Craft Avicii-style melodies

We pay tribute to the modern dance pioneer who, in his short time, set a standard for songwriting in the genre

The Swedish DJ producer Tim Bergling – aka Avicii – was one of those musicians whose careers were cut far too short. But he’ll always be remembered for crafting unforgettable melodies.

A lot can be learned by studying Avicii’s melodies and using his composition ideas in your own tracks. From his interviews, it seems he started with the melodic line first and crafted the rest of the production around the melody. This type of approach differs from the typical electronic music process of beginning with the rhythmic components. He would often use one melody and repeat it, and add variations or short stutter notes. He worked with melody forms like AAAA (one melody is repeated four times), AAAB (repeated three times then varied) and more.

Listen to Avicii’s melodies and see how many different melodic structures you can hear. Here, we’ll look at how to create the types of melodies and sounds Avicii used in SOS and Heaven.

1 Set the BPM in your DAW to 100, and create a MIDI track. Load up a soft synth and find a muted guitar-type sound (we’re using Nexus, and the Mute Guitars 2 preset). Create a MIDI clip that’s one bar in length and write a catchy one-bar melody. Try an ascending pattern, then have the pattern descend on the same notes.