Speaker A
I know countless beatmakers who can't seem to progress because they’re making beats instead of making music. I swear to you, once you understand that, guys, it's easy. Yo guys, girls, hello to one and all. Except for people who
Learn how to create effective melodies with music theory tips and discover TRex_EnLive's new website offering beats, kits, and presets.
Key Takeaways
- Understanding music theory basics like scales and chord progressions is crucial for effective melodies.
- Humanization of melodies adds emotional depth and realism to digital music production.
- Using FL Studio’s built-in tools can simplify melody creation for producers with limited theory knowledge.
- TRex_EnLive offers resources like melody kits and presets on his new website to support music producers.
- Engaging with the community through comments and live streams helps improve learning and creativity.
What the video covers
- TRex_EnLive explains why many beatmakers struggle by focusing on beats rather than music.
- The video covers essential melody-making concepts like chord inversions and voice leading.
- Introduction and announcement of TRex_EnLive's new website with a shop for beats, loop kits, and presets.
- Demonstration of creating melody packs, especially an RnB melody kit with MIDI files included.
- Explanation of choosing scales (major vs minor) and building chord progressions in FL Studio.
- Tips on spacing notes to avoid muddy sounds and using octave shifts for better harmony.
- How to humanize melodies using FL Studio’s strum and time offset tools for realistic play.
- Advice on using FL Studio’s scale highlighting feature to simplify melody creation without deep theory.
- Encouragement to viewers to comment on video usefulness and vote on next beat style (50 Cent or Michael Jackson).
- Mention of live streams where TRex_EnLive listens to viewer beats and music.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and common beatmaker struggles
- 00:35Melody concepts: chord inversions and voice leading
- 01:09Website announcement and shop overview
- 01:45Creating melody packs and RnB kit preview
- 03:15Music theory basics: scales and chord construction
- 04:16Using FL Studio scale highlighting for melody creation
- 06:04Chord progression spacing and octave shifting
- 06:47Humanizing melodies with FL Studio's strum and time offset tools
- 08:06Final tips, community engagement, and live stream info
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
put the milk in before the cereal. What is even up with that? Put your cereal in first, then you add the milk like this. The cereal stays good. Don't leave it in the milk too long though, because obviously, the cereal gets a
Speaker A
bit soggy; you have to eat it right away. For everyone else, get comfortable, it's T-Rex, and welcome to this new video. It's a bit of an important video today because, I know, I didn't make a beat. There, now you
Speaker A
know, so you don't wait around, because I know there are people among you who come to my videos, listen to the beat at the end, and then move on. I see the statistics. But today, I didn't make a
Speaker A
beat. I tried to explain things that nobody tells you about making melodies, like chord inversions, voice leading, and so on. These are things you need to know that are important for making coherent melodies. I tried to condense that into this video. I also talked to
Speaker A
you about my new website in this video, because I actually launched a website. I should have started with that. No, it's true, it's true, it's true. Damn.
Speaker A
Yeah. Hi. I have a website. Yeah, basically, I made a website with all my projects, who I am in music, and so on.
Speaker A
Anyway, I also made a shop section where I sell loop kits, drum kits, and obviously my beats. I'll be doing bundles, preset kits, anyway, all of that will be on my website, it's cool.
Speaker A
Anyway, I'll let you watch the video. Tell me in the comments if it helped you, if you were able to learn some things. It's very important for me to be able to pass things on with humility. I'll also let you choose the theme
Speaker A
for next week's video. Either I make a beat in the style of 50 Cent, or I make a beat in the style of Michael Jackson.
Speaker A
There you go, I'll let you choose, tell me in the comments. The editor is going to struggle with this gesture. But seriously, if you put 67 in there, you're fired. Walid, I'm telling you right now, sorry, I was talking to my
Speaker A
editor. Anyway, we'll see each other at the end of the video. Ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao. Great. Come on, go ahead. What's up, guys? La R, hi there. Tonight, I'm composing melodies for my new website
Speaker A
available here worldwide. You go to t-rexbitatmaker.com and you have access to my website. If you want, there are some beats in there, and I need to feed my store with presets, melody kits, drum kits, and so on and so forth. I'm
Speaker A
also going to make bundles where I'll offer grouped deals. Anyway, I need to get that done. So today, I'm just going to make some melody packs. Make a killer melody. Actually, I'm working on an RnB pack, and it's going to be my
Speaker A
first melody kit; I'll let you have a listen. Are you interested? Does that interest you or not? So, I have four already, and I need to make a fifth one. If you get the pack with the MIDI,
Speaker A
you go into the folder, boom, there's the MIDI, and you just take the MIDI, drag and drop it, and you've got the piano. So, basically, that's the idea, you see. So that's what I've been working on today. I had forgotten about
Speaker A
that one. Some of you actually struggle with setting up the basses correctly and so on. So, I've included a bass track here to go with it, just in case.
Speaker A
Are you able to show some tips for a good melody with a mouse? With a mouse, we can test that. It's something I never do because I'll always prefer composing melodies with a keyboard since you naturally get that
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humanization, and so on. But anyway, first you have to choose the scale. Do you want major or minor? Keep in mind that the difference between major and minor is that major will sound a little more happy, and minor a little more sad.
Speaker A
It's not always true, but in 90% of cases, that's it, you see. So for a minor, C minor for example, you go to your C, which is your root note, and you leave two semitones. A semitone is one note. Got it? So one note, two
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notes. There, so 1 2. OK, those are the two semitones between the first two notes of the minor scale. Alright? And then, you leave three semitones. So 1 2 3, so you land on the 4th. So there, we
Speaker A
have a C minor. There you go. And if you want a C major now, so if you want a C major, it's the mirror chord of C minor. Instead of leaving two semitones, sorry, and three semitones, well here,
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you leave three semitones first and then two semitones, and there you have a major chord. OK? Now, we're going to make a little chord progression. Let's assume. OK? So that's the sequence of root notes. So it will sound like this.
Speaker A
Did you manage to turn the LED blue on? It's not working. This thing is driving me crazy. Anyway, this light will never be blue.
Speaker A
Yes, I did it. Finally, I'll spend a sleepless night on this damn lamp. OK.
Speaker A
No picture, no picture, no picture, great. To avoid making mistakes with the mouse if you don't want to learn music theory and everything. There's a little technique on FL that I personally never use. So you go to FL,
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into the piano roll, and you click this little arrow. OK, you go to view, then scale, and you choose your root note.
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So in this case it's C, and you go to natural minor. And so here you can see some notes that are a little darker than others. OK? So if you see dark notes, you don't use them, and the
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lighter notes, you can use them. OK? So the root note, we said it was C, so it's this one. So now we're going to make our sequence. Alright? Like that.
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There you go. Let's assume. Much simpler than all that theory to avoid overwhelming yourselves with too much information. You see the white notes there, the notes that are allowed, the notes that are a little lighter.
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Systematically, you skip one. Alright? So here, this one is white, I skip one, I go to the next one. Boom! This one is white. So, I skip it and I go to the next one. There you go, C minor. And
Speaker A
you do that for every note, every chord you've made. So there, you have a sequence, okay? Basic. OK. So here, what's interesting to do is to space out the notes a little to avoid it sounding too messy. Especially since
Speaker A
it's in the low end, it can sound muddy. So, what's actually good to do is to take the middle note that is here.
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Right? So here, to select only the middle notes, you use Control and Shift. OK? And there, you simply select what you want to select. And you move that up an octave. OK? So an octave is actually 12 notes on the piano. Right?
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So here, moving to the octave above is also very simple. You hold down Control and press the up arrow. Boom! You have a white note, you skip it, you move on.
Speaker A
Ah, what a jerk! So here, we have a pretty nice chord progression, not humanized at all, but it works. So here, what would be interesting anyway would be to harmonize this and also make it more complex. You see, you take
Speaker A
all the root notes again, okay? Then, you copy and paste. So you hold down Control, you press C and V. Boom, like that, you have those same notes duplicated in red and you can select them and put them wherever you want. So
Speaker A
here, same thing, you're going to put them an octave higher. So Control, up arrow. Boom. So here, what we should do is humanize this a little bit. Make it sound like the instruments you hear are actually played by a real person. It
Speaker A
should really be music because, in fact, you shouldn't forget that music is about emotions and that emotion comes through the human. OK, so that's why humanization is called that. So here, you press Alt + S. And there, the time
Speaker A
and strum tool appears. Basically, if I zoom in, you can see it creates micro-offsets. Why? Because when you actually play the piano, you don't hit all the keys with your fingers at the exact same time. Right? So those
Speaker A
micro-offsets are meant to simulate that, you see. So here, you choose the strength of your offset. OK? And for the time, you set it a little lower.
Speaker A
That’s also for the end, yo
Speaker A
Anyway, so you have this tool here, the Alt S, and you also have Alt R. So, Alt R is the randomizer. All right? You have the pitch and so on. So you don't use that, because it's a piano VST, it
Speaker A
won't be useful. But on the other hand, what's interesting to do is to play with the velocity, because when you play piano, your fingers don't apply the same pressure to each key. All right? Meaning that there's a difference. So, we're going to try to
Speaker A
simulate that with this tool. So, we're going to lower the velocity a bit and accept. So now, we can see that not all notes have the same velocity. OK?
Speaker A
Especially for piano and guitar, it works very, very well. It's because emotions are conveyed through notes played very softly. OK? When it's very loud like that, it sounds mechanical.
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But here, you hold down Alt and use your mouse wheel to turn it down. First , you select everything. You see, now there's much more emotion coming through. You have much more softness.
Speaker A
So, I'm going to get into something a bit technical, so to speak. The importance of knowing chord inversions to have a more harmonious and coherent melody. Basically, what does "chord inversion" mean? Let's say you have a C minor. That's what we used below. All
Speaker A
right? If you want, the root note here is C. So, it's this note. You see, it's the first note. But be careful, you shouldn't assume that the first note is always the root. So here, we have a C
Speaker A
minor. The root is C because it's the first one. But if you think it's always the first, you can be mistaken if you use a chord inversion. What is a first chord inversion? It's when you take a note, for example, the one on the G. If
Speaker A
you move it to the octave below, we still have a C minor. Except that the first one is this one, and you might think the root is the G, but not at all . It remains C because they are
Speaker A
actually the same notes being pressed. Do you understand what I mean? So that is the first chord inversion and if you do this now, that is a second chord inversion. So it is still the same notes, but the root is still not the D,
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it is still the C. Do you understand? So that is a little bit complicated, so to speak, to understand, but it is fundamental if you want to use voice leading. Oh yeah.
Speaker A
So, to explain voice leading. Basically , voice leading is a way of playing so that your fingers move as little as possible on the piano. By the way, it is a bit of a lazy technique, but it is
Speaker A
super important. If you want to make coherent melodies, because if you space out your chord progressions too much, you will overwhelm your listener's brain with information by placing frequencies too far apart. And if you use voice leading with inversions, it
Speaker A
stays more or less the same notes that you hear, with a few notes of difference. So technically, what you hear is coherent. You see, we are going to do the same chord progression, and there will be a slightly different color, but it will
Speaker A
be a bit more coherent to the ear because there will be less space, you understand? So anyway, I'm working on my pack, I'm missing a melody. Come on, I'm going to make this melody because I'm missing one for my R&B piano drum
Speaker A
kit. So, I'm going to do this one. And after that, it's a loop. Okay, so this is going to be my last melody for the R &B pack, guys. Awesome. The BPM is a bit fast though, to be honest. But this
Speaker A
way, you also see how I compose my beats for the kits. So I find that interesting. You see, when I was talking about humanization and that it was better to play these melodies directly on the piano, it's because I'm
Speaker A
not even going to quantize it. For those who aren't familiar with that term, basically, quantizing is putting the notes exactly on the tempo, etc.
Speaker A
You see, if you zoom in a bit, you see that everything is shifted, nothing falls exactly on the grid. But that adds humanization. You see, only the first note always lands on the beat because it is the first note, simply
Speaker A
put, there is no micro-delay there. So, I just set it manually. Uh, just handle how you can teach us to play music well with the mouse and the piano. Actually, you know that right now, technically, and it comes back to what I wanted to
Speaker A
say before, with the whole giving support thing, is that what I'm doing, making melody tutorials on how to write melodies, it's something that's completely stupid. The day of my website launch where I'm selling melodies. I am teaching you for free
Speaker A
how to make melodies on your own without needing me. So it's really stupid in that sense, you see. But uh, I feel I have a duty to pass on knowledge that I try to fulfill as best I can in terms of information, little
Speaker A
tips, and so on. If I can teach you something, it's cool, you know. In truth, yeah, go screw yourselves. Well, ultimately, the 5th melody, I didn't put it in the melody kit. Uh, I made a kit of 4, which is what you heard in
Speaker A
the video, because I'm preparing it for another kit. Anyway, you'll understand. If you're still here, thanks for watching the video until the end. Tell me if you were able to learn some things. What are voice leading, what are chord inversions? Things that are
Speaker A
really super important to me and I've honestly never seen anyone talk about, even though to me it's essential.
Speaker A
Anyway, and don't hesitate to come directly to Twitch, because what happens on YouTube is really only 10%of what happens on Twitch. During the lives, I answer all your questions directly. We laugh, we make beats, and everything. I can't put everything on
Speaker A
YouTube because it would cost a fortune in editing. Obviously, I don't have the means. And if you're watching this video on a Sunday, just know that tonight on stream, I'm listening to all your beats and music, and otherwise for
Speaker A
the rest of the week, I'm composing. Sometimes we even do some gaming. Anyway, come over to Twitch. And on the other hand, if you look at the website on the day this video comes out, well, the presentation site is finished. But
Speaker A
the shop, well, it's still missing a few products because I just barely launched it. I had a small programming issue uploading the stuff. Anyway, you don't really care about that. But the site is open, you can go check it out.
Speaker A
Take a quick look, the articles will be coming little by little and so on.
Speaker A
Anyway, ciao, kisses. Bye. See you next Sunday at 5 p.m. or tonight on Twitch from 8:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. Big kisses.
Speaker A
Bye.
Topics:melody makingmusic theorychord progressionFL Studio tutorialbeatmaking tipshumanizationR&B melody kitmusic productionpreset kitsTRex_EnLive
