is equal to a Major Second interval, a half step is equal to a Minor Second interval. You kind of just have to know what those two are, but they weren’t very hard for me to memorize in my old music class.

I’ve drawn a keyboard to illustrate a piano key for you so that you can see visually what the intervals would look like. Just count the number of steps it takes to get from one key to the next, using both white and black notes:



Click on the names of the intervals to hear them on your computer.

Minor Second: This is one half step between any two notes (for example, C to C#/Db). I remember this as sounding like the two notes in the beginning of the Jaws theme.

Major Second: This is one whole step between any two noted (for example, C to D). I remember this interval as being the first two notes in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Minor Third: This is one whole and one half step, or just three half steps, between any two notes (for example, C to D#/Eb). I remember this as the first two notes in the main part of “O, Canada”. If you don’t know what “O, Canada” sounds like, get out there and learn more about the culture of other countries. If you live in Canada and don’t know what “O, Canada” sounds like, may I ask why?

Major Third: This is two whole steps or four half steps between any two notes (for example, C to E). I remember this interval as being the first two notes in “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”.

Perfect Fourth: This is two whole steps and a half step, or five half steps, between any two notes (for example, C to F). I remember this interval as being made up of the first two notes in the famous wedding march, to which one great poet wrote the lyrics “Here comes the bride/All dressed in white/Slipped on a banana peel/And went for a ride”. Ah, now that’s good songwriting.

Augmented Fourth/Diminished Fifth: This is three whole steps, or six half steps, between any two notes (for example, C to F#/Gb).

Perfect Fifth: This is three whole steps and one half step, or seven half steps, between any two notes (for example, C to G). This should sound like the first notes to the opening theme to Star Wars.

Minor Sixth: This is four whole steps, or eight half steps, between any two notes (for example, C to G#/Ab).

Major Sixth: This is four whole steps and a half step, or nine half steps, between any two notes (for example, C to A). This interval sounds like the first two notes in “My Body Lies over the Ocean”.

Minor Seventh: This is five whole steps, or ten half steps, between any two notes (for example, C to A#/Bb).

Major Seventh: This is five whole steps and one half step, or eleven half steps, between any two notes (for example, C to B).

Perfect Octave: This is six whole steps or twelve half steps between any two notes, or just a note followed by the same note an octave higher (for example, middle C to the next C). This interval sounds like the first two notes to the main part of “Somewhere over the Rainbow”.

You can associate each interval with whichever song you want, but the fact that I could only think of songs to associate with certain intervals shows that you might not need to memorize all of these intervals.

Each interval can also be inverted. Going from a C to the G above it is a Perfect Fifth interval, for example, but going from a G to the C above is makes a Perfect Fourth interval. The following lists goes from Original -> Inversion -> Original.

Minor Second -> Major Seventh -> Minor Second
Major Second -> Minor Seventh -> Major Second
Minor Third -> Major Sixth -> Minor Third
Major Third -> Minor Sixth -> Major Third
Perfect Fourth -> Perfect Fifth -> Perfect Fourth
Augmented Fourth/Diminished Fifth -> Augmented Fourth/Diminished Fifth -> Augmented Fourth/Diminished Fifth (This is basically the middle)
Perfect Fifth -> Perfect Fourth -> Perfect Fifth
Minor Sixth -> Major Third -> Minor Sixth
Major Sixth -> Minor Third -> Major Sixth
Minor Seventh -> Major Second -> Minor Seventh
Major Seventh -> Minor Second -> Major Seventh

Because the perfect octave is simply the same note at different pitches, it can’t really be inverted.

Once you know these intervals, whenever you listen to music in daily life, even if you only listen to the music on TV commercials, try to notice intervals in the tune and name those intervals in your head. Once you’ve somewhat memorized the intervals in a song, you will be able to play the tune on whichever instrument you play with less use of trial and error. Also, knowing intervals like this will allow you to write down music more quickly after you’ve heard it in your head.

First Lesson

This is the first post of my new blog on musical composition and playing the piano. As the title of the blog suggests, I intend to make regular posts with tips on playing the piano and composing music. I specialize in composing for the piano, but I hope that my methods can also be used when composing for other instruments or orchestras.

Why am I doing this, you ask? I’ve looked all over the internet for a blog with tips on how to compose music, but I haven’t found one. I know, however, that there are at least some people on the internet who want to compose music, so I’ve come to the conclusion that I have to make one myself if I want such a blog to exist. If you think I’m not “qualified” to tell people how to compose music just because I’m 14 years old and not a student at some musical conservatory, start your own blog and make it better than mine.

I play the piano a lot in real life, and I do some musical composition as well. However, I’m not fully experienced in either area just yet, so this blog will be as much of a learning experience for me as for you. I do, however, have quite a bit of experience playing the piano, and composing music, at least enough that I should be able to teach you some things.

Before I go too far, though, I should tell you what you’ll need in order to take full advantage of my lessons and become a composer. You’ll need everything on the following list:

A pencil
A thin black pen (preferably not a ballpoint, but if that’s all you can get, it shouldn’t be too bad)
Blank sheet music paper (I made some quick sheet music paper on my computer which you can find below, download and print out, although it might be a bit small and hard to write in)
A scorewriting program (I like Melody Assistant, but if you can find a better one that’s free, e-mail me about it)
A musical instrument (preferably a piano or keyboard of some sort)
Some basic knowledge of music theory (how to read notes and rests, time signatures, key signatures, etc)
Computer speakers and/or headphones
Patience (With yourself as much as with me)

You will need a pencil and blank sheet music paper to write down music as you compose it. Go over this in black pen to make a neater copy of your sheet music that others might find it easier to read.

The scorewriting program is somewhat optional, but helpful. Melody Assistant not only allows you to write and print out musical scores, it also gives you an idea of what the music would sound like.

The musical instrument should be one that you know fairly well how to play, and one which, when you play it, you can tell which notes you’re playing. For example, a piano is a good instrument for this purpose, as there are a number of octaves which all have the same 12 notes in the same 12 positions. A guitar is a good instrument if you’re able to memorize the fretboard (I’m sure most guitarists know the fretboard, but I just started playing the guitar this year, so I’m not that great at it). A clarinet is an okay instrument as long as you know the fingering for each note. A kazoo is a bad instrument unless you have very well developed perfect pitch. It is important to know which notes you’re playing, and to be able to play any note on command, so that you can write and play music quickly as you go along.

You need to know some basic music theory because I don’t always want to have to explain things like notes, clefs, etc. to you before I tell you how to extend upon it. You will need computer speakers because I will upload MIDI files for you to listen to examples of some music. In future posts I will probably even do some ear training.

Patience is important because I have a tendancy to start blogs and then suddently forget about them, gradually making fewer and fewer posts. So, you’d better catch the blog while I’m still enthusiastic about it. Also, you need patience with yourself because the first piece you compose probably won’t be some great symphony, or even a passable fugue (don’t even ask me about fugues just yet). You must do a lot of composing before you come up with anything really good.

I recommend filling one page of sheet music each day. This can be your own composition, or just copying something from your computer screen by hand because your printer isn’t working (I know mine isn’t!)

If your printer is working, though, you can print out my official “Piano Tips and Musical Composition Blog” blank sheet music. Click on the link below. Then, you can right click the image and click "Save Target As..." or just click and drag the image onto your desktop to save it to your computer. Or, if you want, you can just right-click on the link below and click "Save Target As..." to save time. Then print out as many copies as you want. I added the address to this blog to my sheet music page because, hey, I gotta advertise.

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