I'm guitarist and singer....help

[Jtrain42]

I'm a guitarist and also lead singer. the problem is my voice thinks like a guitar, so i tend on repeating the melody line in my vocals, which is not what i want to do, but the thing is that on this one song the guitar melody is so hooky that i can't get it out of my head, and when i sing it sounds exactly like it. But i can't use the guitar melody for the vocal melody because it doesn't sound right what should i do?

[HogansHiro]

I used to have a song like that...my chorus melody was really predictable and was quite monotone but it was what fit perfect with the guitar. I went back in and recorded harmony vocals and made a wall of sound that just mixed w/ the melody to the point that it was the main part of the chorus and the old melody wasn't discernable as the main part...now all four parts were the chorus. kinda hard to explain, but i would definately look at harmonizing.

kinda like simon and garfunkel....at certain times in their songs you can't really tell who was the melody and who was the harmony. it was both equally important to making the sound (goofy analogy, but works)

[qwincy]

Jtrain, I've had that problem many times. My rule is that if the melody is really good and memorable, the vocal wins it and I find something (hopefully) complementary for the guitar to do. I am a guitar player first and foremost, but if there is one thing I know it's that the vocal is the most important part of the song. By a lot.

I think it also helps the creativity of the songwriting process if at least some of the vocal melody was written by another means, because it's not necessarily something you would ordinarily sing.