Name that tune

What do you want the tune of your next track to do? What do you want it to make the listener feel? Sad? Euphoric? A sense of indestructibility? Empathy? Do you want it to help those listening to fall in love? Or do you want it to be imbued with some other quality?

If these all seem like lofty ambitions, remember that pieces of music have the capacity to make us feel all of these things and many more emotions besides. Apparently Stephen Spielberg laughed when he heard John Williams’ initial idea for the two-note melodic hook which underpins the soundtrack to Jaws but has since said that he owes half of the film’s success to this ‘tune’ and the terror it caused to audience to hear. Clearly, melody is something which has the capacity to move us in a remarkable number of emotional ways; one of the factors most likely to connect us to our audiences. Leaving this important process to chance seems like a significant gamble.

Instead, as this subject is huge, we’ll begin the process of being a little more tactical with the notes we write, to help wrest a greater emotional arc in our melodies. Because ultimately, that’s what a melody is; a tune which encourages the listener to feel emotion, no matter which of the many emotions you want to tap into. The melodies we forget are those which leave us unmoved; the ones we remember can bear repeat listening because we want to feel the emotions they provoke over and over again.

But exactly how this process works isn’t a precise science and it’s true that one person’s idea of a great tune will leave another person cold, which is why so many of us are still writing new music; despite all of the melodies which have gone before, there are many left as yet unwritten.

As a rule, a great melody requires a combination of tension and release. The tension comes when a melody line plays against the harmony in a way which produces a moment of musical ‘jarring’; the release comes when that moment is resolved and the melody changes to support the harmony, or vice versa. Melodies which only use notes from the chords which accompany them often lack musical depth, while melodies which only ‘jar’ and never resolve are often hard to connect to or to translate into human emotions.

Hopefully some of the examples that we’re looking at in this months’ walkthroughs will help you to find the balance between those states…

Leaving this important process to chance seems like a significant gamble