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S1E18 – Melodies Don’t Require Expert Knowledge

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In this episode we talk about the mindset behind a catchy melody.

As much as understanding a musical instrument inside and out is important as a music producer to create amazing melodies, many melodies we hear in our music today only consists a couple notes!

As sad as it is to say that it doesn’t require as much skill behind the musical instrument, it does however take skill and ingenuity to create catchy melodies.

Melodies MIDI Notes Piano

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S1E18 – Melodies Don’t Require Expert Knowledge

  1. Hey, this is Gratuitous. Welcome to Music Production Made Simple, the show that
  2. focuses on best practices about music production, which is based on FL Studio.
  3. If you're wanting to become the best producer you could be, subscribe and listen
  4. weekly. You can also check out my courses, which teach you the principles and basics
  5. of music production. They'll get you up and running quickly.
  6. In addition, I also have books on Amazon and tons of music on Spotify.
  7. Always feel free to hit me up at Hi at it'sgratuitous.com.
  8. So let's get into the episode.
  9. Hey, what's everybody? Gratuitous here, and welcome to episode number 18.
  10. I'm calling this title Melodies Don't Require Expert Knowledge.
  11. Okay, so further on into this episode, I'm just going to explain to you about you
  12. know what your mindset should be when you are creating melodies and comparing to
  13. expert composers and stuff like that.
  14. I just want to give you a little update on you know things that have been going on
  15. in behind the scenes of my online business here and stuff like that.
  16. So I just want to remind you guys just to be careful of any contracts which you are
  17. signing, which you are being involved in.
  18. it's just super important to actually read it through and understand all the
  19. terminology and everything that is between the two parties or however many parties
  20. are involved. I've been involved with many contracts lately with my online courses,
  21. and you know, each distributor, they all have different, I guess, clauses or
  22. different rules, right? And it's just really important that you read through it, you
  23. understand what it is and what the benefits are to you.
  24. At the end of the day, you always want the contract to always benefit you more than
  25. than the other party, you know, because you know that's that's business.
  26. But if you can come down to, you know, an equal agreement where it benefits you, it
  27. benefits the other party, and it's a healthy, you know, business relationship,
  28. that's awesome. But you just want to make sure that the other party doesn't have
  29. something sneaky in there, in a sense of taking your commissions or taking your
  30. copyright or anything like that.
  31. Okay. So again, just a reminder make sure you read your contract.
  32. Even if it's hey, I need an extra day to read this contract.
  33. You know, give me a little bit of time, even if that is having to take it to someone
  34. professional. Okay. So really important stuff..
  35. Okay The second thing I have been doing is I've been in the market for a new laptop.
  36. So I actually have a laptop, but it's about seven years old.
  37. It's able to handle FL Studio decent.
  38. It has an I7 processor. So for those of you who do not know, Intel and AMD, they're
  39. like the two different brands.
  40. We talked about that in the building a custom computer.
  41. So Intel, they have like an i3, an i5, and an i7.
  42. They also now have like an i9.
  43. The lower the number, kind of like the lower quality of the processor, in a sense of
  44. like you're not able to handle as much.
  45. And then on the AMD side, they also have like the Ryzen, and it's I believe it's
  46. like a similar model too. So, anyways, my old laptop, which I have, which is about
  47. seven years old, it has an i7.
  48. So I am able to handle FL Studio pretty good, but with some of my projects, you
  49. know, I'm able to run it. But if I start opening up certain plugins, that's where
  50. sometimes my computer, like that laptop is not able to handle it.
  51. Because, you know, if I create a project on this computer, which I'm talking to you
  52. on right now, this is like my computer beast where I'm able to throw pretty much
  53. whatever at it, and it can always handle it.
  54. And then I bring it to like the laptop, for example.
  55. you know, it can't handle that.
  56. Now, the reason why I am using my laptop is because I may start teaching some local
  57. lessons here where I live. and I'm going to be having to do a presentation for the
  58. owner of this, you know, music place.
  59. Okay, so I have to sit down, do a little presentation, and we're gonna see how it
  60. goes. But but I I, you know, I pretty much kind of wiped off the dust off that old
  61. laptop, loaded it up, and I was like, oh, this computer isn't able to handle these
  62. projects. So I was in the market to purchase a new laptop.
  63. And I thought that, you know, nowadays computers are becoming more powerful.
  64. For example, like seven years in the computer world, seven years is a lot of years,
  65. like you know, that's that that's fast because computers update very fast.
  66. So I thought I could maybe get away with like an i5.
  67. So, you know, the one I saw it was an i7, but I had to order it in.
  68. And if I would have ordered it in, it wouldn't have been here in time for this
  69. presentation. So I was like, okay, well, maybe I can get away with like an i5.
  70. So I purchased the i5, loaded up some projects, and it wasn't able to handle these
  71. projects, you know. And I was just like, oh no.
  72. So here's my advice to you if you are in the market for a laptop for music
  73. production. You want to be going to these websites where they do tests, okay?
  74. So, you know, in other words, they test these CPUs and they tell you the
  75. performance. And many times you can be getting an awesome laptop with you know, at a
  76. pretty affordable rate, but sometimes like you don't need that expensive graphics
  77. card or like you know, all that types of stuff, right?
  78. So it's important that you look at the CPU.
  79. for example, I was actually gonna purchase this Ryzen 7, and you know, it seemed
  80. really really good. And then I was like, Well, maybe I should actually check out
  81. these websites which do comparisons, and then you know, there was this other laptop
  82. for like maybe like 200 less that came with a way better CPU, and it was just like
  83. okay, well, this seems more of like what I want for music production.
  84. But yeah, so you want to test on these actual websites, they'll tell you like the
  85. CPU, the performance, and again, the single thread performance is what FL Studio,
  86. what image line tells us is the most important.
  87. and you can be getting like you know, at the moment, a pretty good deal for like a
  88. thousand bucks, and you'd be getting a really good CPU, but it's something to be
  89. aware of if you're someone on the road all the time.
  90. You know, it is important that you get a good laptop that can handle all these
  91. things, and you know, an SSD is all obviously really important now, too.
  92. A lot of times you can be getting a good laptop, and they'll all of a sudden you'll
  93. read it's like, oh, it but it's it's an old hard drive, you know, it's like the disc
  94. platter one. You're like, oh well no.
  95. So, you know, it's important that you have a good processor, a decent amount of RAM,
  96. as well as a solid state hard drive, and you're gonna be amazed.
  97. One other thing with these laptops is you want to be careful of the fan noise, too.
  98. you'll actually read that some of these laptops they come with like dual fans, or
  99. you know, sometimes they even have like a silent mode.
  100. These are things that you know, just from my own discoveries, that it's important to
  101. look into that stuff. Okay, so into this episode's topic.
  102. So it's not gonna be super in depth.
  103. This is gonna be a kind of a quicker episode, but I want to talk to you about
  104. melodies, okay. So it doesn't matter how good of a musician you are, our
  105. music production, how it works is it's melodies in a sense of catchy melodies, which
  106. you can play on repeat over and over and over.
  107. And many times these melodies are no more than even three notes, and as sad as that
  108. is to say, it's the truth. It doesn't matter if you are the best pianist, you know,
  109. piano player in the world or best musician that you understand you know all these
  110. different notes and how they can all go together, whatever.
  111. Many times the most popular music are like these three note melodies, and
  112. that's you know, like I'm saying, it's kind of sad, but at the same time, if you're
  113. just starting up, it might give you some motivation that you know what you can
  114. create these awesome melodies.
  115. Okay, you just have to learn how to create a catchy melody.
  116. You don't have to know so much how to play this piano like an expert, okay.
  117. So, music theory is really important to know, okay.
  118. It's important because if you ever, you know, go to a studio and you're
  119. collaborating with different artists or different musicians, it's really easy to
  120. kind of talk and have that conversation back and forth.
  121. It's like, oh, do you know what?
  122. No, I think you should maybe play a C major chord here or whatever, just just for
  123. example, right? So, in addition to that, it also lets you know what notes that you
  124. are allowed to play in what scale and what key and stuff like that.
  125. Okay, you know, this is a little bit hard to explain.
  126. Now, just a little plug to one of my courses is it is called Learn Piano for
  127. Beatmakers and Producers. It has been my best selling course out of all of my
  128. courses. I teach you music theory and piano from like a beatmaker's perspective.
  129. Because again, like I'm telling you, it's like as a beatmaker, we don't need to know
  130. the piano as like an expert. Because if you listen to your favorite tracks, I want
  131. you to listen to like the melodies.
  132. Many times it's like what they're just playing, like you know, four chords in like
  133. the background, it's like one chord, another chord, and it's just like okay, so they
  134. have some chords in the background, then they have like you know, some like kind of
  135. like quick notes that like they're playing, and it's like okay, well, that's it.
  136. And they add effects on like reverb, delay, and they might process it in such a way
  137. where it sounds bigger than what it really is, and it's honestly really impressive
  138. at how powerful it can sound. But if you look at it for what it really is, it
  139. doesn't require that much knowledge.
  140. And again, it's kind of sad because these you know classical players who you know
  141. spend their lives learning these instruments in depth, practicing for hours a day.
  142. And you, as the beat maker, you can sit down at one of these MIDI keyboards, hit a
  143. couple notes, and you have like a bang and beat, like honesty, right?
  144. L,ike it's pretty amazing. So, again, just take that as motivation.
  145. That even though it doesn't require as much knowledge. like it used to back in
  146. the day, it still does require skill to create a catchy melody
  147. Okay, because anyone can create a little melody, like that's fine.
  148. But a skilled beat maker is someone who knows how to create something that catches
  149. people's ears. And this is something where it can really only come with practice,
  150. and honestly, listening to a wide variety of music.
  151. Listen to music, like like I'm saying from from tons of different genres, like
  152. listen to like the radio, listen to all these different genres, all the hits that
  153. have been like you know, like they're still being played today from like 40 years
  154. ago. And it's like, well, why are they still being played?
  155. It's because they're you know, they are they are people's favorites, the melodies,
  156. the words that people are saying.
  157. you know, these are the hits, and if you study that, you kind of start to get a feel
  158. for what's catchy and what's you know what feels good.
  159. you know, for myself, I'm really big on not copying the trends.
  160. Now you can listen and compare and study and still not copy, okay.
  161. Whereas typically the industry at the moment, when it comes to like this trap music,
  162. there is a lot of copying going on, you know.
  163. For example, I I just remember like when SoundClick was super popular for selling
  164. and buying beats. That is like you went to one producer's beat store, you listen to
  165. their beats, you're like, Okay, oh, trap music has that hard 808, and that's you
  166. know, the 808's like the main make pretty much like melody of the track.
  167. Then, like you go to like the next producer's page, and it was the same stuff, you
  168. know what I mean? So it's just like there's no originality, but you can take that
  169. type of music, you know, just in general, like you know, from all these different
  170. genres, and study what sounds catchy to you, okay.
  171. Then when you go to make your music, it's just gonna train your ear.
  172. Like, I'm not saying to copy these people, copy cop.y their style or all that stuff,
  173. I'm just saying it more from an education standpoint
  174. Really try to learn what's catchy because really I don't think there's anything to
  175. teach you this. Like, you know, I don't think you can take a course, I don't think
  176. you can really you know, it's something that you have to listen for and kind of
  177. watch people and see how like they interact to this music.
  178. Like for myself, I work on many different job sites because I'm an I'm an
  179. electrician, so like these are people who are not musically inclined at all.
  180. And many times I'll even ask them, I'll be like, So, like, where do you listen to
  181. your music from? Like, I'll ask them, it's like, you know, do you like do you like
  182. using Spotify? The thing is, these people they're they're all over the map.
  183. Like, some people they'll they'll say, Oh, I use YouTube music, and then like, oh, I
  184. used to use Google Play, or some people are like, Yeah, I use Spotify, and then
  185. someone, you know, another guy was like, Oh, I use SoundCloud.
  186. And it's just like, you know, so it's kind of cool because I'm able to ask these
  187. actual real consumers of music, you know, how they listen to the music, like you
  188. know, what artists they like, and you know, just stuff like that.
  189. Like, I'm able to actually talk to like the real end user in like a non-biased way,
  190. and I'm not asking them in a sense of like to sell them or anything, just I'm
  191. generally interested because like I'm a music producer and I don't tell them I'm I'm
  192. a music producer, like you know, like I work at a job, they don't even know I
  193. produce music, and I I kind of keep it in the background because this is something
  194. that you know I just like to do.
  195. it's not something I want to be like known for in a sense of like, oh, this guy's so
  196. cool or whatever. Like he he makes beats, like you know what I mean.
  197. It's just I just want to be treated as like a normal person, and I gain this
  198. knowledge just by having a genuine conversation.
  199. So that was kind of a little rant off topic, but like I'm trying to say, melodies,
  200. it's something that you have to learn over time.
  201. It really comes from like ingenuity..
  202. I would think is a really good word there
  203. but again, listen to all these different genres, really listen to what's catchy, and
  204. when you go to create your music, you can incorporate that.
  205. Again, being a beat maker and a producer, we're not playing these huge composition
  206. pieces. Like you can, but for the most part, a lot of the music that's on the radio,
  207. you know, I'm I'm talking more like this electronic, you know, so like hip hop and
  208. that kind of music. Many times it's like a really catchy bass line, really hard
  209. hitting drums, a nice snare, a catchy hi-hat, which kind of flows with like that
  210. drum loop, and then some melody, which many times has like a delay or something like
  211. that, and they only hit like the one note, and that delay kind of carries on.
  212. And using these types of techniques adds fullness to that beat.
  213. And then you know, many times they'll just add some vocals in there, and you know,
  214. you you just got you just have to make sure that the vocals are catchy with that
  215. beat, and you got yourself like a really good song.
  216. So that's pretty much all I have to say in this episode.
  217. got some things going on in the back end.
  218. I'll I'll keep you guys updated on my lessons that I will be trying to do here, like
  219. like real in-person lessons, like where I live.
  220. I'll give you guys an update. Maybe even it can eventually turn into something where
  221. I can kind of travel around and kind of host events and stuff like that.
  222. That would be pretty cool. If that if it ever turns into that, I'll obviously fill
  223. you guys in, give you guys a link to if you want a book or something like that.
  224. I think that'd be really, really cool.
  225. So hopefully you guys have been enjoying these podcasts, you've been learning a lot.
  226. Always feel free to reach out.
  227. Otherwise, like I'm saying, I'll always just be creating just topics which I want to
  228. talk about and think you guys can learn a lot from.
  229. So, again, don't forget, you guys can support this podcast for five dollars a month.
  230. Just come to it's gratuitous.com forward slash podcast.
  231. You'll see a button there to support..
  232. You guys can cancel anytime You guys don't have to, but it would be much
  233. appreciated. So you guys can always contact me at high.
  234. So it's h i at it'sgratuitous.com with any questions.
  235. and hope you guys have a good week.
  236. Thanks for checking out the episode.
  237. If you had any questions, visit it'sgratuitous.com slash podcast, select an episode
  238. and submit your question at the bottom of the page to the contact form.
  239. If you'd like to take my FL Studio courses, see my current studio and podcasting
  240. gear, read my books, or are interested in lessons, visit the link it'sgratuitous.com
  241. slash learning. That page will redirect you to more info and resources.
  242. I hope the best with your productions.
  243. I'm gratuitous, and I'll see you in the next
  244. episode.
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