Melody/Chords

[rapedbyape]

I'm looking for some advice/pointers, if anyone thinks they can help. The only songs I write seem to end up with a melody that follows the roots notes of the chords. For example, if I took a four-bar chord progression of G C D E, the melody would be a bar of G, then C, then D, then E. There's normally a couple of variations, but I don't seem to be able to write songs starting with a melody and then working out a chord progression from it. Has anyone else had this problem? It's making things rather tedious.

 

[blarg]

I'm not quite sure what you mean, I'm assuming you mean that either you come up with like whole notes of G in a 4/4 measure of G chord, either that or you have a rhythm in which all of the notes contain G. If that's the case, try taking you're rhythm that you have, and just make it a different pitch. For instance, if you have a 4/4 song with the rhythm as quarter quarter eigth eight quarter, and they're all G, try doing the same rhythm, but instead just do like G D B B D, basically, just take the rhythm and try to assign a different pitch value, see what you get out of that.

 

[famous beagle]

I'm looking for some advice/pointers, if anyone thinks they can help. The only songs I write seem to end up with a melody that follows the roots notes of the chords. For example, if I took a four-bar chord progression of G C D E, the melody would be a bar of G, then C, then D, then E. There's normally a couple of variations, but I don't seem to be able to write songs starting with a melody and then working out a chord progression from it. Has anyone else had this problem? It's making things rather tedious.

1) Try singing the same note and changing to a chord that has that note in it, so you can hear how different intervals sound against the chords.

For example, over the chords: Em, C, A, C, sing the note E. You'll be singing the root of Em, the major 3rd of C, and the 5th of A.

2) Then try the opposite, like what blarg said. Sing different chord tones on each chord.

For example, over a C chord, sing E (major 3rd) for a half note, G (5th) for a half note, C (root) for a half note, and maybe D for a half note (9th).

Try this exercise: (all notes are half notes)

Over C chord: E - up to G - up to C - up to D - up to
over Fmaj7 chord: E - down to D - down to
over Am chord: C

Also, try reharmonizing some of your songs. For instance, if you have a song where the melody goes (low to high): G-C-D-E like you said, try putting different chords behind them. You might try these chords: C-F-G-A. Or try starting the melodic phrase at a different spot. Maybe instead of the melody going G-C-D-E, make the E the first note and make the melody E-G-C-D (we just moved the E from the end to the beginning). Now try that melody with the new chords (adjusted like the melody) A-C-F-G.

Also, try listening to the melody by itself (without the chords and listen for tendencies that it might have. When I played that new melody (E-G-C-D) for instance, it sounded to me like the C note wanted to resolve down to B over the G chord, instead of moving up to D. So that created a new melody of E-G-C-B over the A-C-F-G chords, where the notes function as 5th, 3rd, 5th, 3rd.

Finally, try analyzing some songs that you like and see what's going on with their chord/melody relationships.

Hope this helps. Good luck.