Lesson video

In this lesson, you will need a pencil, a piece of paper to write notes with.

This lesson makes use of music, making software.

You may use the same one that I do, or a similar app or desktop digital audio workstation.

This lesson is also better with headphones but they are not required.

If you can find a quiet space to do this lesson in, as you will be doing lots of listening and playing.

If you need to pause the video now to prepare for the lesson, please do so and click resume when you're ready.

Using music software.

You can create music using audio mixing software.

The demonstrations in this lesson use a free programme called BandLab.

BandLab is for use by over 13s only.

And if you are over 13, you still need permission to use it from your parent or carer.

Melodic riffs in EDM.

A riff is a short, repeated phrase used in popular music.

You will hear some riffs from popular EDM tracks.

Whilst you listen to them, answer the questions on the right hand side of your screen.

How could you describe them? How are they similar and what makes them easy to remember? Pause the video after the third extract, if you need more time to answer the questions.

♪ I want to dance by water 'neath the Mexican sky ♪ ♪ Drink some Margarittas by string of blue lights ♪ ♪ Listen to the Mariachi play at midnight ♪ ♪ Are you with me, are you with me? ♪ Practise playing melodic riffs on a keyboard, an app, or your instrument.

Make sure you play it in time with a steady pulse! Pause the video to complete your task and click resume when you're finished.

Copy out the table you see on screen now.

This piece contains a melodic riff that is one bar long.

This piece contains a melodic riff that is two bars long.

This piece contains one or more riffs, that are four bars long.

This piece contains two riffs that work together in a question and answer structure.

The three songs are named Lola's Theme, Right Here, Right Now and Are You With Me.

When you've finished the table, click resume.

We will then listen to the riffs again.

As you listen this time, try to determine which of the statements are true for each song.

So up first is Lola's Theme.

Up next is Right Here, Right Now.

♪ I want to dance by water 'neath the Mexican sky ♪ ♪ Drink some Margarittas by string of blue lights ♪ ♪ Listen to the Mariachi play at midnight ♪ ♪ Are you with me, are you with me? ♪ So let's take a look at the answers for that table.

Here we go, notice how some of the songs, Lola's Theme, and Right Here, Right Now had more than one option.

So example, Right Here, Right Now had a melodic riff that was one bar long.

And one that was two bars long.

And, And Faded was quite a long riff.

It was four bars.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

So far we've looked at some basic melodic riffs, and we've just had a go at harmonising a melodic riff.

But what actually is harmony? Well, harmony is when two or more pitches are played at the same time.

On the right hand side of the screen there I have a C major chord.

And as you can see, the notes are stacked on top of each other, representing playing them at the same time.

"Where melody is horizontal, on a score, harmony is vertical." What are the different functions of harmony? To add interest, harmonising a melody can make the melody more interesting.

It can change the mood.

Different chords and progressions can evoke different moods.

Sense of direction.

Composers use chords to take the listener on a musical journey.

And home, after that journey is complete harmony can make the song sound like it is home.

You can play each scale as chords, Composers use harmonious chord sequences, or progressions in their music.

For example, However, you could argue that some chord sequences don't sound so harmonious.

So it's up to us to decide which chords we pick and in which order we play them.

But how do we know how to do that? Well, let's take a look now.

So now it's time to compose our own melodic riffs.

And I've got a chord sequence here on the screen.

I've got D minor, A minor, B flat major and C major.

And that sounds like this.

I'll loop it one more time.

And so you might ask, "well, how do you begin to even think about writing a melody for a chord sequence?" Well, the step I like to take is looking at the notes in each of those chords.

So as you can see the notes that I have in D minor, are D, F and A.

And what I've done is I've taken the root and the fifth of that chord.

So I have D and A.

I'm doing three notes per bar, and I've just decided to go A, D, A for that first chord.

I could have picked any of those notes.

I could have done D and F.

Or I could have done just the D even if I wanted to make it really simple.

And then I said, "well, I want to keep it nice and simple.

I do, so why don't I just repeat that A and D, A pattern in my second chord." And I'm thinking, because I've got the notes A, in my A minor chord, this going to sound quite good.

So let's see how that sounds, the first two chords.

We'll try with the next chord as well.

And again.

So I think it sounds okay.

Definitely it could be made more interesting and more complicated.

But crucially, in all but just the last chord, at least one of the notes in the riff A or D is in that chord.

So we have the A and the D in the D minor.

We have just the A in the A minor, and we have just the D in the B flat major chord.

Let's play it one more time.

A minor.

B flat major.

Then to C.

And that last bar, like I've just said, we don't actually have any of the notes that are in the chord in the riff.

You have A, D, A in the riff, and we have C, E and G in the chord.

So maybe I could actually change that A to a G.

And that would sound like this.

Sounds a little bit better, and I could even change that D to a C if I wanted to make it fit with the chord even more.

See, so I'm just matching notes in the chord.

So if I had an F chord, for example, which has F, A and C in the chord, then I would either play F, A or C in my riff.

It's okay if I use notes that are outside of that chord, but it would be nice if at least one of the notes in the riff fits with at least one of the notes in the chord.

So why don't we head over to BandLab and put that in over there? So here we are in BandLab, I've already clicked on mix editor and opened up an instrument track because we're going to be using the piano for this example.

So, first thing I would like to do is double tap in that first bar.

So I can get my middy region.

I's four bars long, and we'll do one chord per bar.

So the first chord we need is the D minor chord.

And according to the table, the notes were D, F and A.

So I'm going to double tap in those squares.

So I can double tap there to get a D.

Like I said, I want these to be one chord per bar.

So I'm going to make my notes a little bit longer add the note F as well.

Here we go, although that is F sharp, so I can just move it down to F natural.

And then, Let's see what that sounds like.

There we go.

A nice D minor chord.

So I will fill in now the next chord which is A minor, A, C and E.

Now, I could copy and paste and drag it down, but just for the video, I will type it in.

So you've got A, you've C.

And E In bar three, we needed B flat, yes.

So B flat.

D.

And F.

You notice that it's just a semitone higher and C major.

C.

E.

and D.

So let's hear what the whole chord progression sounds like.

I'm going to click on my loop bar here.

So when it gets to the bar, at the end of the bar four, it's going to go back and play from bar one.

So lets hear how it sounds.

So there we go.

I'm just going to loop, loop and loop.

So we've got our chord of progression now, we just need to add in the easy riff, which was just a repetition of the notes.

A and D, and turn my keyboard up.

And we had A, D, A rest, A, D, A rest, A, D, A rest, et cetera.

Now, I could put the riff on the same track.

I'm not actually going to do that.

I'm going to have a separate track for my chords and my riff just in case I wanted to change the instrument or change the notes.

It's easier to do that if they're in separate tracks.

So I've clicked the abstract button, clicked instruments again, and it automatically beats up a piano for me.

I will change that to riff.

I'll create my region again, by double tapping in that first one.

We can notice it's a nice, different colour.

It's just easier to differentiate the two.

So we need A, D and A.

Often riffs are higher in pitch than the chords, so I've just scrolled up and I'm going to be using the C four octave.

So I'm going to do A, D, A.

Each note is going to be one beat long.

So the first note is A, just A there we go.

Make sure that it is the correct sound.

So yeah, that's A.

I can just make it sort of two rectangles, long parts, one beat.

So it needs to go to 1.

2.

It's got A, I could go up.

I could do.

But I think it sounds better if I go down.

So I'm going to go down to this D right here and another A.

Now I could, if I wanted to make that longer.

So it goes to the end of bar two, or I could keep it as a rest And the BDI would realise that I put that in the wrong place.

So wants to start at 1.

3 and I can make it all the way to two like that.

If I wanted to again, save time I can copy and paste, by highlighting.

And if I hold down the Alt key and click hold and drag, I can copy and paste it.

Or if that is a little bit too complicated, I can just draw it out again.

And that's fine.

So we've got, A.

D.

And A again.

They can go right to the end.

And one more.

A.

D.

And A.

Making it go all the way to the end of the bar, and let's hear how that sounds together.

So repeat.

Great, I'll pause that.

So we've got our chord and we've got our riff sounds pretty good.

If I wanted to, I could actually change the instrument and I could do that by clicking on the track, come down to the bottom here and selecting an instrument.

So if I wanted it to be let's say a guitar would sound like.

So again, I could experiment with lots of different ones.

But that is how to put in D easy riff over the chord sequence, D minor, A minor, B flat major and C major on BandLabs.

So let's go back to the slides before we come back to BandLab for the slightly harder version.

Over there, that's all right.

So let's take that a step further and make our riff even more musical by changing the notes in each bar to match the notes, that are in the chord.

So instead of just having the A and D repeat I'll loop that too.

For each chord, I'm going to change the notes.

So for the, A minor chord, instead of playing A, D, A, I'm going to play E and A instead, because E and A are in the chord A minor.

For the B flat major chord, I'm going to play F and B flat and for the C chord, I'm going to play C and G.

So together it sounds like this.

There we go.

So that's a slightly more musical version, and this will work with your chord sequence, as well.

So for each chord you have, you can pick one, two or three of those notes to play in your riff.

So, for example, if you had a D major chord instead of a D minor chord, you could choose notes that way, either D, F sharp or A.

Hear that was your riff.

A, D, F sharp.

Change the chord but I keep the same notes.

So riff is for any chord sequence.

Let's go up into BandLab and write this new, more musical sequence into BandLab and then you can have a go at doing it on your own chord sequence.

So back over in BandLab to do the more musical riff.

What I can do is I can just mute the track that had the easier riff in, if I don't want to delete it.

And I can add a new track, add instrument, and we get our piano pop.

Now, I should mention as well that you can use your actual laptop or computer keyboard to play the piano sound, but my brain does not work like that.

So I'm still going to be inputting the notes with the pencil.

So we're still using our chords D minor, A minor, B flat and C.

We're just slightly changing the notes from A and D, to notes that match and fit in with the chord.

So again, I'm going to be using a higher octave, and the first bar is the same.

It's actually A, and we'll make it a chord sheet A, D, A like so, but then we have in bar two.

So I'm just watch my masters as I go to bar two and just line it up, go down to E, E.

A.

E.

Going to have a rest and then we've got the B flat chord.

So that's F, B flat and an F again so, that's an F sharp, so I just need to drag it down.

So I'm just click holding and dragging.

Can be a bit fiddly and if you find this too fiddly, you can just delete it by clicking backspace.

And just double tapping it again, I'm going to go down to my B flat on the right bar.

So I'm actually put that in the wrong place.

Well, to make you spotted that 3.

2, I put my B flat and back to my F, Leave a rest enough for.

I can do my last three notes which were C, G and C again.

So I've got making sure lining it up, go to the bar four, I want my C, I'll go up for the G I missed by a long way that's the G and back to C at 4.

3.

There we go.

And again, I've got this rest at the end.

So let's hear how that sounds this time from the beginning.

There we go.

So there is the more musical riff, for argument's sake, let's hear what they sound like together.

It's not too bad.

It's a bit clashy, but it's not too bad.

So there we go.

There we have the more musical riff.

It's more musical again, because the notes of the riff are shared with the notes of the chord.

So there are no clashes.

And that is how to put the riffs into BandLab.

Composing a melodic riff.

Compose a melodic riff above your own chord sequence.

Use BandLab, or piano, or keyboard.

Pause the video to complete your task and click resume when you're finished.

So let's talk about making our melodic riffs a little bit more interesting.

The one on the right hand side of the screen, Is boring, in my opinion.

Now, let's think about ways in which we can make it a little bit more interesting and enjoyable for our listener.

That could be changing the instruments, which I'll show you how to go on BandLab, very soon.

It could be adding effects.

It could be changing the register so the octave that I'm playing in or down here, But one of my favourite ways, in a way where we can be really creative is to use passing notes.

So we're adding notes that go in between the notes that we already have.

So we have A flat and F in the first two bars.

And the note G is in between those two notes.

So I could go, instead of, I could add a G at the end of the first bar.

So the end of each bar, I've added a passing note and it makes it sound nicer already.

And I could add even more notes, but still sticking in the notes of the chord so I could play.

So I've got some passing notes in there and I've added extra notes.

Most of those extra notes, were notes that were also found in that chord.

So there are lots and lots of ways and we're going to head over to BandLab and try and change this very simple, literally four notes chord, four notes riff, into something a little bit more interesting.

So let's do that now.

So here we are in BandLab, and I've just written out the riff and the chords, and this is how it sounds in its original form.

So the first and easiest way to make that sound more interesting is to change the instrument.

So I'm going to head over to the track.

I'm going to click on instrument and I don't want the piano.

Let's try strings.

I am a violin player but no, let's try pizzicato, let's try that.

Let's just load it again and we'll see how that sounds.

I like it.

However, sometimes the melody's getting lost.

And that's because of a few things.

One, is that the chords are way too large.

So we're going to turn that down.

We can turn our pizzicato strings up, but also if we look at the the notes themselves, I think we could actually get away with putting them up another octet.

So I'm going to highlight.

I just about missed them, didn't I? Let's try that again.

Highlight all of them and I'm going to drag them up, up an octave.

Oh, too high.

There we go.

Let's see how that sounds.

Sorry, that took me a long time to do.

Oh, we lost some there, didn't we? Well, we can get them back easily.

Sometimes BandLab is not my friend, but is okay.

Why so, what else can we do next? Let's add in some passing notes, we said we would do that.

So we said that we could put a G there, let's hear how that sounds.

Yeah, it's good.

I'm going to change the rhythm as well to make it how I did on the piano earlier.

Good, so let's add in some notes here.

Do, do, do, do, do.

There we go, let's see how that sounds.

Good, I don't like the jump down the octaves so we're going to put this up.

There we go, that was easier.

And we will, Let's, follow the same pattern that we've been doing add some passing notes up.

So let's see how that sounds now.

You know what, I like this arrangement over here, so let's repeat the same thing and we'll go, do, do Nope.

So, new riff, new and improved riff I think, sorry, Alan Walker, if that's you.

Here the riff? Yeah, I think that is way, way, way better.

Now, what we can also do is add some effects.

So if I click on the effects panel here and I click add effect, there are lots of things I can do.

I can add reverb, I can add dynamics, distortion, delay.

Let's try a delay actually.

And the good thing about BandLab is if you don't like something you can just undo or delete it and it's fine.

No one will know.

Oh yeah, I like this delay and I'm also going to put on some reverb as well.

Let's do Space Maker and let's put it into a large hole.

Turn the room size down a little bit.

I think that is much more interesting than the original so I invite you too.

Change the register, change the instrument, add an effect if you would like to.

And if you're adding any notes, make sure that they are mainly the notes that are in the chord or a passing notes.

So one that comes in between the two notes.

So if you have the opportunity to do that now and spend probably about 10 minutes improving and making your melodic riff a little bit more interesting.

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