Building a melody line

Teasing in a melody line by using fragments of it before unleashing the full tune can prove to be hugely effective

01 > We start with a fully-supported melody line. We’ve got a tune, supporting chords, a whole beat structure and everything’s playing at once. But this certainly doesn’t sound like the start of a track. Let’s look to work ‘up’ to this point by building an introduction. 02 > We move the track back a few bars and copy only the elements playing the hook to the start of the track. The first of these is a house piano sound and we start with this, stripping out the syncopated notes between the melody note completely, to produce something much more sparse.

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Increasing the delay on this sound keeps each fragment of melody audible for longer and, now that there’s more space in between each hook line, this is effective, as there’s a greater sense of anticipation between each new hook fragment with these echoes. 04 > Next we bring in the synth line which doubles the piano. To this, we add SoundToys’ FilterFreak, set up with a low-pass filter so that from a muted, murky start, the synth line sweeps in under the piano, ready for its ‘full frequency’ version to take over when the track kicks off.

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Next, we introduce the bassline, which starts when the trance synth part does, meaning the piano plays for four bars before the bass and the lead synth are introduced. The bass brings in the movement of the syncopated pattern, providing some momentum before the beats arrive.

06

This would be a good time to add a few FX to the transitions – a white noise sweep leading into the main drop would work well to build further anticipation. As we’ve explored in the video, even playing the main hook’s melody at half time could work well.