Call and Response Melodies: The easiest way to instantly make your music more catchy

Hey everyone, welcome to the third issue of the Newsletter! Today I wanted to go over one of the easiest music writing techniques to instantly make your music catchier and more interesting. I'm not very musical on the piano so this has been a major tool in my toolbox over the years.

It's called Call and Response melodies. Some of you may be familiar with this and have used it, but I want to dive in deeper to why this really works.

The call section is the first lead sound and the response section is the second sound. The way I like to define it are two different instruments having a musical conversation with each other back and forth. Hans Zimmer refers to it as a question, then an answer.

Here's one of my favorite examples below in one of my recent songs, my Skrillex Rumble Remix. 1st sound is a lead bass, then the 2nd is a super saw and they trade off every 4 bars. In the Ableton session it looks like this so you can visualize it:

The major reason this instantly makes your music sound more interesting, is the two sounds are having a musical dialogue with each other. It adds a layer of depth by creating then resolving tension. Not to mention it's two different sounds rather than just 1 lead or bass sound playing static for 16bars+ which can get boring sometimes.

Call and Response melodies also have been used for thousands of years in different ancient genres of music and even in nature by animals like birds, so part of it is also instinctual. 

A few tips when writing with this technique:

-Play with the phrasing, 2 bars then 2 bars. 4 bars then 4 bars, and even 8 bars then 8 bars of each sound can work, like my song "What's the Move" with Knock2.

-Think in terms of question and then an answer to the question, make sure the melodies are relative to each other and make sense. 

-Experiment with lead sounds that are different, but compliment each other. I usually find the best ones result when the sounds are contrasting more. 

-Try staccato short notes on the call and longer legato notes on the response. 

Hope you guys found this helpful, see ya next week enjoy! -Henry