People who can write great melodies possess an intuitive sense for melodic figures, the basic vocabulary of melody. They’re like master improvisers who seem to create endless, effortless streams of new ideas. (I checked, and it’s ok to secretly hate such people.) Here’s a little secret. The improviser’s endless, effortless streams of new ideas are hardly new! Master improvisers draw from pre-existing patterns and reassemble them. So do master songwriters and symphonic composers.
And remember, an unconscious choice is still a choice.
Now, if you cannot currently compose as well as you want to, I can tell you precisely what your #1 problem is. You’re not tapping into your underlying knowledge of the melodic vocabulary. Rather than working with the 24 common figures that everyone else uses, you construct each melody from scratch, writing one or two notes at a time. Not only is this a big waste of time and energy, but the melodic material you create in this way also doesn’t sound “musical.” (And that’s why you don’t like some of your original music.)
Now the good news. Learning the 24 common melodic figure patterns will uncover what lies buried way back in the recesses of your musical subconscious and bring it forward where you can use it. You’ll be able to use figures deliberately, which is fantastic when you get stuck or want to fix a humdrum melody. But even more importantly, it won’t take long for the figure patterns to become automatic responses – unconscious choices. In other words, you’ll work more like a master composer. You’ll rely on a richly-trained intuition most of the time, and shift into a more conscious mode as needed.
