how is your music theory knowledge and note-reading skills?
There are various approaches to constructing melodies - as @jasonw22 said, “Composing Music” starts out with unaccompanied melodies. It also has a chapter on analyzing melodies by mapping their notes onto a grid, which is an interesting way to approach it.
You could also check out some Gregorian chant (many would say singable melodies are the best melodies…)
I can drop some music theory knowledge, but I am very ignorant of modular rigs, so I don’t know how you might want to translate this (but I would be super interested to hear about your progress!)
My music theory students learned a Western classical approach to writing melodies - I’ll just dump it here:
Western classical music says all good melodies have two parts: an antecedent phrase and a consequent phrase. The antecedent asks the question, the consequent answers it. (https://sites.google.com/a/egrps.org/ib-music-interactive/home/sound/melody/phrases)
Generally, an antecedent ends on a note other than the first degree of the scale; scale degrees 2 5 and 7 are solid choices. A consequent phrase will wrap everything up, often (but not always) on scale degree #1, sometimes #3 or #5, but those are a less declarative ending to the phrase.
You can also analyze phrases by looking at if they are:
- Regular length (2 measure, 4 measures) or Irregular length (either)
- Long or short
- Flowing (all the notes are next to each other) or Fragmented (jumps between the notes)
The phrases in the melody to Angels We Have Heard on High, for example, are “flowing:”
Then I show my students this Ligeti piece to make sure we’re not taking the rules too seriously:
And If it inspires you, here is a playlist I made of mostly monophonic solo instruments.
