"Melody"

[SnoSkiDrew]

Whenever I see/hear older songwriters/music fans complain about the songs of modern artists, the chief complaint I hear is, "today's songs just don't have melody anymore," and often reference the Beatles, Dylan, etc. as supreme examples of artists who understood "melody."

What is "melody?"

I understand that all songs have a melody, but what is meant when people complain that today's artists don't use/have "melody?"

[RareBird]

The first thing about melody in the popular music sense is that it is a relatively short sequence which can be repeated with a bridging mechanism to take you back an confirm that you just heard a neat and thoughtful little musical thought. You really can't have a long wandering melody because you have no opportunity to establish where it begins and ends and creating a bridge back to it just looks like you want to wander the same route again because you haven't figured out what else to do.

I find much of so-called "alternative" rock to fail in using melody for good effect with the audience. The fact that it goes on too long--sorry but I find Dave Matthews stuff emblematic of this--tends to reflect a self-absorption by the artist with himself or herself (like Alanis Morissette's first real miss which came out recently)and a failure to be in touch with what an audience connects with in the way of melody, reinforcement and frequency. Matthews still has a big audiences anyway because everything else about his group is pretty professional but his songs sit in a genre where people are used to self-indulgent twaddle and don't know from the hooks that used to sell millions of 45's in two and a half minute songs. Alanis was excellent until now in hooks and frequency but her latest has wandering singing that doesn't appeal to the built-in desire to understand what she's trying to do musically. Her words are all about her this time and the music seems to be too. Sorry. I love her and will be seeing her at Radio City musical Hall in September but this new album doesn't have what the others clearly did--some real sense of delivery.

Surely melody exists in longer strings in classical music but the nature of the length of a symphony provides for refrain--repetition of the melody to enforce it creator's assertion that this IS the goods he or she wants to share with us.

[rick-slo]

Good post RareBird!
Rick

[Rick Shepherd]

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree!

[SnoSkiDrew]

So, to clarify-- the biggest problem as you see it is that the recognizable tune, aka the "hook," is too drawn out, or not recognizable enough?

Makes sense to me.

Whenever I play "Can't Buy Me Love" in the local sandwich shop, people generally recognize it a few bars into it, before words come. But when I do more recent tunes, many aren't picked up on until I sing.

Good points..thanks. It does make me wonder though - do the songs get well known because of their catchy "melody," or do they have a memorable "melody" because they've been on the radio alot?


Anyone else have anything? Any more specific examples of songs with "good" melody or poorly constructed melody?

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by SnoSkiDrew

So, to clarify-- the biggest problem as you see it is that the recognizable tune, aka the "hook," is too drawn out, or not recognizable enough?

There are other problems and other hooks. A hook can be in the melody, an instrumental fill, a harmonic progression, or a rhythm. However, it needs to be singable. If "Susie sorority" can't hum it or some part of it to herself or her friends, it is bordering on not being a hook.

Much of today's music is a reaction to the three decades that preceded it, where the art of the hook was developed and abused. Today's younger artists make you wait for the hook. Often you'll wait through a nondescript intro consisting of rhythmic strumming of a couple of chords then through a verse where the vocalist attempts to side-step every cliche' the previous generation was guilty of and every singing convention the previous generations were bound by.

Case in point: The music industry spent three decades purging performances of breaths. Engineers perfected first the ability to manually punch in and out of record and remove them, then the business of using the automation to duck them. Then in the '90s, a female artist put them back in. Now producers are having engineers seek and save "perfect breaths" to repeatedly edit them in to add "humanity." Where it was previously bad form to reveal that you were human enough to need to take breaths or run out of breath, it is now the style to milk a place where you run out of breath and turn it into a hook.

However, hooks based on oddity, abnormality, or novelty, are the most short-lived. The ones that really last are really good "ear worms": melodies or word-melody combos that refuse to go away.

Good points..thanks. It does make me wonder though - do the songs get well known because of their catchy "melody," or do they have a memorable "melody" because they've been on the radio alot?

During the 60s, 70s, and 80s, a hook caught you from the first time it was played. That was part of the definition of a hook.

Anyone else have anything? Any more specific examples of songs with "good" melody or poorly constructed melody?

Here's a really recognizable hook with no melody: Remember the first chord from the Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night". One chord and your audience tunes in. Another is Badfinger's "Day after Day" where George Harrision played the melody on slide as the intro. Besides anything else, it was instant payoff, instant connection, requiring nearly no patience from the audience.

Bob

[SnoSkiDrew]

Great post, Bob. Very concise...

It's good to have some clarity on this--I've been unable for the most part to find a practical definition. I knew what a melody is, but.. never understood when someone complained about the lack thereof.

[Herb Hunter]

Technically speaking, a melody is a sequence of notes that is pleasing. So when someone bemoans the absence of a melody, they are simply saying they don't find the note sequence pleasing.

[ljguitar]

Hi ssd...
A story:
The melody is the part of a song (the notes) that most people sing along with. It is what makes a song recognizable or identifiable even without words - at least that is what I thought.

I had a student (still a good friend) who only plays and never sings. When lessons progressed without a hitch to the point we were going to learn chord/melody playing, he asked ''What is the melody?''

I said ''it's the part of the song that most people recognize and sing along with.'' He said ''I don't sing...''

So I asked ''What do you listen to when you listen to music?'' He replied ''the music'' (meaning the instruments).

Without words being sung (I hummed melodies) he could not identify Mary Had a Little Lamb, Amazing Grace, Twinkle-Twinkle, Star Spangled Banner, Row-row-row-your-boat, Hang On Sloopy, or anything else I tested him on. It effectively ended our lessons.

I even wrote a couple of them out for him to play simple melody lines by rote thinking it would help. It only made it a tiny bit better, since he cannot improvise on what he cannot latch onto in the brain...and he still cannot pick out the melody of the songs he plays. He's a brilliant guy who was raised in a non-musical home (completely devoid of music from what I can detect).

His wife is an amazing singer, and he plays on a Worship Team, but he cannot distinguish melody. His 3 year old daughter wants to sing these days, & he is making slow progress at home...she sings up a storm (and is basically learning from what she hears at home on CD or kid shows).

I asked him what he likes about guitar, and it's the way it ''feels'' when he plays. He can do scales all day long, knows chords and inversions, plays etudes well...in fact he treats them like normal people do songs, and likes them. He's a pretty good accompanist, but needs other participating musicians to successfully play and sustain a song.

[Bern]

Originally Posted by Herb Hunter

Technically speaking, a melody is a sequence of notes that is pleasing. So when someone bemoans the absence of a melody, they are simply saying they don't find the note sequence pleasing.

Herb, that's basically in a nutshell...

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by Herb Hunter

Technically speaking, a melody is a sequence of notes that is pleasing. So when someone bemoans the absence of a melody, they are simply saying they don't find the note sequence pleasing.

Hi Herb...
So do you think that an aimless or repetitive series of notes - random or planned - that is pleasing to a player constitutes a melody?

[RareBird]

Melody is the horse that pulls the cart in a song. Music without melody is closer to engineering than song-writing. A person can begin to flesh out a song starting with a rhythm pattern--like Robbie Krieger did with the Doors' "Light My Fire"--but the melody placed above it turns the nice chunk of marble into the Winged Victory of Samothrace or the Piata. It's where the engineering ends off and the personality begins. In music as opposed to sculpture however, in order for melody to be melody it needs to be reinforced.

People admire certainty and confidence--they don't have to think about it, it's in their animal nature to respond to the assertion of power with certainty. If the artist indeed has come upon a worthwhile melody and executed it right, people not only fall immediately into yielding to it--they consider themselves privileged to behold it and can't get enough. To achieve this crystallization of a melody as a matter of confident certainty--think of the brashness of the Beatles' "She loves You"--they ain't asking, they're telling-- it becomes important to make melody a coherent fraction of a song which when repeated divides the song into an articulation of certainty that this is just right for how it should be.

Some groups posture and put forth junk but people are magnetized to the apparent confidence even if the music is engineered with the head or the groin rather than the heart. Too bad Led Zeppelin let that cat out of the bag in my opinion as I come from the day where most in the business actually believed you had to not only project confidence but have something timeless to touch the heart with too. Sorry if that tweaks any Zep heads but I'm ruined by the excellence of the Beatles, the Kinks, The Who and the beach Boys, Smokey Robinson etc etc before the cat got out of the bag on money for nothing.

[Herb Hunter]

Originally Posted by ljguitar

Hi Herb...
So do you think that an aimless or repetitive series of notes - random or planned - that is pleasing to a player constitutes a melody?

Technically speaking, yes. Most people might define a melody as a sequence that is instantly memorable to the point that much of it can be repeated from memory but then there are people that can hear any piece, even a rather long one, once and play it back in its entirety on the piano.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by Herb Hunter

Technically speaking, yes. Most people might define a melody as a sequence that is instantly memorable to the point that much of it can be repeated from memory but then there are people that can hear any piece, even a rather long one, once and play it back in its entirety on the piano.

Hi Herb...
Interesting. I don't consider what savants or highly skilled players do when they repeat a sequence or song as playing a melody - unless there is a melody defined that they repeat with proper emphases.

In teaching folk fingerstyle and chord solo, the difference between accompaniment and melody is brought forward by which notes are accented or otherwise emphasized.

If there is no melody defined by the use of solo passages, or accents (or provided notation), it would seem impossible to distinguish which part is melody from harmonies or other notes in the chord.

Perhaps for some, a defined or memorable melody is not essential for enjoyment of music...but not the majority of listeners I think. If it were the case, we guitarists could get by with noodling and wandering through chord progressions and randomly fingered passages and it would be appreciated by the majority.

[Herb Hunter]

Originally Posted by ljguitar

...If it were the case, we guitarists could get by with noodling and wandering through chord progressions and randomly fingered passages and it would be appreciated by the majority.

But only if it were pleasing to the ear.


The theory regarding the difference between melody and harmony is something I view as apart from a strict definition of melody.

This brings up an affliction. I have, I believe, a deficiency akin to dyslexia regarding harmony. My mind sometimes confuses the harmony with the melody. For example, until I discovered that handicap, I would sing the melody to the Beatles', In My Life, correctly until I came to the word, remember, where I would jump to Paul's harmony note then revert back to the true melody. I have to labor to pick out the melody in songs like those of the Byrds and still don't always get it right. Have you come across students with this affliction regarding melody and harmony differentiation?