One of the most difficult concepts for a budding songwriting to master is melody. It's relatively easy for anyone who plays an instrument to learn to play chords on it. And rhythm can be created by a drum machine or loops of live drummers.
But too often, when contemporary songs are written, the melody is an afterthought--either pasted on at the very end after the backing track has been composed, or in the case of genres such as rap, jettisoned altogether. There's much these days that can be done to shape and manipulate the quality of the recorded voice. But it helps if the singer has a great melody to perform in the first place.
But from Cole Porter to Holland-Dozier-Holland to the Beatles, the best composers have made their mark by composing great melodies.
Rikky Rooksby's latest musical instruction book, titled Melody: How To Write Great Tunes, does a pretty good job of explaining how basic pop melodies work. It's aimed at both new composers, and those who've written their share of tunes by instinct, but want to become more knowledgeable about their craft.
Rooksby, who teaches courses at Oxford when he's not writing, is a one-man pop historian, with an encyclopedic knowledge of British and American pop music from the 1950s to the 21st century. He starts his new book by analyzing why melody is a seemingly dying art in pop music, and then explains how it works, first starting with the bare rudiments and getting progressively more advanced. He uses numerous methods to teach: For each of his examples, there are simultaneous music staves and guitar tablature, and an accompanying instrumental tune contained in Melody's supplementary CD.
Too Often, Melody is an Afterthought
One of the reasons why melody has become an afterthought is how songs are typically written: as Rooksby notes, these days they're often written on guitar, where it's extremely difficult for most players to play a melody and chords simultaneously (unlike the piano). Or they're "written" on multitrack cassette recorders or multitrack computer software where first rhythm, then guitar or keys, then bass are recorded, and the vocal is an afterthought, the last piece of the puzzle.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
excellent Ed, great advice and review, thanks!
2 - Jon Sobel
It's great that books like this are coming out - pop music has been shortchanging melody for too long.
3 - godoggo
"an encyclopedic knowledge of British and American pop music from the 1950s to the 21st century." Yikes, that's a bad sign; he starts about the time thinkgs started going downhill to my way of thinking. I think the main problem is that the organizing principal for pop has become repetition, rather than cadence. Also, it's no longer expected that pop musicians know how to play changes.
4 - godoggo
...plus juvenilia monopolized pop culture post-WWI, because of demographic and economic developments, resulting in the case of music in an emphasis on things like beats and hooks, which go along with the repetition thing.
5 - SFC Ski
Yeah that damn Benny Goodman and the syncopation, why it was that post WWI juvenilia that caused the Crash of '29.
6 - Willie Wrock
Rikky is to be commended for attempting to describe melody making for the pop musician.
This is not an easy task for all kinds of reasons. Not the least being that any author is more likely to know what a reader wants after the book has been published - rather than before the book has been written.
Rikky's contribution is even more commendable when one considers the paucity of titles available on melody and melodymaking (compared to the bounty of titles available on learning and playing chords for guitar for example).
So now that I have read it, I find myself being more interested about what's NOT in this book.
Now that he's done volume one, where he has basically laid out preliminiary alphabets, I look forward to his volume two.
I'd like to see far more discussion about melodic rhythm in volume two. At least 25% of the book should be on the exploration of melodic rhythms from two note to ten note phrases for example.
I'd like to melodic contour taking another 25% of the book. Again contours ranging from two note to ten notes should be explored.
I'd like to see form and forms discussed in another 25%.
And in the remaining quarter I'd like to read about specific songs in their native state or in their recomposed states by the time he has applied some melodic rephrasing techniques to them.
I found the gallery of melodies least satisfactory. No doubt copyright issues and associated budget impacts constrained Rikky's discussion.
Whereas I could accept, the the name of didactic focus, a certain degree of cheesiness in the presentation of the audio tracks that populate the aforegoing nine sections, it was a bit rich to ask this reader to tolerate the same degrees of separation from the writers, let alone their songs, cited in the gallery of melodies section. Sometimes the come on does not come off.
This section feels more like a fob-off than a pay-off.
This criticism does not detract from the value of the book overall however nor does it prevent me from recommending it to melody students.
Teachers also can take this book as a reference and help their melody students extend the examples into relevant insights and inspirations.
Melody How To Write Great Tunes Volume One is a commendable book. I look forward avidly to his Volume Two.
7 - BooBoo
"I think the main problem is that the organizing principal for pop has become repetition, rather than cadence". - Rooksy addresses this in Inside Classic Rock Tracks when he discusses Brian Wilson's use of development in Good Vibrations. ICRT is a must read.
8 - Willie Wrock
Over here, all they talk is
melody, melody and melody.