Melodies

[Krystof01]

How do you write your melodies, on guitar, on piano, what rules do you try and stick to?

I find writing good melodies usually the hardest part of songwriting-what do you think?

[Shana]

I think most ppl have a specific style they tend to stay with. Its almost like you can recognize some guy (or girl's ) song right away cuz they tend to fall back on the same kinda music whether they like it or not.
It gets hard working out an original tune. So many times i hear someone elses song and im like "damn, why didnt i compose that.."
I mean how many combinations can there be for the same 8 notes? I tend to worry one day we'll run out of tunes.

I personaly try to work out different chord progressions and then add a funky chord into the pattern to add some flavor and distinction. Thats where my chord handbook jumps in. Sometimes I "borrow" a few different tunes ive heard and throw 'em together . I mean theres enough to go around right?
I find that music is pretty flexible and 10 ppl can make 100 different melodies with the same 4 chords.

It doesnt take a brain surgeon.
Shana

[migo]

I've created melodies in many different situations. One example: At home, I had my computer on a 70s internet radio station. I went to take a shower. The water is running, I couldn't recognize the song because I couldn't make out the melody. The only thing I could hear loud & clear were the bass & the beat. So I began to make up a melody based on these two predominant musical elements. When the song was done, I ran out of the shower, all wet and lucky I was the only one home, I raced to my 16 tracker & recorded the damn thing before I forgot it.

Personally, and when it doesn't come to me out of nowhere, in the middle of the night, after a dream, etc., I'm the kind of guy who likes to write a song/melody by experimenting with chords and progessions and singing to them. BTW, I sing falsetto.

And I love to experiment with 3 part harmonies. Listen to Crosby/Stills/Nash's "Carry On" from the album "Deja vu" and you get what I mean.

[istyle]

i like to share my experience
i dunno if i'm gifted or not maybe i can say i'm cursed!
cos melodies comes to my head all the time
mostly at night when i had to sleep i had to situp and wrote them down or recorded it out of my head so i could sleep
but this thing alone doesn't make a great melody
i also spent a good deal of time figuring out great melodies in great songs
it's sure worth it
my advice is learn them all until it becomes your second nature then when you have inspiration try to create sth of your own personality
whether it's your habit your taste....
hear some of my music at www.mp3.com/istyle
hope this is not a shameless promotion hahahaha

[Ron Galicia]

I guarantee this method will give you a bunch of melodies, some of them original and good too. It's painful though.

Go on a long drive (something on the magnitude of San Francisco to Chicago) all by yourself in a car with no radio, CD player, or tape deck, with at most 4 hours sleep per day.

During several long hours of isolation from "organized" sound your drowsy mind will start to organize something from the drone of car sounds, an occasional ambient squeak, etc.

The hard part is remembering the cool melodies long enough to write them down or record them. Oh, and not falling asleep and ending up in a ditch is pretty important too.

[Krystof01]

Ron-just because you have a tough time and have to survive on four hours don't take it out on us-only joking.

I'm certainly up for new ideas to try and capture some fresh thoughts to write some melodies.

How did you find this method out-did your girlfriend leave you (=by yourself) and had your car just been done over (=no radio/CD player).

Oh-I'd love to do the actual journey of San Fransisco to Chicago-all I'd need is a ten hour plane journey from England.

Seriously-thanks for the advice.

[Ron Galicia]

Hey, I said it was a painful method.

Coming up with melodies wasn't why I did those drives. (There were several of those drives, actually.) This was back at a time when I couldn't afford more than the most basic Geo Metro and I had to get to internships in Chicago. I couldn't afford to fly, or to even stop over in any motels during the drive. So I would park on the shoulder and sleep. Something would always scare me awake before I could get more than 4 hours sleep, so I'd move on.

Oh, and the drive doesn't have to be between those two specific cities, just something that long.

Seriously, I find the sound isolation thing works for me a lot. Try not listening to any radio, TV, tapes, CDs, etc. for a week or two. (It's easy for me since I have bad TV reception, have no car radio still, have a really quiet workplace, and have a really boring non-nightclubbing life.) You might find melodies, actually good and original ones, forming in your thoughts after a while.

[dragonworks]

99% of the time I will have the progressions
written and the lyrics rolling around falling
here and there but the melodies seem to come
naturally vocally. I can usually hear it in
my head and sing it. I don't think I ever worked a melody line out on an instrument in
35 years. I always work the melody line out
vocally and if the lyrics dont fit exactly I give them a little twist here or there and
slide em on in somehow and it all seems to work out pretty good, except for the corny ones, they get thrown out by the by.

[Tucci]

One way to get a good melody is to start by creating a melody line first. Go note by note - no chords until your melody is done. If your melody is good by itself chords will enhance it. Gregorian chant contains the most incredibly beautiful and haunting melodies ever written and they are unaccompanied by chords. I would encourage everyone to check out some gregorian chant.

But yeah, do your melody, then chords. Your melody will always be strong this way.

Tucci

[Krystof01]

Hey Ron-I hope that the pain is worth it. Just think all the suffering might be worth it in the long run, when you have your top down on your convertable with music blaring out as you've just scored some top ten hits. you can look back and laugh-good luck.

By the way how can you not listen to music for a week or two. I get so pissed off if I can't play on my guitar each day at least for an hour or two-radio's aren't that expensive.

[Ron Galicia]

Hey Krystof, that probably explains why I haven't been able to come up with melodies I like recently. I started playing guitar again very late last year after having not touched a guitar for almost 10 years. (Long story, mostly grad school, no prison.) Man, the more I think about it, the more it's a bummer of a tradeoff.

[Krystof01]

Hey Ron, here's what do do. Quit your job, buy yourself some recording gear, have some self belief and get some tracks put down, make some money and buy yourself a radio, a new car and continue to play.

[C. Lewis]

Since my son was born, I've found all these shiny plastic objects around my house that play various lullabies; they have slowly crept into my brain again. In an effort to debrief myself, I've sampled a bunch of these toys and done two things:

(a) played the samples backwards; and
(b) chopped, cut, spliced chunks of the riffs.

And then there's a combination of both methods. But my point is this: I've constructed some cool ass new melodies using William Burroughsish cut up methods. Sometimes it's trippy, other times so seemless that you create something that sounds strangely familiar.

[KaBudokan]

A buddy/collaborator of mine yelled at me and told me NEVER to create a melody with a guitar. It'll end up sounding like the blues scale or some mode or something crappy like that. The other possibility is that it will simply follow the chords, root, 3rd, 5th, etc. He yelled at me after I wrote a song that sounded to him like "mountain hippy music," as he calls it. Just totally uninteresting melody that I hadn't given any thought to. He was right, the nelody was very boring.

He made me listen to nothing but Beatles and Elvis Costello for two weeks. Actually, it worked. Redid the melody and it was cool.

Originally I had said I was going to try to come up with some good harmonies to spice it up, to which he replied, and I'll never forget this: "Putting harmonies on a lame melody is like putting lipstick on a cow."

Classic. lol

[Tucci]

That is classic. True too.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what makes a melody good and why some people can just create incredible ones time and again.

I think Paul McCartney has come up with more catchy and beautiful melodies than anyone on the planet. Eleanor Rigby, Michelle, Yesterday, etc. etc...

Billy Joel and Elton John are also good at melodies. Now both Billy Joel and Elton John are piano players. Paul McCartney was also pretty dang good on the piano and did a lot of writing on it. I have found that the melodies I come up with on the piano are generally better than the ones I come up with on the guitar - but I am not sure why.

Tucci

[kmar]

Like Dragon, I have never searched for a melody on an instrument. It usually slaps me upside da head when I'm not even trying to write. I almost always use it for the chorus. In the morning, after 2 cups of java, I get my best hooky melodies. It usually comes WITH lyrics. Then I have to work on a new melody for the verses, as well as lyrics to tie the thing together.

Some of my best songs are the ones that come fast. I keep a mini-recorder with me when I can, to get it on tape accapella (sp?).

If I remember correctly, Graham Nash wrote "Just A Song..." on a 15 minute trip to the airport. I think David Crosby challenged him to come up with a song on a flight. It kinda paid off...