Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
From first note to finished track that belongs in a real game, and if you decide to, getting paid to compose.
Get the free roadmap: bestmusiccoach.com/roadmap?htrafficsource=yt&el=composers-make-your-theme-hummable-so-players-always-remembe
Much of the time when we compose video game music, we want to create what are called singable melodies. Well, what makes a melody singable? What makes a melody singable is that it's going to be, well, more clustered, meaning there's not going to be a big difference between how high and how low the notes are. You can still have a difference, even an octave, maybe even a ninth. But having that consistently makes it more difficult to sing, which would make it not a singable melody. Something else we would have, not too complex of a rhythm. It might be relatively complex, but not too complex and not too crazy. And in fact, I'm going to put up on the screen here a couple of examples of what a not singable melody looks like. You'll notice that the melody is intervallic, meaning there's lots of jumps. It's quite fast, and there's some intricate things going on with the rhythm. Now, a singable melody is, again, going to be more clustered, it's closer together, and usually more repetition going on in terms of the rhythm, so that a human being would have a lot easier time singing it. Now, we don't have to compose singable melodies. In fact, sometimes the right move is to make a melody that's not at all singable. But 85, maybe even 90% of the time, we want singable melodies because when we create thematic video game music, that's what we want. We want a theme that people are going to remember. They have a lot easier time remembering a melody that is singable. So that's why we use singable as the razor, as the decision-making framework with which to compose melodies. All that you can find on page 131 of Compose Legendary Video Game Music. It's my new book. It's out on Amazon. Now you can grab your copy if you want.
From first note to finished track that belongs in a real game, and if you decide to, getting paid to compose.
Get the free roadmap: bestmusiccoach.com/roadmap?htrafficsource=yt&el=composers-make-your-theme-hummable-so-players-always-remembe
Much of the time when we compose video game music, we want to create what are called singable melodies. Well, what makes a melody singable? What makes a melody singable is that it's going to be, well, more clustered, meaning there's not going to be a big difference between how high and how low the notes are. You can still have a difference, even an octave, maybe even a ninth. But having that consistently makes it more difficult to sing, which would make it not a singable melody. Something else we would have, not too complex of a rhythm. It might be relatively complex, but not too complex and not too crazy. And in fact, I'm going to put up on the screen here a couple of examples of what a not singable melody looks like. You'll notice that the melody is intervallic, meaning there's lots of jumps. It's quite fast, and there's some intricate things going on with the rhythm. Now, a singable melody is, again, going to be more clustered, it's closer together, and usually more repetition going on in terms of the rhythm, so that a human being would have a lot easier time singing it. Now, we don't have to compose singable melodies. In fact, sometimes the right move is to make a melody that's not at all singable. But 85, maybe even 90% of the time, we want singable melodies because when we create thematic video game music, that's what we want. We want a theme that people are going to remember. They have a lot easier time remembering a melody that is singable. So that's why we use singable as the razor, as the decision-making framework with which to compose melodies. All that you can find on page 131 of Compose Legendary Video Game Music. It's my new book. It's out on Amazon. Now you can grab your copy if you want.
