How do you keep your melodies simple enough and when are they too boring?

[u/branntweinn]

I've been producing for about 8 months now and I learned the basics of music theory and have been specializing on making better drums in the past months. I mostly produce trap beats, my main inspirations are yung lean, Pierre Bourne, playboi carti and souly (from Germany). Now my problem is, that I think my melodies right now are either too simple and boring or too complicated with too much stuff going on. i especially struggle with making hard beats like for example on whole Lotta Red. So my question now is how do you create melodies and chords that sound interesting and not boring but aren't too "crowded", so the artist still has space to work with.

[u/Maleficent_Use_2832]

My advice would be to focus less on the melody and focus more on the beat as a whole. A lot of times the melody can be boring by itself, but with drums it can be a lot better. It's what Pi'erre does a lot, where he has a melody that doesn't change much, but the drums are constantly changing.

If your melodies "have too much stuff going on at once", try seperating stuff and have them play at different times.

[u/50_Hertz]

It has taken me years to realize that I was usually overdoing it. Simple melodies with unique texture and some hard drums will take you pretty far.

[u/boombapdame → u/50_Hertz]

I need examples of simple melo’s with unique texture

[u/50_Hertz → u/boombapdame]

You can make a simple melody sound pretty cool playing around with some vst synths and effects and some layering. For inspiration just go on YouTube and search "type beat" and then go to your search filters and select - most viewed, videos, last month or within the last year and then listen to them and try and recreate the ones you like. You know, "steal like an artist"

[u/50_Hertz → u/boombapdame]

Or if you make boom bap beats, just use samples. Just chop up old jazz or soul records. You can download them, use a free website like Moises AI to remove the drums. Then put them in either your sampler or the sample utility in your DAW. All the hip hop legends like DJ Premier, 9th Wonder, RZA, etc. used an MPC sampler with 16 mb of memory and floppy disks. Now it is 2025 there are countless ways to recreate this.

[u/LoopMirage]

There is no correct answer but focus on whole beat as a composition. Thats what I do myself for minimal loopy hypnotic electronic idm stuff.

I try to limit my own stuff to bare minimum a lot of times. I use 3-7 sounds for my whole beat or whatever I'm producing. Gives you enough to be interesting without being overwhelming.

Just focus on a larger loop of the track. Like Bar to Bar or 4 bars to 4 bars. That should help you get a better idea of whats interesting and whats crowded.

And as others have recommended, the textures.

[u/CreativeQuests]

You can use acapellas and test how everything fits. End of the day it comes down to your own taste as a rap listener.

[u/DjakeToBreak000]

Use aca pellas or just your gut tbh. Sooner or later you’ll be able to tell when something is too much

[u/Oreecle]

Trial and error. After a while you will start to know. Less is more try and visualise the finished song

[u/Hesam_rmn]

I use one base note and two or three higher notes and to make my sample more interesting I use silent and a sharp note

[u/Ok-Accountant6028]

Hmm along or sing along random words , you’ll end up finding melodies like that or I do personally.