C Melody

Lacking better methods of melody construction, outline a scale in a DAW, or on a piece of paper, or whatever. With a Digital Audio Workstation you can usually put the melodic fragment on loop while you fiddle around with it for a maybe faster feedback cycle as to whether a change was good or not.

    c d e f g a b c

This (usually) will not do, so the next step is to rearrange the notes randomly (random choice is a valid method, especially if you do not have anything better to go with) and also fiddle with durations and maybe accent and how loud the note should be. Here you might get some bleed-over from music theory, like why the note B might move (eventually, the resolution can be delayed, such as with a sub-phrase akin to this aside) to C. Whether or not to re-use notes before going through the entire scale is a choice here; usually some notes (C, G or the tonic and dominant of C Major) will be used more often. Re-using notes is more common than a tone row as seen in atonal music, where the starting C (or any C) cannot be used again until all the other notes in the set have had their turn. Imposing weird limitations can have benefits, as the limitations might help you stay within a particular style, or can reduce the "too much free choice" problem to something manageable. Melodies tend toward step motion over leaps, so forcing selection from a tone row may complicate melodic design. One option is to use a tone row as something like a skeleton or bone-cage and to fill in steps and ornamentation between the tone row notes. Or the skeleton notes might be hidden in the ornamentation.

A piano is a good option in a DAW; some melody may sound okay with a fancy voice that masks the defects. A good melody will usually shift between different instruments, though there can be issues where a Harpsichord or Banjo lack the sustains that an Organ or a Cello can pull off. Try a few different instruments and see if the melody is generic or really only works with a particular patch. Note velocity may also depend on the software instrument, as for some a soft note requires turning the volume way down, which on another instrument will be inaudible. Don't tune the note velocity too much before settling on the instrument for an output track, if you even get that far?

Most of these melodies probably should be thrown away, similar to the story of a writer needing to write some (large?) number of words before they get gooder. A danger here is if you spend too long fussing around with that one phrase (overtraining much?) rather than churning through a lot of different melodic ideas.

    c4 d2 g4. f8 e2 a8 b c4 b g4. g8 d4 e4. e8 d4