The main melody in this classic track is played by both a synthesizer and a bass guitar (in different pitch ranges and with slightly different rhythms). It's also sung during certain sections of the song called the choruses.

This melody uses only notes in the scale of D major. But the melody starts with a long E, creating a sense of tension against the implied key that continues throughout the whole song.

Notice the shape (or contour) of the melody. At the beginning, it moves up and down the scale by adjacent notes. But at the end, it leaps from B up to D and then down to A. This contrast between stepwise and leapwise motion helps to make the melody strong and memorable.

Try making some of your own melodies that also use a contrast between steps and leaps.

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Synthesizers and drum machines play all of the sounds in this track (except the vocal parts), and the primary melody is a synthetic string-like sound.

The main melody in this track is very long, but you can break it down into four smaller pieces (or phrases) that are simple variations of each other.

The first and second phrases are identical, with the exception of the final note. In the first phrase, the last two notes descend from B♭ to A♭, while in the second phrase, they ascend from B♭ to C. You can hear this as a sort of "question and answer" relationship; the first phrase sounds somehow incomplete, while the second phrase sounds like it serves to resolve the first.

The third and fourth phrases also work as a pair. The third is identical to the first, except that it has been transposed up to start on G instead of F. Finally, the fourth phrase "answers" the third, with another small variation at the end of the phrase.

Experiment with your own melodies that use some of the techniques from the original: repeated phrases with variations, "question and answer" relationships, alternation between ascent and descent in the variations.

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Side note: the first few notes of the melody are borrowed from a much older piece of music: Paul Hindemith's Sonata for Flute and Piano (1936).

There are many layers in this song, and all of them are played by electronic instruments of some kind.

This song is in E minor. Much like the Kraftwerk example, the melody is a pair of nearly-identical phrases, with a small variation occurring at the end of the phrase. Each phrase is two bars long, and only the last note differs.

The rhythm is interesting; the pair of ascending five-note lines from D up to B creates a sort of rhythmic "tension" as the notes land in a different place in the bar each time through the figure.

Experiment with your own melodies that use unusual groupings of notes and repeated phrases with variations.

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You might have noticed that the notes don't quite sound the same between the video and the note grid. That's because the original track uses notes that are in-between the 12 pitches that are commonly used. This might have happened because Ikonika was working with synthesizers that had very flexible ranges of pitch, and she tuned them by ear rather than to a "standard" reference.

If you listen to the original track alone, everything works, because all of the instruments use the same collection of notes and so are in tune with each other. In the grid, we've chosen to move up to the next higher "conventional" note (E), but we could also have gone lower; the song is almost exactly halfway between E♭ and E.

As with the Kraftwerk example, all of the sounds here are made by synthesizers and drum machines. There are actually very few sounds being used, but they continuously evolve.

Robert Hood was working extensively with the Roland Alpha Juno 2 synthesizer on this record, and it's likely that this is the synth used for this melodic sound.

In addition to the drums, there is only a single pattern of notes that repeats throughout the entire track.

This is an example of minimal techno; here the focus is on slow, subtle changes, primarily to the nature of the sounds themselves, rather than to the notes and rhythms.

Notice that this line jumps between a very wide range of pitches. As you listen to it repeat, you might sometimes hear it as one part, while at other times it might separate into two interlocking parts, with the high notes suggesting a melody and the low notes suggesting a bassline.

So is it one or the other, or both? In music like this, the distinction is really up to the listener.

Also notice that the steady four-on-the-floor kick drum makes it very easy to hear the beats. But it's very difficult to tell where the pattern actually begins. If you jump to different points in the video, you might hear the pattern sound like it has "shifted" to begin in different places.

Let's play with some of these ways of hearing the pattern.

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Now that you've learned a bit about melodies, spend some time creating your own.

You can also create beats that will play in sync with your note patterns.

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