and these tunings add a lot to his vibe and atmosphere and why he sounds unique imo
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Also think about trackers or even earlier computer derived music, notes selected by typing code, all the various tricks to make something that undoubtedly is music, yet not a note “played” or a score required.
It is all very interesting to me, and so is Jimi Hendrix making his guitar do what he did.
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I agree with all this but still were supposed to be talking about getting melodies into midi…
Standard midi is 12 note western scale… 
I just don’t see how music school grad vs technonaut came into play… 
#StopTheWar
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To be fair I thought we were talking about melody in general, and definitely no war from my side, I’m pointing out that in the example of Aphex Twin and his use of melodies there is no single approach or even a specific formula or working method, and that is what makes him for me so interesting, because I share a lot of those interests.
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No offense, but did you read the original post?
And you know me by now, I love everyone here, it’s all good… 
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I also think that listening is one of the most important skills. In electronic music, traditional music (to put life into notes), playing together, …
One step further: If you know what you like in what you‘re listening to, you can use machines to automate the boring stuff. For instance, I like having slight variations in drums after every 8 bars —> random hold LFO. Doesn‘t sound good? Retrig the LFO. More focus on listening and design, less on tedious basics.
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None taken, I did read the OP, and I was just responding to the unfolding conversation 
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Word… Communication has been strange for me and others I know the last few day, seems like on nauts too… Whatever… I’m sure I’m getting carried away one way or another in my own posts… I’m actually sick with a cold right now too, sure it doesn’t help…
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To put it in a nutshell the OP was asking about how to get ideas from head into midi, then posted Aphex as example, then the conversation went into playing and how the use of technology might possibly hinder music (I’m paraphrasing somewhat) so my responses were that Aphex isn’t a player (from the horses mouth in many interviews) or into music theory (again in interviews) and so I was responding to those points, and that there are many ways to approach, all good
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Alternate scales are awesome, It’s tricky to get alternate scales into hardware midi without a daw, on elektrons you’d have to plock a steady lfo offset to tun, or use alternatively pitched samples I guess… You don’t even need to use any scale to make cool music, a neat thing about synths…
My stopthewar hashtag was all in good fun, not meant at anyone just that techies and trad musicians should get along… I feel I’m overposting… Haha, carry on…
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Would be nice to just jam together to a melody after all the weird but interesting discussion in this thread.
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Jam Origin Midi guitar VST was probably one of the best things I ever bought for the guitar.
It’s VST but literally the most flawless pholyphonic guitar to midi ive ever heard without needing a pickup or anything extra, just plug in
Honestly, try the demo, it’s insane.
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Enjoyed reading this discussion - Thanks all. And Aphex is my fave.
I’m not a confident melody writer so I resort to a few tricks (such as ableton’s convert harmony to midi). It’s fun to come at a nice melody through a back door. It feels like I’m cheating but I prefer to think of as hacking.
These conversations remind me of a great documentary called “Tim’s Vermeer”. It was thought that the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer had divine skill, but it might be that he was using really clever techniques with lenses to get his paintings looking so realistic. This makes my mom respect him less, but it makes me love him.
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It is definitely not cheating.
I know musicians who think drum machines and loopers are cheating, it is bit like saying photography or DJing isn’t an artform, or movies are not as “good” as theatre, daft.
Funny fact: In the 80’s the musicians union wanted to ban synths and drum machines
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If you get a chance give Yamaha’s QY-series a try. They have a lot of tricks up their sleeves. The groove templates on them introduce rhythm/velocity/groove -oriented tricks that can help you on getting new ideas from the same notes and there’s a lot of other, more melodic tricks on them.
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Fingerbib!!! One of my favorites ever since I bought this cd when it came out and like OP one that I admire melodically. So good call 
Here’s an exercise I do, you can of course change any of the specifics to your taste.
- Take my DT hook it up to two (or more) synths or use 2 or more looped single cycle waveforms in chromatic mode.
- Write a 64 trig melody line, I usually write in live recording not grid
- Write a second melody on another track
- Listen to what I’ve recorded, if I don’t like it, scrub it and start one or both over, I try not to be too precious here
- When I do like something say about 75% or more I start looking at where the notes are falling on the source page - Oh I have an E on track 9 over a C on track 10, etc.
- Start looking for specific places I don’t like what’s happening and try to figure out why - do I have an inhamonic relationship? Too predictable harmonic relationship? I’d like to add more of a “walking” feel from one note to another - looking at the other melody line what notes make sense to get me there? Do I want it to feel resolved or not? Tweak the notes in grid rec mode as it plays to get a feel for what different notes do each time around
- Copy that to a new pattern and scrub one track or parts and try extending or transitioning from pattern A to pattern B
Read some wikipedia articles on scales and chord theory (chords will help you understand melody, I believe)
Pick limited # of notes (say, 4: C E F# G) and just use those and see what you can come up with
Also do stupid crap like lay down a C note ever other trig and just put a C Maj scale over it and listen now a C Min, etc.
Or conversely keep the same scale and put a repeating C on trigs 1-16 and a G on 17-32, etc…
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A module by Mutable Instruments called Marbles can explore melodic variations from a single melody. Haven’t tried it yet but it is highly regarded.
Some very clever logic in there.
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My OP was asking about people’s approaches to exploring a short melodic phrase. It wasn’t about getting it to MIDI. I did mean playing keys by way of exploration and then posted an example of an artist who definitely did not play keys
Every opinion about how to approach music making is a perfectly valid one as there is no right or wrong way to make music (and anyone who says otherwise makes me question their relationship to music). A human written melody that follows textbook rules of how to write a melody will probably sound as interesting as an AI written one. On the other hand, using something as wickedly smart as Marbles with little engagement (with other modules, user ect) will probably sound about as interesting as cutting up notes in a scale and throwing them all over the floor: maybe interesting, probably not beautiful (no disrespect to Mutable, that module is absolutely incredible, I use it all the time in VCV).
Learning harmonic relationships is just one other tool to resort to as much as using an arp or piano roll.
So forgive me for not being clear that I was more interested in the exploration via music theory and keys playing (the tech talk was kind of OT). That absolutely does not discount any other method for writing a melody.
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This is a really good idea. I should take advantage of my OT and synths and explore counterpoint this way. I usually come up with melody and bass and chords separately and then sequence them. I’ll try starting from two of the same phrases. Thanks.
I know this idea and I’ve watched / listened to people talk about it but I never get the feeling of “tension” and “resolution” from this or that chord. I’ll have to look more into it.