Because I believe a better UI would help us write better melodies and harmonies (on Elekton machines)
A few thoughts:
-Analyse what you like about other people’s music. Maybe you enjoy dense jazz chords or simple triadic arpeggios or bouncy pentatonic melodies.
Listen, explore and experiment.
-Get to know your intervals. How does a 5th make you feel compared to a major 2nd or a tritone? Compose with those feelings in mind.
-Find the right balance of repetition and variation. Too much repetition gets boring, too little and things get incoherent.
-Try building a melody (or a whole track) out of a few little gestures/motifs. Choose simple building blocks like a leap up of a 5th using a short then a long note and stepwise pattern moving down 3 notes of a scale using a long note then 2 shorter notes.
You can then build phrases by taking these building blocks and turning them upside down, inside out, stretching or squeezing them, adding or taking away notes etc. etc.
-Start simple. Catchy melodies tend to be based around a few notes, so if that’s what you’re going for don’t over complicate for no reason.
-Control the tension. Every note (and rhythm and harmony) carries a different amount of tension depending on the context of what’s happening around it in time and space, make sure to pay attention to each note’s feeling.
If you’re trying to write something calming you’re not going to want a melody built out of minor 2nds and tritones.
Some notes ‘want’ to resolve to others. If you play G, A, B you expect C to follow because the B feels like it’s pushing towards it. If you leap from C up to A it feels good to fall down to G. Whether you chose to resolve that tension or not is up to what you chose to express in that moment…
-Balance fulfilling and confounding expectation. Re the above point, if you do the obvious thing every time it will get dull and unsatisfying, if you do the surprising thing every time it will get and unsatisfying.
-Balance your steps and leaps. A melody built entirely of steps tends to get boring, entirely from leaps is hard to follow.
-Half of melody is the rhythm, don’t negative that by getting too hung up on the frequencies (and vice versa).
-Pay attention to the contour. Notice how different ascending and descending feels and use that to help create the emotion you’re aiming for.
-Listen. There are no rules, just things people have noticed. Use your ears and trust your decisions without questioning if they’re ‘right’.
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Thanks everybody for all your replies!
I’m sorry I don’t have a lot of time to be very active here right now but I will read everything as soon as I can.
Cheers!
Super simple, super beautiful.
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agreed! some of the best Mark Fell/SND stuff is using like 3 chords triggered in wild patterns
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There is some very good advice here. I will throw in my 0.02. I never found the doing melody and harmony on my OT/AR standalone to work for me.
You effectively have 1 octave of notes to interact with, which was just not enough for me. I am talking about the chromatic keys on the OT or chromatic mode on the AR.
Personally I found I am better off working with a bigger keyboard to find the chord progression I like. I will come up with 2-3 related progressions, like A/B/bridge sections, and then with that as context I will explore sequencing with the elektron machine.
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It’s not the notes, but the space between the notes that makes the music 
This is actually a good trick for writing melodies based on the rhythm:
Write a rhythm using only the root note of whatever scale you want to be in. Adjust lengths of notes, velocities, etc until you have a rhythm that sounds really great just playing the same note over and over in a nice rhythm.
Next try transposing just couple notes near the end of the loop (or wherever) until you have a nice sounding note change happening. Only change a couple of notes.
Duplicate and extend that loop then change those same notes you changed before to different notes in the second half of the loop.
Repeat until you have a nice melodic loop happening.
From there you can try small changes or slightly different rhythms in one of the repeating sections of the loop.
It’s a good start and then things start just popping out at you that sound “right” or “wrong” depending on what you’re going for.
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I am currently working my way through this (free) course on music theory and can highly recommend it: https://www.daveconservatoire.org/
I’ve tried learning theory from a couple of (written) sources before and not got very far, and I’m not usually very good with learning from videos (they usually waffle too much for me!), but I’m actually really enjoying this - each video is only 5-10 minutes long, and they get straight to the point, but are presented in a nice informal way. The structure of the course mostly is good too, although there are a few bits that seem to appear out of order.
I’ve been watching a few videos before work most mornings and taking notes, I’m just starting on “modes” now and already feel much more confident in my understanding of what makes melodies work etc, despite not dedicating much time to putting it into practice. Definitely worth checking out I think
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Nice thread, based on reading a couple of posts.
Currently I’m frustrated by youtube advice that seems to amount to ‘stab around randomly in fruityloops (while considering the chord and scale)’ … and the end result qualifies as a top line of the score but rarely a coherent melody. Which I guess is okay in some contexts, but leaves me unsatisfied.
So I’m going to be re-reading this.
Welcome more advice like the preceding in this thread.
I think its pretty important to also consider the sound design and type of music as well now.
I still like messing around with a piano instrument to find pleasing progressions, but I run into a few problems problems when I try to incorporate them into the type of music, which is faster (130 bpm) dance oriented.
Firstly, big long pad sounds tend to suck the energy out of the music, so it doesnt really do to have them prominent.
Secondly, if you have a really big and cool lead sound covered in delay and reverb, often simpler melodies sound better. Like if theres some intricate progression it just gets overwhelming and loses impact.
I also like just faffing around in synths making sounds, so i combine making synth patches and progressions/melodies. If i start with a progression I will try it out with pad sounds covered in reverb etc, or if i make a cool lead I will try find a melody or riff that suits it. I save the sound and pattern in a big ableton project which i can lean on down the line. Still working on putting everything together though.
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I am curious how DT / DN users are coping woth the 4-bar pattern limit because that’s quite a hurdle to take if you want to make progressions that span more bars.
Either chain patterns or set the track scale resolution to half or quarter, works on most elektron machines…
I usually get around this with conditional trigs (one pass plays 1:2 and another 2:2) and chaining. The sequencer limit does influence what you write, though. You naturally want to write shorter phrases and your brain wants to wrap it up in 64 steps.
Same with the one-octave keybed on the modules… I strongly suggest a midi controller for anyone attempting to write melodies on these boxes. I always end up stuck in C because of how hard it is to play anything in another key while in live record mode.
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Thats a pretty good video/thread. He has a bunch of chords in a midi, which he uses to sample synths into his OT, which he then slices up and can explore with plocking slices.
This guy is also cool Elektron Octatrack Mk1 🧻🧻 – ManCave3 he’s an OG of electronic music in Australia and re the OT he writes
Do you like loops? Good. Do you like melodic progressions? Not so good. Even the clever bald dude that demos the unit online tends to get a groove and just fuss that around. It is just a rhythm machine and you will need other toys to provide the actual music.
Obs people will disagree but it does kinda match my own experiences.
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I have a friend that used to teach piano to all ages as a side gig. When I wanted to learn a bit about music theory she recommended I start with understanding chords first–I’d been struggling with books and guides that started elsewhere.
She told me adults tend to do better starting with chords for some reason, but you really can’t go wrong by starting with a chord progression and sticking with those notes. Use the roots as the bassline etc.
I mean, it won’t have you writing symphonies, but for most electronic music its a great place to start.
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You can get 32 bars using note repeat and microtiming.
For example, to create the pattern:
xxx0x0x0 xxx0x0x0
you would set to 1/8 time so one bar was two steps, then on each step place a trig pushed forward 3/64 with a note repeat of 1/8 and 4.25 (for three repeats). Not tried this, but you might be able to use LFO on pitch and HOLD, so it runs an LFO and plays the value on trig to change notes in the repeat.
I find I can often compress patterns into 1/4 without much trouble and into 1/8 if they’re a bit sparse.
Separately …
If you use analog rytm II you can get very nice lead synth noises out of the metal cowbell and dual VCO from which melodies can be composed. You can also get good stuff from rimshots and plastic kick. So even on drum synths there are often melodic options.
Thanks for the tip, I’ll give that a try when I’m feeling courageous.
This kinda goes against the OP’s question though, this is no longer writing or composing melodies, it’s more like coding or programming them after they’ve been composed.
I’m not trying to bash anyone/anything, it’s just I’ve found the 4 bar limit and the absence of song mode to be quite a creative limitation of my Digi twins.
ok, revealing my secret:
- using Phrygian Dominant scale
- i’m brilliant!
downsides: after a while you might found yourself listening to old school goa trance 
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