Writing a Melody
There is no formula for a good melody, and there is a set of principles that turn up in thousands of them. Steps with leaps as punctuation, a range people can actually sing, and one high note used once.
- mostly steps
- one octave to a tenth
- one climax
Where you run into this
- Pop
- Singer-songwriter
- Classical
- Film music
- Every style
In short
Melodies move mostly by step, from one note to its neighbour. Anything larger is a leap. Stepwise motion is easy to sing and easy to predict, and that is exactly what makes a leap an event: it stands out because it breaks what just happened. Ode to Joy is almost entirely stepwise, which is why anyone can sing it back. Over the Rainbow does the opposite and opens with an octave leap, and then walks back down.
The range decides how a section feels before any note does. Narrow feels intimate and held in, wide feels dramatic. Most singable melodies stay inside an octave to a tenth; the Star-Spangled Banner covers an octave and a fifth, which is precisely why amateurs dread it.
How it works
The climax is the highest note, and the classical rule is strict and genuinely useful: use it once. Three appearances and it is not a high point, it is the ceiling of your note supply. Put it on the most important word, usually in the last third of the section, with a mostly stepwise approach so the listener has a reference for how high it is.
Where you run into this
- A verse that sits in a small range and a chorus that suddenly opens up
- A leap upward that walks back down over the next four bars
- A melody you can sing after one listen, which almost always means steps
Our own examples
Three of our own lines, all synthesis: one entirely stepwise, one with a single leap to the climax, and one with leaps everywhere so you can hear it stop being singable. The note supply is playable above them, so you can check every choice against the scale it came from.
Keep going
Everything in melody and form
- Writing a Melody
- Motifs and Phrasing
- Melody and Harmony
- Non-Chord Tones