JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Melody's Demise

Glad to join in here. I've spent my entire life in music as a player (piano) and music educator AND songwriter. (I've been playing music professionally for 64 years, and still at it.) My subject area in a college music program was keyboard harmony. I am proud to have been able to teach that subject FUNCTIONALLY. No theoretical terms were ever presented in my classes without their being illustrated on the piano in familiar music, both songs and instrumental pieces.

The songwriting business is in tough shape. The musical element of MELODY has virtually disappeared. In the great pop tunes known as "standards" the tunes came before the lyrics 95% of the time. In today's pop music, melodies per se have just about disappeared. With no valid melodies to work with, the "lyrics" have become banal. Things are so bad, the Academy Awards people have relegated the "best song award" to an optional status.
STANDARDS (with a few exceptions) will be few and far between.
Blame it on "visual," beginning with the curse of humanity: TV.
The big shift is on from Audio to Visual! Good songs are being written, but they will wither on the vine. Songwriters cannot compete with payola. That's what keeps radio loaded with garbage.
As a very active musician/songwriter at age 82, I write this more in sorrow than anger. I love musical art and real musicians. Phil Klein www.philkleinsmusic.com

Hi Phil! Welcome to JPF!

A lot of truth in what you say.

I remember an article in Recording Magazine awhile back. There was a composition/production contest. As I remember their review; it stated the top 10 winners had wonderfully produced tracks - knocked their socks off. Then went on to say, but where's the melodies?

Best, John

Hey Phil, welcome and glad to have someone of your experience on board. Take some time to read the boards and you'll find that many of us share in your sentiment.

I just made a comment on another thread about Gershwin's "Rhapsody In Blue". It was, to the critics of 1924 over the top. Was it jazz? No one knew, but it was different. Here's my chance to leave a link to the song performed by Gershwin himself on the piano. Give it a listen if you have 10 minutes to spare. This isn't necessarily for you Phil, I'm sure that you are very familiar with the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U40xBSz6Dc&feature=related

Welcome, Phil,

Melody has been slowly dying for some time now. Classical music began abandoning it quite a while ago. The twelve tone row is not something I find myself whistling in the shower. Schprechstimme doesn't haunt me while driving. I don't think about Ionization while walking down the road.

Jazz began drifting from it back when the sax player played "Flight of the Bumblebee" while the piano player played the changes to "Back Home in Indiana."

Blues didn't abandon melodies, it simply became satisfied with just a few.

So now the pop genres move away from it. Three or four notes to the tessitura, with many passages hanging on one.

I wonder how much of that is due to the fact that new melodies simply cannot be written. They've all been done. The George Harrison "My Sweet Lord...Doo Lang, Doo Lang, Doo Lang" lawsuit was a harbinger of things to come. I would be surprised if major labels and publishers weren't a bit concerned about hearing a very memorable melody coming across their desk.

Of course, there are many grand melodies out there. Ellington, Bach, Nelson, Bernstein, Anderson, Williams, Lennon & McCartney, Howard, Johnson, (Not Howard Johnson) Arlen, Lightfoot, Legrand, Mozart and many others occupy space in my brain on a daily basis. But, there's no money in singing cover tunes.

Something funny happening? Follow the money.

Looking forward to hearing more from you, sir.

Mike

I wonder how much of that is due to the fact that new melodies simply cannot be written. They've all been done - Mike

If I believed that, I'd quit composing today.

John

It's true. Since the 1930's there hasn't been an original melody lasting less than a few measures. By now, I would guess you can't write an original melody that lasts less than a minute. Maybe more. There are only so many notes. But, there are unlimited ideas.

Hi, Mike Dunbar -

I'm an old geezer, but I'm still playing and writing. For the past ten years I've written songs with a woman half my age. We've managed to place our tunes in movies, network soaps and an ABC series premiere. Guess why? They're in French, and there aren't many Fr. tunes kicking around. In the meantime, I've done much on my own, including country tunes. I'm going to send you an mp3 of a song that's going to be very pertinent (unfortunately) very soon.
Thanks for your response. Phil Klein www.philkleinsmusic.com

Thank You, Phil, I'm looking forward to hearing it.

Hi Phil and Welcome:

Good to have you here with us. I can certainly appreciate your perspective having grown up in the era where melody was the most important part of our musical lives. Mike Dunbar certainly has a perspective of what goes on in Nashville these days and he's correct about the demise of melody in most of today's music. I suppose that's part of my problem. Being not too far behind you agewise, I'm still really into things melodical.

Regardless, I don't believe that melody is gone for good. All things seem to run in fairly large cycles in music and it will eventually be "re-discovered" and embraced.

I hope you'll hang around and enjoy all the discussion (mild or hot) that goes on here... LOL! Merry Christmas.

Dave - Thank you for your response. I surely hope that you are right about melody. I don't expect to be around long enough to find out. (Not being morbid here...!)

The main problem as I see it is that there has been a major shift to VISUAL - cell phones, DVD's, iPods, etc. I believe that only a small percentage of those kids running around with things in their ears are LISTENING. I'm afraid it's more of the humdrum stuff that greets all of us, all over the place.

I;ve been active in songwriting myself, and you can hear some of what I've done at www.philkleinsmusic.com

Thanks again for your comments. Phil

There are still great melodies to be composed. Yes, a little more difficult to find them, but they're there. Working around uncommon chord structures is one method of creating new melodies.

John

Hey, John...we need a few more Prokofievs around. Of course, the other thing is something you know well, I'm sure - only about 15% of the population can hear chord changes. Unfortunately, that extends into the ranks of the musicians.

I'm mainly concerned that the populace has been captured by VISUAL. Think of them all: iPods, DVD's (games,) cell phones
AND the tyrant: TV .

Folks are messing up their brains, staring at the idiocy. I know as a teacher when, recently, I have talked to some college classes, the students can be characterized by the term: "benign
passivity." There are inevitably a few who sparkle. They come from homes where may be still some sort of discourse going on.

I can start to rave in a minute! See? Phil

Rave on Phil! It's refreshing.

Welcome Phil. I hope you stick around.

That is the first time I have heard that. 15% Huh?
Well I think I am not one of the lucky few. I usually have to really concentrate to hear chord changes and if they are subtle I can't hear them at all.
I think it can be learned but it takes a lot of work.

Hello again, Phil:

I took a peek at your site via the link you were kind enough to provide. A very well done site and your playing is excellent. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Hi Phil, welcome, listened to a few of your tunes, very nicely done. Hang around.

philkleinsourmusic. I'll admit there's a laziness to today's popular music but the masses crave it. Whatta ya do?

Welcome Phil! A young 82 I bet! Just a number, right?

In the ways I always wrote songs, (from about 15), *56 now, melody rules. it's the things that comes in my head first. It's the thing that I work on to try to have them explore the not so usual, (except in the obvious styled songs of some, like "Too Little Time", for one example). That's probably liked because it is very familiar sounding. ???

Glad to have your experience and opinions here!

For Mike,,,,I may be wrong, (and I might try this for myself), I wonder if a few of my melodies are mostly original. ? I understand what you're saying. I think one factor could be the chord progressions of a lot of songs that are very alike, and not really the melodies. One can whistle many, many different tunes that are no way like any other, (for the most part, as few sections of notes will cross-section). It could be that when similar chord progressions are heard with their melodies, that in general, the songs could sound more alike than not. ???? Just suggesting. Chords, more than melodies being less original?

For any down time and if interested, here's a few that may be more original than not. Do they have other songs in them, in other words?
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=322686&content=music


We Just Gotta Be Friends

Pictures Of Life

Love All there Is

One Moving Mind


Some more on that page too, but not sure, as you got me thinking more about it.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=328343&content=music
My instrumental page link right above may have some more original melodies than not. ????

Anyway,,,,Welcome again Phil, and thanks to anyone who may chim in on the melody topic.

John Daubert

Hi Phil,welcome. The above statement, I wonder how much of this is caused by that beloved "WEED" that society loves to smoke, the one that they say does no harm, other than take away ambition and desire, especially in the very young.

Everett,

I'd say that drugs are a symptom rather than a cause. The real drugs are tv, the internet, hedonism, moral relativism. We eschew thought for stimulation. Guess what the cure is? Here's a hint: Merry Christmas!!!

Hi Phil,..interesting discussion.

On one hand, it is very sad how "bad" pop music (by that I mean pop rock, pop pop, pop country, etc..) is today and how much shallower it is than what preceeded it. 90+% of music listeners are lemmings that merely follow the trends. On the otherhand, the discoveries that can be made on the internet for people who WANT to know what came before them (what anyone who wants to understand something has to dig into the history, right?). I always get excited when I make a new "discovery", whether its an old 1940's folk 78 I found at a swap meet, or a new band I havent heard yet. There is alot of good music out there, but it is mostly niche stuff (not on the radio) and unfortunately there probably isnt much chance of these bands ever breaking out. Look what's on PGF!! It does come down to making music for its own sake. Even if you only reach 10 or 100 people, its worthwhile.

It would be very interesting for someone to do an analysis of current pop songs in terms of melody. I agree with Mike that there are only so many short melodies that are possible. From my limited perspective of tween pop songs, the melodies are quite simple - as is the music in most instances. It is a great surprise to me how simple the music is for most of the current tween pop hits. Listening to the music tracks for the recent songs by Miley Cyrus, Vanessa Hudgens, Emile Osment and Salena Gomez, it is remarkable how simple the music is.

Tom

I wonder about this.
Music is about language. Think of how many ways you can say Merry Christmas.
If you hear fifty people say Merry Christmas and each says it as many different ways as they can how many variables are there?
Is Melody more than just a series of notes on a sheet of paper?
Yes there are a limited number of notes but there's only two words in Merry Christmas.
Just a thought.

Hi Phil. Warm welcome to JPF!
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you. I know what you mean by saying about the melodies but I hope that it's only a matter of time when the melodies will come back to pop music as the fashion usually runs in circles. The best music like the one you are performing on your site is very popular and we are hearing the Beatles and many other groups and solo artists from the past with Great Melodies. Songwriters still compose amazing songs with great melodies. I often listen to the songs on MP3 forum here and on IAC site where amazing melodies are created these days. Every time in history people were saying about something dying. They were concerned about the Theatre dying because the Cinema has arrived, Theatres are still very popular and sometimes there are so many tickets sold that the theatre simply can't start the performance and have to ask some people to come another time! We still love reading books and newspapers and buying the CDs even though some people believe it's dying or disappearing. I think great songs will always live and the ones which just represent a very popular trend but empty inside will disappear. only the time will show that of course and it's only my opinion. Have a great time, enjoy JPF.
Kindness regards,
Nadia
________________________
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_music.cfm?bandID=936270
http://independentartistscompany.com/artist.aspx?id=137230
http://www.showcaseyourmusic.com/nlcripps
http://www.myspace.com/nadiacripps

Bill, continuing with your line of thought on the complexities of Merry Christmas (and being not in agreeance that "everythings been done before")...say you have just an octave worth of notes (12). Going with the math side of my brain here...and throwing some probability at you... So note 1 has 12 options, introduce the second note and you have 12x12=144. By the third note, you have 12x12x12=1728 options. See where I am going? By the time you are on your 10th note, that's over 10 billion options. How many notes in an average song? (even considering you probably repeat alot for verse, chorus). Now throw in the fact that each note can be of different duration (1/4note, 1/8 note, 1/2 note with rest,...). It hasnt all been done. Just alot of copycatting out there.

Thanks for giving us some numbers Dean! Great original melodies will never cease as long as there are great writers.

John

Dean
This might be a real musical mathematical quanundrum.

I don't know much about music theory or even melody writing but what if you throw in flats and sharps? Can melodies have flats and sharps? Can melodies be like chords? Minors, 7ths, 9ths, etc?
Seems like they could.

It gets far more limited, "copycatting" becoming de riguer, when you use intervals that are mostly within a key, repeated, and, basically, pleasing. Continual octave jumps or long passages of chromatic scalar moves eliminate certain of these extrapolations...they just don't sound good. Also, don't forget transpsosition. Using 12 to the 10th, you end up with melodies repeated in different keys. Happy Birthday is Happy Birthday, no matter what key it is in. Plus, a passage that is only one or two notes different from another may be considered functionally the same. If I sing Happy Birthday 1 1 2 1 4 3 2 1 2 1 5 4 (2 1 2...instead of 1 1 2...) and try to use that melody, it will get shut down in a court (though this doesn't "count" mathematically, it certainly makes that and any "close" melodies unusable). It's a lot more limited than what you get when you run variables.

We were told in college that as of the 1930's, a few monophonic measures worth of melody were already used. I have no reason to doubt that. The question there is, does the listening audience's ear get attuned to enough dissonance to allow the grand shuffle to continue?

I would contend that, despite the 'limitations' of how many notes there are, the mathematical possibilities of how a composer might recombine them make it infinite.

The problem, then, is not in the exhausting of possibilities, but the failure to attempt to come up with a new melody, settling instead for a melody that commences, goes up, goes down, goes to the end of the lyrical line, and ends, often with such predictability that a listener can make up their own words as they listen and sing that same melody on the spot.

I think Marc Barnette cited someone listening to demonstration recordings and dismissing them as "...standard country melody #3..."

The penchant in the industry for promoting singers instead of writers, and for songwriting commencing with THE hook/title and fabricating lyrical lines that merely rhyme to lead up to and arrive at that title, has filled the airwaves and the market with these predictable, 'standard,' and bland melodies, and equally bland lyrics. I am skeptical many if any of these will ever be 'covered' by anyone in the future, revived as 'classics.'

Rather than supplying their function of 'hooking,' being memorable, they are often forgettable. You literally do not know what you've been listening to. Or I don't. I become aware the song is over, having drifted off to my own thoughts rather than listening raptly to the lyrical storyline, and/or the vocal melody. Even the production and arrangement of instrumentation failed to hook me. I don't know what the song was about, and I can't sing any of the melody, let alone THE hook.

Indeed, I hear lyrical lines that twist the natural music of the words when spoken in natural cadence, and ignore the obvious variations of pitch in natural emotion, given the story they're telling, twisted instead to fit that preconceived melody.

Explore. In the 100,000 years of human exploration of music we have not exhausted the ways in which the lyrical stories of the human condition can be expressed, nor have we exhausted the melodic possibilities. And we are far from exhausting the possible accompaniment. Explore. Find the new possibilities. I promise you they are there to be found.

You could argue, 'No! It's all been done.' But you'll see. Someone will write that new stuff and amaze you and you'll see.

I dunno... buy a recent George Strait record and see what you think. The world's best country songwriters are throwing their best at him for every record. He screens over 1,000 songs to find a dozen. And all 1,000 of those screened are among the best songs recently written by the world's best country writers. And, IMO, he does come up with winners on every record he records.

Luckily for us, melody is just one component of a good song. The beat, the groove, alone, is incredibly important to making a track enjoyable. As for memorable, haha, I guess you gotta have a good melody.