This Melody System Changes Everything

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]If you've ever struggled writing emotional melodies that just stick in your listener's heads and end up clicking around in the piano roll editor and after an hour your melody still sounds forgettable, this video is going to fix that. And that's because most producers think melody writing is talent. I used to think that, too. And honestly, melodies used to be one of the most frustrating parts of music production for me. But after analyzing thousands of professional tracks and helping our students get millions of streams and releases on the world's biggest labels, I realized something.

[00:00:25]Professional melodies are not random.

[00:00:27]They're engineered emotionally. And once you understand the system behind them, writing melodies becomes way easier. So, in this video, I'm going to show you the 10-step melody writing system I wish someone had shown me years ago, including the biggest melody mistakes producers make. So, by the end of this video, you'll be able to write melodies that actually stick in people's heads.

[00:00:44]If you'd like to learn the entire system of producing professional quality music, you can join the wait list for something new below this video. This is the melody ladder. Now, every one of these rungs represents an important part of the melody writing process. And most producers try and skip straight from the bottom right to the top, which is why they run into trouble. So, these first four rungs are actually the most important. Then, we just need to make our way up rung by rung until we get to the top. So, let's start with the first rung. You know, when you open Netflix and you're looking around for a movie, you got something like John Wick, which is a bloke running around with a gun, or The Shining, which is a bloke running around with an axe, or something like Twilight, which I wouldn't know anything about.

[00:01:26]>> You brought a snack.

[00:01:29]>> The important point is that each of these different movies have a strong emotional theme, and it's exactly the same with a piece of music. So, at the bottom, we've got emotion, and we really need to decide how do we feel when we're writing the song, and what do we want other people to feel? Do we want it to be happy? Do we want it to be sad? Do we want it to be melancholic? Then, we've got the scale, which is the pallet of notes, which helps us impart the emotion. So, I'm going to have to get rid of all this. Bye-bye, my beautiful ladder. Oh, we can leave the sun, can't we? No. So, if we want it to be happy, we're probably going to go for a major scale or a major key. If it's going to be sad or melancholic, no. We're going to want a minor scale or maybe a friian.

[00:02:09]So, in this instance, we've chosen a minor key. We can draw all the notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. And if we hit scale mode in our DAW, we can get rid of all the notes that aren't this scale. So, this is really like stabilizers on a bike.

[00:02:22]Really hard to hit a wrong note. Now, the next step is massively underrated.

[00:02:26]The baseline is basically a mini melody already, but it's way simpler to write.

[00:02:31]And if your bass progression has emotional movement, your top melody suddenly already has something to react to and to play against. Absolute gamecher. So, as in the second rung, we've chosen the scale of a minor natural. I'm just going to hit scale mode to make sure that we never hit a wrong note. And I'm going to start my bass progression on the root note of the track, which is the A. That's the easiest way to do this really. And like most music, we only want three or four chords, which will then just repeat throughout the whole track. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. So, I'm going to choose this one, that one, and this one. And now it sounds like this.

[00:03:11]And I'm just going to use one note to lead it back up to want to naturally start playing that first bass note again. You'll see how handy this is in a few minutes. Okay, we've drawn in our bass notes. Once we've drawn in our bass notes, if we're in scale mode, we can just skip one note in the scale each time to build out our chords. Now, these are simple triads, but they're a great place to start. Let's have a listen to how that sounds. Okay, I've duplicated a couple of octaves of our bass progression to make it sound fuller. So, if I choose scale mode like this, all I have to do is skip a note each time to build out these basic triads. And that's going to sound something like this.

[00:03:48]And actually, technically, we've got five chords, I guess, but this really is just leading back around to that first note there.

[00:03:59]Oh, already sounded great. We haven't even got to the melody. So, let's get to the next rung where we get to spice these chord progressions up. If we had sevenths and 9ths, that's counting up seven positions from the root note of the chord. So, if that's the root note, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, the seventh chord would use this note here. And if it was a ninth, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. The ninth note would be up here. So, as we just saw on the whiteboard, I'm going to count up from the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 and add the seventh chord there. Let's try it for the second one. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. First one sounds like this.

[00:04:36]Beautiful. Second one sounds like this.

[00:04:39]Oh, that sounds a bit weird. That's actually because that's a dominant seventh. And when you come across that, all you need to do is move that top note up one scale position or down one scale position, and it's going to make it sound right again. So, let's try that for the last few chords. There's a seventh. We could add the ninth as well.

[00:04:56]So, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. And then 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. And then this one, that's going to be the exact same chord as this one.

[00:05:06]So, we need to make sure we go up there as well. Now, let's listen to it.

[00:05:14]Oo.

[00:05:18]Oh my days.

[00:05:25]Emotions. This stage was about creating the emotional context for our melody.

[00:05:29]And now we've handled the chord progression. We can actually start building out the melody. But this is the point where most producers get things back to front. And here's how we can avoid that problem. Most producers think of rhythm and pitch at the same time.

[00:05:40]But this just makes things hard. So let's get rid of that and we're just going to focus on the rhythm first. So each bar is made of four beats. 1 2 3 4.

[00:05:50]So if we just focus on using the root note of the key in which we're working, we just need to program in a rhythm that dances around those four beats. Don't even need to worry about the pitch yet.

[00:05:59]So we've got our chords here. And as I said, if we just focus on the root note of the track, we just have to tap out a rhythm that's working with the core elements that we've already got in. So in this case, it's really just the drums and the chords. So here we've got our root note. And it sounds like this. And we want something that dances around those four beats in every bar. And I like to use a 16th grid because you've got these two points just before a beat and just after a beat that adds a syncopated groove like this. And you don't have to overuse it, but it can really add groove to your track. Now, we want a simple rhythm that repeats because a really important aspect of a memorable melody is that it repeats enough for people to actually lock onto it. So, now we can just repeat that rhythm and then we can add slight variation at the end just to lead back around to the beginning of that melody.

[00:06:47]Here we go. Let's just add a double beat there. Like so.

[00:06:58]So simple, nothing too complex.

[00:07:04]And then here we can just add four beats all running in a row to loop back around to the beginning. Now, if you don't get this bit right and your melody is not grooving with everything else when it's just on one note, then the pitches don't even matter. But when you have got that nailed down, we get to the next rung on the ladder, which is pitch. So, at this point, we've already got scale mode selected. So, it's really hard to hit a wrong note. However, the best melodies use specific types of notes to get the best emotions. And quick side note, much like we've got a repetition of rhythm, we also want a repetition of pitch shape. So we need to think about how this melody can repeat over and over with just a couple of small variations.

[00:07:38]Now the strong notes in a melody, the root note of the scale in which we're working, in this case, the A. Then you've got the chord tones, which will always be safe and always give a nice solid sound. So you've got the third and you've got the fifth, just like in our chords, the first, the third, the fifth.

[00:07:53]And another quick tip, if you just repeat the same note until it gets boring and only then change the pitch, that can help you avoid over complicating your melodies.

[00:08:08]So, we've got two chord tones and then we've got these notes in between which are known as passing tones. And it's like a bridge between each of the solid core tones. And this kind of shape is called stepwise because we've got small intervals between each note and it sounds quite natural much like in a conversation I'm not doing this all the time which would sound really weird and hard to follow along. However, sometimes you might want to have that jump in energy and that's called leapwise. So let's try one of those next.

[00:08:39]So it just adds a little bit of extra emotion and drama for that one moment.

[00:08:43]Now remember, we want that repetition of pitch shape and repetition of rhythm. So let's just copy. And we can see we've got that repetition of pitch shape and repetition of rhythm. And now I'm going to use leap wise straight up to what we call a tension note. And this is basically any note that's not falling within your main chord beneath it. That doesn't count as a passing note. So we're not bridging between two chord tones here. We're just jumping straight up to this note that doesn't fall within our chord progression. And this is the key to just causing this tension that absolutely demands resolution. And then I'm just going to use stepwise notes back down because quite often we want to naturally work our way down or up to a note that's close to the first note of the melody. So it creates a natural loop. So let's just copy this.

[00:09:25]And then we've got the extra rhythm at the end that we'll need to deal with in a second. But we're running down to meet the beginning of that melody again. So now we end like this.

[00:09:39]Nice. Now, I'm going to show you what this melody sounds like with better sounds in a minute. But first, let's get to the next rung of the ladder, which are harmonies. So, now we get on to harmonies. And I've just dropped our melody down an octave. And I tweaked a couple of the notes cuz I thought it was actually getting a bit complex. So, I took out some of these double notes because remember, simplicity is key. So, for harmonies, these can really add depth and weight to our melody. But how do you form a harmony? Well, basically, it's like a chord, but with just two notes playing instead of at least three.

[00:10:07]So, we can treat them in the same way.

[00:10:09]And the easiest harmony to write is just the third position above your melody.

[00:10:13]And the easiest way to do that is to just grab your entire melody like so.

[00:10:17]And then just duplicate it up to the third position above the root note of each of your melody notes. And now it sounds like this.

[00:10:32]You can also use the fifth position as well instead of just the third. And actually, I find that if many of the harmony notes kind of hold. Again, we're looking for simplicity and repetition, that can make the whole thing a bit easier to digest and therefore remember.

[00:10:44]So again, we're just trying to stay on the same note for as long as possible without it getting boring. And this is what we've got.

[00:10:54]Sounds pretty cool. And let's make it a little bit quieter so it doesn't fight with our main melody. Now we're on to the next rung. And this is totally optional, much like the harmonies, but it can be the difference between something sounding good and something sounding amazing. So, we've already used the analogy of melodies kind of being like speech and conversation. And in a conversation, there are usually at least two people. So, why don't we have something converse with our main melody?

[00:11:17]And this counterpoint can be called a counter melody. To do this, I'm going to mute our main melody and our harmony like so. Just going to press zero. And then I want a more simple but still repeating and memorable counter melody that works rhythmically with everything else in the track.

[00:11:34]Let's just repeat that. Add a little bit of a tension note there.

[00:11:44]And now this should feel like a conversation between the main melody and our counter melody.

[00:11:57]But now that takes us onto the final rung of the ladder. And this is where we can really bring our melody to life. And it doesn't just have to be with an instrument like a piano. This works for any sound design, as you're about to hear. But we can humanize this and make it sound less robotic. And there are two ways we can do it. One is varying the velocity and the tone of each note. If you are using Ableton, you could hit randomize. And that's going to change the velocity. and it's just going to make it sound a bit more human. So, let's turn off the drums and just listen to the piano and add some reverb.

[00:12:39]And the other thing we could do is slightly change the timing of the notes.

[00:12:42]And you could do that using a groove template or you could actually do it by zooming in manually shifting some of the notes just to humanize the sound as though a real human was playing a keyboard. Or we can use this humanize effect in Ableton which will actually shift things off the grid slightly. If we zoom in, we can see that happening.

[00:13:00]And we can also change how much each note varies from the actual velocity that's been selected or set by this humanization. Now, it's worth noting the velocity of whatever instrument you're using does have to be assigned to a parameter. So, reducing the velocity actually changes the sound. But if you're using a standard piano plugin, that's automatically going to be assigned to probably lowass filter and definitely volume. Now, I said I'd give you an example of this with different sounds. So, let's listen to what we can actually create. All I'm going to do is split the chords, melody, harmony, and counter melody to different instruments.

[00:13:34]And this is what we end up with.

[00:13:47]So nice.

[00:13:51]As you can hear, sound selection changes everything. And honestly, this is why so many producers stay stuck for years because they try to learn music production as disconnected tricks. A melody trick, a mixing trick, a sound design trick. But professional musicians use systems. Everything connects emotionally. That's exactly why we rebuilt the music production accelerator from the ground up. So, if you want to be part of it when it opens, the weight list link is down below this video. But there's one thing we haven't fully covered yet. And if you get that wrong, nothing in this video is going to help.

[00:14:19]We saw how important the chords are. So, understanding how chords and chord progressions create emotions is really the underpinning for any melody. And once you understand that, you can start writing your melodies intentionally instead of accidentally. So, watch this video next to understand how to use specific chord progressions to create specific emotions. It's going to change the way you write forever. But before you head over there, if you enjoyed this video, please give it a like, subscribe to the channel, and thank you for watching. I'll catch you over at the next video where you'll learn exactly how to convey emotions using chord progressions. I'll see you over there.