Where do melodies come from?

As a musician (if I can call myself that now lol)
I find it odd that I can't even grasp the most simple concepts yet I use them to their greatest potential..
I can't read or write music, I can only interpret and create sounds.

soundcloud.com...
i'll use my page as an example, 42 or more melodies i've written within the past month.
When I make them in the moment, I have sort of an idea of what i'm going to hear, rather then what I want to hear. In other words, these melodies are almost writing themselves out with me as an observer.

What about melodies, makes sense?
I mean, how does a bunch of notes combined in patterns give the 'sense' of anything?

And how do these specific melodies come from me personally?
Do they make sense only to me? Or to everyone who has an understanding of music?

I see them as expressions, but of what,
has the world around me created this?
or my experience within the world?

I have written a few things that where a few weeks later I hear it on the radio . Kinda like how bands will almost have the same sounding song released at the same time ... I have often wondered if music comes from like an ether that we tap into that is always progressing and evolving...

Sounds to me you're asking the unsolveble question of "what is art and where does it come from".

When people hear music, it tends brings out thet same emotion from me than the person next to me, it is interperated by our experiences, memories, perception etc etc. Yes, esspecialy with music, primary emotions are easily brought forward (such as anger, sadness, etc) but they tend to relate to a certain memory of some sorts. Most of the time we are unaware of this, but a simple way of testing is just to look back at who you tended to listen too last winter, and then who you listened to this summer, and do that to the year previous, many times (for people who listen to music, and not just dance/get drunk to it) the same bands tend to pop up in certain seasons.

For me as an example, in summer/sunny warm weather, i tend to listen to more up-beat, happy music (such as ska, indie, regge, trance etc) but in the winter, i tend to listen to more darker, heavier music (industrial, heavy metal, prog).

I could go on forever with this example, but to cut it short, people tend to have happier memories in the summer, many from childhood in the summer holidays from school, family holidays are typicaly taken in the summer, those lounge days in the park with some friends when you where teenagers. There are also chemicals released with sunshine that boost your mood. Because of this, music with higher frequencies (and major notes) tend to relate to us with happy emotions.

Winter on the other hand, is dark and cold and missreble. It's too wet to go outside and play when you were young, less sunshine (the chemical thingy again) and so on. So people tend to be more missreble in the winter (well, after xmas anywho, another reason why all xmas songs tend to use high notes (major) rarther that low (minor notes for you music folk).

Take a quick look at the charts over a 12 month period, you will notice how in the summer time it's all happy go lucky cheese, where as in winter its all slow, "somebody left me and im all alone crying" love songs.

Sorry if i woffled on for too long, music is a major interest of mine

reply to post by yourmaker
I like the Ancient Greek's explanation of the Muses being the givers of creative thoughts and ideas. For melodies it would be Euterpe.

The most scientific explanation would involve seeing your brain as a cauldron of influences and neurological drivers that, when boiling point is reached, creates melodies. I much prefer the idea that the structure of melodies somehow existed autonomously and we tune into them. Paul McCartney *dreamed* Yesterday and spent weeks believing he'd subconsciously plagiarised it.

I think of music as a sort of short hand from the mind; trying to make logical order out of a cacophony of chaos known as experience moment to moment, a lot like a transmission of electrical impulses of focused directed nervous energy, such as unconscious pen tapping. You don't need to read or even write music to make it, or play it for that matter...reading and writing it only allows reproduction of your work by others...unless they can play by ear, then they don't need it either.

One of my friends since childhood is a very good guitarist; he knows many many weird chords and songs by other people; but can't for the life of him, make up a single song on his own, which I find really odd. It irritates him that I can constantly flow stuff out, in like an India style Raga, until I get tired and fingers throbbing but, I can't play a single song by anyone else and only remember maybe 12 chords on a good day.

I think automatic writing is a good practice for just becoming a conductor of the flow of that energy. If you try to force it it's like writers block, I think Ouija boards work along the same lines too...interesting that this type of energy transmission; always used to get associated with evil or some devil/demons. Hmm food for thought, is it a form of channeling or tapping into a hidden stream right under the surface of things...and that's why others can duplicate the same thing, having never heard or met yourself and music? hmmm sorry if I have raised more questions than insight into what you've asked...

reply to post by yourmaker

Melodies are not only the most important part of a musical composition, but their origin, relative to the composer's mind, is hard to define. The musical composition is essentially a craft: You can learn various techniques, try some variations by breaking certain rules to try adding a progressive element into your music, but no teacher will tell you how to come up with a melody that would turn your song into a hit. In this particular case, the melody construction seems to be a pure art - it's almost an unconscious process taking place in your mind. When someone asked Michael Jackson how he came up with the melody of "Billie Jean," Michael simply pointed his finger toward the sky/heavens. He said that the riff and the melody came to him real strong when he was driving home one day. He said that he could almost hear it in his head. It came by itself, unannounced. Paul McCartney is a very skillful songwriter and he knows that musical memory can store other people's songs in the mind for a long time and recall them without notice any time. So when he heard in his head a melody that became later "Yesterday," he was asking around humming the melody. But it wasn't familiar to no one he asked. No copyright suit followed so it was an original musical idea.

Originally posted by yourmaker
As a musician (if I can call myself that now lol)
I find it odd that I can't even grasp the most simple concepts yet I use them to their greatest potential..
I can't read or write music, I can only interpret and create sounds.

soundcloud.com...
i'll use my page as an example, 42 or more melodies i've written within the past month.
When I make them in the moment, I have sort of an idea of what i'm going to hear, rather then what I want to hear. In other words, these melodies are almost writing themselves out with me as an observer.

What about melodies, makes sense?
I mean, how does a bunch of notes combined in patterns give the 'sense' of anything?

And how do these specific melodies come from me personally?
Do they make sense only to me? Or to everyone who has an understanding of music?

I see them as expressions, but of what,
has the world around me created this?
or my experience within the world?

edit on 5-10-2012 by yourmaker because: (no reason given)

Hello,

Honestly, I'm kind of the same way. Sometimes when I'm trying to go to sleep, or working, out with people a riff, melody, whatever you want to call it will pop in my head, and it always seems to be when I do not have a guitar in hand or it's least convenient to play. Then when I try to sit down later to play what I was imagining, my mind goes blank. Every time I do " write " if you can call it that, I more or less just start playing. It drives my buddy absolutely crazy. I will just sit down, start playing a few scales, or dicking around with sweeps, then *snap* I start playing something, and he's like woah, when did you write that...." errrrr, right now...." How ever, I tend to have a bit of musical ADD so to speak, so unless we really sit down and hammer it out for a few hours I tend to forget how it went sometimes even moments after I put down my guitar.

I've actually started to come to terms with the idea that I'm not playing the instrument, rather I am interpreting a situation, thought or mood, and the guitar is playing it through me.

I don't know what instruments you play, or the skill level you play at, as I have yet to check out your site.

So I'm going to go do that now,