Making a Repeated Melody Less Obvious

Changing key temporarily is a great way to make a repetition less evident.

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Radioactive - Imagine DragonsMost songs make great use of repetition as an important feature. Some repetitive elements go without needing to be discussed. For example, a repeating drum pattern, repeating rhythm guitar figure and repeating verse melody are part of what is expected in solid song structure. Not only are they expected, they are attractive and important aspects of successful music.

Repetition does two important things for songs:

  1. makes melodies more easily remembered, and
  2. strengthens the formal design of a song.

To hear what I’m talking about, listen to “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons. The first half of the verse melody, which includes the first two lines of lyric, are then repeated to form the second half of the verse.

There’s nothing wrong with that; the point of this post is not to tell you that this kind of repetition is bad.

But there is a way to reap the benefits of repeating a melody without making it so obvious that you’re doing that. It involves temporarily changing key.

Take a listen to this excerpt (opens in a new browser window or tab). It’s a simple, short verse melody in C major. You can hear that there is an exact repeat in the middle of the verse, and then moves on to the chorus, which starts on an Am7.

Now listen to this one. It’s the same melody, but for the second half of the verse melody, the key is temporarily changed to Eb major – up a minor 3rd. Then as the chorus approaches, it quickly switches back to C major.

The key changes, you can hear, are done very abruptly. No need for finding a common chord or other smooth way to change keys. In fact, one of the things that makes this quick key change work is the abruptness of the change.

If you’ve got a melody that repeats for the verse, and you’re a bit worried that it’s too much the same thing, try taking the second phrase and moving it up a minor 3rd and see if you like the effect.

Keep in mind that this sort of thing is very noticeable, and so you won’t want to do it in every song. It will sound trite very quickly. But done once every now and then, it can be useful. It is a great way to take advantage of the benefits of repetition without making it so obvious.

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Gary EwerWritten by Gary Ewer. Follow on Twitter.

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