since I fail miserably with lyrics, and I make instrumentals, there;s nothing else for me to start with BUT the melody. I took a shine to contrapuntal melody technique. It allows me to start with a "bubble gum" melody, and slowly piece together the undermelody to go with it, or vice versa.... if its working decent, I end up with a complicated "dual melody". allowing for many options...
1) I can easily switch the undermelody and the over melody, and it sounds same but vastly dfferent.
2) f it comes off REAL well, I can play them in and out of time and get vastly dfferent sounds each iteration of it.
3) I can take either the overmelody OR the undermelody (or both) and melodically invert them...
4) when all these possiblilities are exhausted, I still have the "retrogrades"... doubling and quadrupling the "different, but closely related" different melodies...
5) all from the startng "bubble gum" melody.
6) later on, i can "pass" the undermelody or the overmelody, out of time of course, in the IV or the V chord (with respect to what chord I'm IN at the time...) theu the system. when you add i the melodic inversion and retrogrades of THAT, you get literally millions of possibilities to pick thru so that no two passages sound alike, though they are all based on the same simple bubble gum melody...
PS - I dont know why, but, its taght to start with the underelody, as I call it... the cantus firmus, I wanna remember... and to buld UP the overmelody from that. For some weird reason, I do better starting with the overmelody (bubble gum simple melody...) then getting the bass off of that.
also, just for sh!ts and giggles, the undermelody can be used handily as a bass line... and ts guaranteed to be completey different from the main higher melody you "hear", yet mesh perfectly.
the main thrust of making a melody system this way, is that you get zillions of options to try out, all from the starting point. note that "chords" are formed this way by PASSING individual tones to make portions of chords, rather than just hammering away at the basic chord structure...
for me, it seems to work best in pent minor scale.
this is hardly a "soul less" cookie cutter convention, whereby any "rules" are followed... rather, it opens the door suddenly to millions of possibilities to pick from, by EAR by the way, which are most pleasing. SOME of the permututaions sound quiet, soft, jarring, slightly scary... winding up or winding down... you just have to move the stuff around with mouse clicks and let your ear let you know which to snag up and make use of... by hte time you are stacking the various chord lines (I, IV, sometimes V...) you get numerous instances of major, minor, diminished, etc etc... chords. SOme at regular intervals, some at quite novel timing points...
then, yet another possibility once the system is seeming to bear fruit, I can try different cadences for the main start out...
another trick to try is to just force yourself to use an unfamiliar scale you normally dont use. or to pick a KEY you almost never try out... heck, I usually start with teh bubble gum melody, then try it out in C#, D, etc etc... until one strikes my fancy, then go from there... if I want to be weird, I will do DOWN instead searching, rendering me a base key I would optherwise rarely use.
but, that contrapuntal thing I use... GOD, i could take the same exact 4 or 5 measure "bubble gum" one finger melody... and write 2 pieces from it, from scratch, and both sound like they were written on different continents...