I said I would circle back to this arrangement and talk about a few things so let me do that today. I have talked about many of these things before; in fact, this arrangement is just about as solidly in my preferred wheelhouse as anything I write. Let’s start with the introduction and in particular, […]
Tag Archives: melody
Read Part 1 here In Part 1, I introduced a general rule: the further from root the melody note is, the more sophisticated the sound is going to be. This is a general rule because it requires a lot of nuance and is not always true. For example, there will be occasions where you get a […]
I was recently at an event where lots of people were presenting songs and someone presented a song that sort of blew people away. It stood out in certain ways that made people sit up and take notice. In my opinion, there was one huge factor that made it stand out and I want to […]
I want to write one more post about the Composers Symposium I went to last week because there is another thing that made a big impression on me: how difficult it is to write a good melody. Melody writing is hard because frankly there are really not many solid rules. It is not like the […]
I heard a curious thing a while back. I heard a young person play two pieces of music. The first one was an extremely technical classical piece. It is the kind of piece that only the top classical music students would tackle. I know it well but I would not touch it with a ten […]
If you are like me, getting started on a piece of music (arrangement or composition) is often the hardest step. We all have tendency to get stuck looking for that idea that will define the song.
The short answer is no.
An analysis of the melodies of a few songs.