The Song Builder s Toolbox Session 6. Discovering Melody in the Chords

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1 The Song Builder s Toolbox Session 6 Discovering Melody in the Chords By Lisa McCormick GettingStartedWithGuitar.net 2012 Lisa McCormick Music, LLC 1

2 In this session, we re going to talk about how you can come up with melody ideas, using chords as a helper. Now, melody is the line of music that your voice would be singing when you re singing the lyrics of your song. Now, for some people, melody ideas just sort of pop into their head, and that might happen to you too sometimes. And if they do, if you find yourself singing some little melody and you don t even know where it came from, record it and label it, because you might want to come back to it later. Even if you suspect that it might be a song someone else already wrote, keep track of it anyway. It may be that you can make some very minor adjustments to it to make it very much your own. But what if you don t have some wonderful snippet of melody going through your mind? How do you begin to generate ideas out of thin air? Here s a technique that I use and many other songwriters use as well. And in this technique, what we re going to do is allow the chords that we came up with in the chord section to sort of provide some guidance to what notes we might sing to go with those chords that are going to sound good. So if you recall from the session we did on chords and figuring out chords that sound good together, we ended up with a progression that went from C to A minor to E minor. 2

3 So what I m going to do to start to generate some melody ideas is this: I m going to go to my starting chord, the C, and any of those notes in that chord are likely candidates for melody. I could put my voice on any one of those. I think I ll pick this one. Now I m going to go to A minor, which is my second chord in that progression. And I want to see if that same note will work. Can I just hold that note with my voice as I change chords? Oh yeah, there is the simplest melody in the world, it s one note, but it actually sounds really pretty against those two chords! What happens if I keep holding onto that note as we go to the third chord in the progression of the E minor? I think it kind of clashes there. So what I want to do then is change the note. And the best candidates will come right out of that E minor chord itself. What if I went for that note? So again, back to the C. Well, that kind of begins to work, doesn t it? So again, in the spirit of experimentation, I m going to now take that very simple melody that goes mmm It s basically two notes. And I m going to see what happens if I can kind of come up with maybe some intermediary notes that go at the juncture of those chord changes. So what if I went mmm So I ve got my three original notes, or two original notes actually. 3

4 But then I ve put those two notes in between them. So far so good. Now, continuing in the spirit of experimentation, I want to see what happens if I take those notes that I figured out, that go like that...and what If I reversed them? Would that work with the chords? That does work with those chords! So now I have basically two melody lines. I ve got mmm and I have mmm What if now I alternated them? And again. Here s my original line, and here is that line upside down. So this is one technique for generating melody ideas of your own: Play a chord and choose one note from that chord that you can get your voice on. And then play the next chord in your progression. If that original note that your voice is singing continues to work with that chord, keep it there. If it doesn t, make your voice go to a note in the next chord. Through the process of experimentation, see if you can find any other notes that might help lead from one chord to the next. See what happens if you go at those notes that you found in a different order? What if you went low to high? Or high to low? Or started right in the middle and went to something else? 4

5 It s all about experimentation. And when you land on something you like, or even kind of like, record it, label it and come back to it. Maybe you ll get more ideas next time you check in on it. Now, for some homework: If you ve been playing around with chord progressions and writing them down, go to your notebook and get that page out now. Choose a chord progression that uses anywhere between two and four chords, you can pull something out of thin air right now, just pick a couple of chords. Play the first chord, note for note, go through all the strings in the chord, and find one note in there that you can get your voice on. Now play the second chord. Does that note that you re singing still work with that second chord, or does it need to be changed? You ll know by checking if the note that you re singing is actually the same as one of the notes in the second chord by going through that second chord string by string. If it s not there, try making your voice go to one of the notes that is there in the second chord. Now go to a third cord or back to the original chord. And keep going with this exercise. Can you continue to sing the note that you sang with the last chord with wherever you re headed next, or do you need to change it? 5

6 Can you experiment and come up with some variations? Can you find some intermediary notes that lead you from one place to another? Can you experiment and see what happens if you try those notes in a different order? What if you try alternating between one variation and another variation? What if you repeat one snippet of melody three times over and then the fourth time, do something different? Experiment, have fun, and when you land on things that you like, or even kind of like, record them. See if you can get your own melody stuck in you head and take it with you out into your day. You might find it magically begins to grow and turn into a song right before your eyes. NOTES: 6

Songwriting. Geniuses. for. 25 Tips for the Genius in Everyone. By Gene Burnett

Songwriting. Geniuses. for. 25 Tips for the Genius in Everyone. By Gene Burnett Songwriting for Geniuses 25 Tips for the Genius in Everyone By Gene Burnett Songwriting for Geniuses iii Introduction This little book is entitled Songwriting For Geniuses and is comprised of various tips