Beginner's Guide to Producing Leads and Melodies

Once a groove consisting of beats and bass has been locked down, adding accompanying leads can be a daunting next step for beginners. With so many different options available, it’s hard to know where to even begin! This series of courses goes from the very top, showing simple workflows for coming up with engaging rhythms and melodies, then moving onto more advanced areas of sound design and FX processing, to arm you with a wide array of techniques for making captivating leads.

This first course is designed as the perfect next step after our Bassline Fundamentals course and begins with the absolute essentials when it comes to rhythm and pitch, helping you understand what notes to play and the timing to play them with.

As leads can often be very simple whilst still being effective in a lot of styles of electronic music, the first module focuses mostly on timing, showing how a wide range of ideas can be conceived purely from a repeating sample with an interesting rhythm. This is developed later in the module by introducing various level adjustments when it comes to overall volume and also waveform envelope, all carried out by straight forward editing of samples directly on audio tracks.

The next module then moves away from one-note patterns and into the world of melodies, starting with a brief explanation of key signatures and scales, before a demonstration of 3 ideas for coming up with melodic phrases, which are put to practice in both the major and minor key. There is also a bonus lesson showing how to create your own arps, or arpeggios, which are rhythmic melodies that can be applied to both a main lead or background element with great effect, so a very useful concept to know about.

By the end of the course, you’ll be armed with a multitude of simple techniques for working with audio and MIDI to come up with a whole host of leads that can be added to electronic music of any style.

Enrolling on the course provides immediate access to the streamed tutorials, as well as the Ableton projects from the lessons and a selection of bonus lead samples to practice with - all you need to start making quality leads today!