How To Avoid Sounding 'Oriental' When Writing Melodies?

[muakz]

Newbie here.

Just completed writing a few songs, unfortunately realised all my pieces sound like typical CHINESE / KOREAN pop whereas I was aiming for ENGLISH ballads, complete with ENGLISH lyrics. Even though I'm not using pentatonic, I wonder if there's any suggestions how I can avoid 'Oriental' sounding music?

Thanks a lot!

 

[zenguan88]

its the way u are used to in the music..

maybe thats because u listen to chinese korean songs often therefore havingg a certain mindset that this chord will lead to this chord which happen to make it sound oriental.

try listening to more english balleds for a start...

put in more of the 'fa' and 'ti' .

but usually a song will sounds oriental becas u use the pentotonic scales... so yea hmmmzzz

hahas

aniway just a thot good luck

maybe u could try changing the chord also...

 

[jeremyrozario]

use string skipping, open strings, and major style phrases

 

[crozzfire]

haha i also kinda hav the same problem but different genre as urs only..i wanna compose punk but in the end my chord progresions sounds so metal..

 

[Guest]

i can't even tell the diff between sounding metal, punk or rock. :lol:

 

[crozzfire]

lol..i write songs with little energy and the chord progression very heavy..anyone care to help me with this?

 

[Kerr]

C G AM EM F G C This bloody progression be it MANDRAIN or ENGLISH .... got the most HIT SONG if you know how to put good melody line on it!

 

[ShredCow]

Ya know, from personal experience, the easiest/fastest (relative to each person) way is to cover songs from the genre you wish to emulate/learn.

When I was in MDC, I had to play Jazz songs, blues, pop... it was from there that I had to "bluff" my way thru, I was a rock guitarists all my life! It was like a crash course in Jazz/Blues but it worked out for me. I learned how to make it jazzier (in a pseudo way) or made it sound more bluesy.

Perhaps you should consider jamming with some people.

 

[Kengz]

try listening to more english balleds for a start...

quote]

^Couldn't have said it better.
But honestly, I do think most pop songs/ballads (regardless the language) run along the same line. You can listen to instrumentals of a English, Chinese and Korean pop song/ballad and u might not know which is which. It might not be a bad thing to try something new though.

 

[Paperback]

i read somewhere once

it said that your "1st language" is the language u hear in your dreams, the language that you or the people ard u are usin when u dream.

if u listen to chinese lovey-dovey ballard pop all da time, it's gonna be hard to write like say, an angst-filled 3-chord punk song, cos it jus wun work,
*shrug*
i dunno

 

[stevenson]

Hi

lol..i write songs with little energy and the chord progression very heavy..anyone care to help me with this?

What do u mean by chord progression very heavy? Actually, i suggest u use a simple progression like C G/B F G---Verse*2

C Am F C/E Dm F/G--chorus*2
end with---Am Am/F# Dm F/G Fm/C C
fine

This way is quite simple, just let ur thoughts come out naturally, don't keep stressing urself on making ur song special, but just let it naturally, the result will be gd....But organize and structure ur song 1st....JIA YOU!

 

[crozzfire]

thanks!

 

[muakz]

hi thanks y'all for the comments & advises.

the thing is though i do listen to some chinese songs (only selective ones which i like the melody but i dunno what the heck the song's about), most of the songs i listen to are english. even radio stations, i'm almost always tuned to wkrz or power 98. reason being, i'm a NON-CHINESE SPEAKING chinese .

so thats why i wonder why my pieces turn out that way!

anyway, will try some other chord progression and listen to more english rock. thanks!

 

[rottenramone]

..

and post it up on the OM thread yeah

 

[Indigo_blues]

if u leave out the 4th note in your melody lines it will tend to sound oriental. eg. F in C major key.

 

[stevenson]

oreintal

hmm....Well, actually how your melody is being ''catagorized'' not only based on what note eg. fa soh la ti do etc, or wad chords eg. Am , Em etc....These are rather important factors but i suppose most of us always leave out another thing which we can play arouund...that is our Tempo and Rhythm....For example, you take an oldies, ''Ye shang hai'' compare the rhythm patternwith songs like ''tong hua'' Or any other pop songs...Not to say to find a similar one, bcos it's impossible, but it's the Kind of pattern..the similarity and difference..
Like for similarity, compare LEEHOM's ''Kiss goodbye'' and ''Wei Yi'' They actually sound quite the same...and these 2 songs consist of almost the same chords...

 

[hub37]

song writing

hi from my experience on writing songs

1) if u want an English song, during ur melody creation stage,
hum with English lyrics to create ur melody. It doesn't have to make
lyrics sense but it's to help you create an "English feel" melody. You
can touch up the lyrics again when the melody is more firmed up.

2) Listen to more English ballads if that's what u want to write.
But seems like u have already done so. But it's not a strict rule, in fact u
can always listen to other types of music for more exposure.

3) Ocassionally u can use chords from some
songs to help you imagine more melodies.

 

[thor666]

It is important not to treat the melody like you would for Chinese characters, separately. Notice for Chinese characters, we seldom have any 2 syllable words etc, whereas it´s quite prevalent in English. Also, Chinese (and even more so for Japanese) have strong emphasis on certain words, while the English language is smoother with less words of strong emphasis. Bear these in mind when writing the melody.

 

[Cheez]

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