147 WAYS TO WRITE A MELODY

hello it's Andrew Huang last week Italked about how music often followssomewhat logical story like patterns andwith that in mind I shared half a melodythat I invited you to finish composing[Music]where does it go nowthere were a hundred and forty-sevenusable submissions and I say usablebecause there were a few people whomaybe misunderstood the challenge andonly sent me chords with no melody therewere also a couple of people who sent mepassword-protected videos and nopasswords if you want to share what youcame up with or if you didn't writesomething yet but you still want to linkit on Twitter someone started thehashtag chord story so include that andjump in check out other melodies talk topeople I think this could be really funI was gonna say I don't know why theydidn't make the hashtag melody story butI just searched that and it seems likethat is a person so my original idea wasto just talk about different ways toapproach finishing a melody when you'restuck but I realized with all thesesubmissions we essentially have adatabase of a hundred and forty sevensolutions that people came up with forthis unfinished melody so as I waslistening i taked20 possible attributes that these melodycontinuations might have here they arein a nice Google spreadsheet where Ihave checked off which ones applied toeach entry it's kind of like you wereall voting on the best methods to useand I feel like I've been hearing a lotabout voting lately it's important orsomething so good job everybodylet's get a caveat out of the way wewere only working with one melody soit's very likely that it was suggestingor favoring certain approaches thatanother one might not but I think whatwe're going to learn today is stillreally valuable and with those 20attributes I mentioned I was trying tokeep in mind things that you could applywith pretty much any song you might beworking on the first bunch of them haveto do with phrasing the structure of amelody my melody had a very clearsequence you can see the shape of itwhen it's written now for those of youwho don't know in music when we talkabout a sequence we're referring to amelodic pattern that is repeated butwith different notes so the most famoussequence in the world is probablyyouin my spreadsheet though I'm using theterm sequence a little bit more looselybecause while a lot of the submissionsdidn't follow the exact same shape as mymelody many of them continued to use thesame rhythm or a variation on thatrhythm which is a very natural thing todo15% of people kept the exact same rhythmfor the remainder of their melody forexample[Music]35.4%abandoned the sequence altogether andcame up with something completely newfor their second half[Music]youalmost exactly half of the submissionswere a variation on the sequence and Ibroke that down into two categories6% created a variation that removednodes[Music][Music]and by far the most popular approach43.5% of submissions created a variationon the rhythmic sequence that added afew extra notes[Music]now let's look at the overall phrase Ifelt that my melody was prettysuggestive of being exactly halffinished in terms of length and a lot ofpeople felt the same way 79 percent ofsubmissions took my four bar melody andcompleted it in another four bars[Music]alright 17.7% extended the secondsection which is also a fairly naturalthing to do it can add an extra littlebit of finality[Music]don't know which way I should go[Music]I know I'll be just finehellothe skies to endhow longonly 3.4 percent of people created ashorter resolution to the melody and Ithink that makes sense it's not a verypopular approach because it usuallymakes it feel like it's been cut shortso let's take a look at the kinds ofchoices people made with their notes Ihave to say it was wonderful toexperience 147 different takes on thistune there were obviously similaritieshere and there but every entry wasunique we are all beautiful snowflakewas one similarity I picked up on that Iwanted to point out because it'sfascinating to me and I think indicatesif not an absolute logic to musicwriting at least some definite naturallyarising possibilities there were fivepeople three-and-a-half percent of theentries whose continuation of the melodybefore they went on to do their ownunique thing started like this whoa alsotwo of them were named Tom three ninepercent might not seem like much butwe're talking about an identical threefollow up notes in this melody thatthese people came up with completelyindependently and it makes me wonder ifthat proportion would stay the same in alarger sample size looking at the rangeof the melody how high and low it goesmy original bit had a range of 13semitones so just over an octave nothuge but also not tiny 41.5% of themelody is stayed within that range intheir second halfOh12% incorporated one or more lower noteswriting something new and fresh like thevegetables in the testers the mostpopular option at nearly 50% of entrieswas to go up to higher notes which makessense in music leggins story we wereoften building towards a climaxand at 2.7% it was very unpopular toinclude both higher and lower notes nowlet's talk about keys and chords therewere 14 entries that didn't have chordsthey were just solo melodies so thatleft a hundred and thirty-three entriesthat I could analyze a third of thoseincluded a modulation so the chords andmelody went to a new key usuallytemporarily[Music]you[Music]I don't know how much I can pull fromthis because we're getting into morenebulous musical territory where peoplemodulated to different places ordifferent numbers of times or fordifferent amounts of time what I willsay is that to have a third of themelodies include a modulation seems onthe high side to me and I might chalkthat up to this being a mass melodywriting experiment for a nerdy musicchannel it might have attracted moreadventurous writers or maybeinadvertently encouraged people to flextheir chops a bit that said the majorityof submissions two-thirds included nomodulation I'll point out one moreharmonic possibility which only threesubmissions used and that is what isknown as the pickety third most peopleresolve their melodies in key which isof course the most natural thing to dothe Picardy third happens when you soundlike you're going to resolve on therelative minor but you take the third inthat minor chord and raise it half astep making it major so the resolutionsounds like thisit has this sort of majestic triumphantquality to it because you're expectingthis sad ending but right at the lastminuteit's totally overcome no problemeverything's right with the world and itjust so happens that I used it when Iwas finishing my melody[Music]you[Music]you[Music]youso if you run My Melody through thespreadsheet it used an extended phraselank it discarded the original sequencealthough it hinted at it toward the endit stayed in the same range of notes andit ended with a picardy third also Iwouldn't say that I modulated but likethe first half of the melody and likemany of you did I used a lot ofsecondary dominance so it's a bit of agray area I feel like I could go on awhole tangent about secondary dominancebut I will save that for another videoso what did we learn todayit would appear according to all thisinformation that the most logical or atleast the most popular way to completethis melody was to create a slightlymore complex variation on the originalrhythmic sequence keep the phrase lengththe same reach for a higher note in thesecond half and never modulate there yougo that's the formula is that helpful orjust super vague / obvious I've neverreally looked at this many melodicwriting techniques altogether for me asa writer a lot of the times these thingsaren't conscious I'm usually justfeeling my way around and sometimes thatworks great but when you need them Ithink it's really awesome that throughthis project in your contributions we'vekind of put a name to and done a verybrief study of some of the most basictools as usual I would love to hear yourthoughts so please leave a comment belowit was a real joy to listen to all yourcreativity your voice is everything youcame up with so thank you to everybodywho contributed I'm going to leave youwith a couple amazing examples of onefinal writing technique which I'mcalling the non sequitur where your songtakes a complete turn into something noone could ever expect or predict thanksfor watching bye[Music][Music][Music][Music]