How To Write A More Interesting Melody: The 4 Levers Of Melodic Interest

We all want to write more interesting melodies.

Without an interesting melody, most songs are going to be sunk. So what is something we can do to take our melodies to the next level?

In this post, we’re going to talk about the concept of “levers”. Basically, different factors you can either dial up or down. 

Note that “up” isn’t “more interesting” and “down” less interesting. Intrigue and interest is created by the levers MOVING and CHANGING, NOT by them being “up”.

With that being said, let’s dive in.

Long vs. Short Notes

Making your notes change from lasting shorter to longer or longer to shorter helps to create some intrigue. 

If every note in your melody is a quarter note, that’s probably going to get boring pretty quickly.

The movement from staccato notes to a note you hold for a while can create massive interest and stick out to the listener. 

Even slightly mixing up the length of your melodic notes will go a long way in creating melodic interest. 

The change doesn’t need to be extreme, it just needs to be there.

If your melody is feeling a bit boring, check to see if you can do something to make your note lengths vary in a more interesting way.

Up vs. Down

Your melodic notes moving up and down in pitch is another factor that moves your melodic interest levers. 

Generally, ascending melodies will have a sound of hopefulness and rising tension. Your descending melodies tend to have a more sad feeling or a lessening of tension.

Use this to build and release tension.

If your melody predominantly went up over the course of a song, it would probably start to sound boring and predictable. And it’s the same for a melody that is mostly descending.

Changing directions in your melody will help keep it interesting. 

Think of it like driving a car on a 55 mph road. Despite the speeds, driving in a straight line at 55 is boring. You know what isn’t boring? Adding different small turns left and right. Not turning onto a different road, but just having to move the steering wheel back and forth a bit.

All of a sudden the drive is a lot more interesting than just a straight line. At least if you have a semi-exciting car.

Your melody is the same. Moving up and down in pitch is like turns left and right. It doesn’t really matter what direction is what, as long as it keeps changing to keep you awake and paying attention.

Small Intervals vs. Large Intervals

Most melodies are built around mostly-small intervals. You walk up and down one step at a time. Maybe you jump by a 3rd or so once in a while. That’s because this sounds more natural vocally. 

In conversation, humans tend to talk without large leaps in pitch.

So utilizing small intervals in your melody helps it sound conversational and natural.

But let’s go back to the car analogy.

Let’s say you’re going 40mph. This is pretty comfortable for your passengers. In fact, it’s so comfortable that they might just fall asleep on you.

Then you downshift, slam on the gas and speed up to 65mph.

You just woke up your co-pilot, didn’t you? Can’t you feel the rush?

That’s sort of the effect that large intervals can have on a melody. It helps to highlight certain lyrics and bring great emotion to your melodies.

Large intervals bring excitement and help balance out the conversational comfort and naturalness of small intervals.

You can’t abandon small intervals though, as constant large intervals will just get tiresome, old, and feel unnatural.

Just like constantly accelerating to 65 mph and then decelerating to 40 mph right away would make your passengers (and probably you) sick.

You can’t highlight too much in your textbook, because soon the whole thing is just a different color. This defeats the purpose of the highlight, which was to highlight the most important stuff. 

If you highlight everything, you have essentially highlighted nothing.

It’s the same with constant large intervals. 

Consonant vs. Dissonant

This is the only lever of the 4 that is dependent on something other than the melody itself. 

The consonance and dissonance of your melody is determined by the pairing of your melody with your chords.

A melody on its own isn’t consonant or dissonant. 

How a note matches up with the chord is how you highlight a melodic note as consonant or dissonant.

Generally, if the melodic note is contained in the current chord, that melodic note is consonant. 

So, for example, if you’re playing a C major triad (C, E, G) and play a descending melody from C => B => G, the C and G of the melody will be consonant.

Why? Because both C and G are notes in your C major triad.

The B is not in a C major triad, so that will sound more dissonant. 

It’s common to think of consonance and dissonance being a “true” or “false” value, but it’s really more of a spectrum. A C note with a C major chord is perfectly consonant. On the other end, a C played with the C# right next to it is about as dissonant as 2 notes can be.

This is part of how melodies can stay fairly interesting for a while with no leaps in pitch. If your melody moves up or down by a single note, unless you’re also changing chords with every note, your consonance/dissonance lever is constantly moving up and down.

Think about it- if you have 4 notes in a row over one triad, 2 of them are guaranteed to be dissonant with your triad, right?

Let’s take C major again (C, E, G) and look at some different melodies that go up or down by single notes:

C => D => E => F

G => F => E => D

A => B => C => D

B => A => G => F

The bolded notes are consonant with the chord, while the non-bolded notes are differing levels of dissonant. 

Do you see the pattern? If you go up or down by a single note, any time you hit a consonant note, you’re guaranteed to have a more dissonant one next if your chord is a simple triad. 

Why? Because triads are chords stacked in thirds. Play C, skip D, play E, skip F, play G. 

Dissonance helps to build tension, while consonance helps to relieve tension. 

In music, tension and release is everything. If you don’t build tension, you can’t have the relief of release. If you don’t build tension, you’re not creating any intrigue. 

Think about a movie with no tension. No worry about if a character will die or if the guy won’t get the girl or if the guy will die of cancer before he gets the girl.

A movie would be boring without the tension of wondering what will happen. 

The same is true of your music. Building and breaking tension is everything. Wield that power in your melodies by constantly moving these 4 melodic levers up and down. 

Dial up the long notes while changing the direction of the melody. Throw in some large intervalled short notes after a period of smaller intervalled long notes. Constantly bring the consonance and dissonance up and down.

This is how you create melodic interest.

Think of it like this. If you were watching a small board with 4 levers on it, what would keep you the most interested? 

If the levers all stayed up the whole time? If they all stayed down most of the time and one went up once in a while? Or if all the levers were constantly in a state of motion and flowing up and down at different rates and times?

Similarly, interest is created in moving the levers, not in where the levers are.