Writing Melodies
by Tim Thompson

Since my first article was focused on lyrics, I'll now concentrate on the next biggie in songwriting- melodies.

I look at a melody as one of the things that breathes life into a song, determines the mood, and takes a lyric and penetrates a person's soul. Wow, that was deep! In fact, a melody can turn a serious lyric into a comedy, and vice versa. Coming up with the right melody for your song is just as important as the lyric. When I moved to Nashville, I learned very quickly that lyrics are king here, but with the market gravitating towards pop, good melodies have become increasingly more important.

So how does one come up with good melodies? Well, that's the million-dollar question. Some people simply don't, which leads me to a very important point. I know many songwriters who only write lyrics and so need to co-write with knowledgeable musicians. I also know musicians who come up with great melodies and musical ideas, but are weak in lyric writing, so must collaborate with people who are strong lyrically. I'm of the opinion that you can learn the necessary skills in both areas, but one may come so easy to a person that they choose to rely on someone else for the other. There's nothing wrong with that. I like doing both, but I spend way more time writing lyrics because the music side is easiest for me.

If you are a person who is lyric-heavy and you need help with melodies, one thing you could do lyric is take guitar or piano lessons from a teacher who understands music theory. Certainly, not all instrumentalists or songwriters understand theory, but you don't have to go all-out and get a music degree either. I'm talking about understanding just enough music theory to get a handle on one thing, the diatonic major scale. You know, the thing you sang in grade school:

do re mi fa sol la ti do

If you only learned the diatonic scale in one key, C, and sat down with your guitar or piano, turned on a tape recorder, and started playing random notes while staying inside the scale, I think you'd surprise yourself at what you'd come up with.

Similar to the process I mentioned in the article about lyrics where you wrote down pages of random ideas related to your song title, let's try the same concept with melody writing. After learning the scale in C, learn the same diatonic major scale in another key, let's say Eb. Go through the same process of playing random notes while staying within the key. You'll find that things may not change much because you're just moving the "do re me fa" etc. to a different starting note and the intervals sound the same. BUT if you use both scales, C and Eb, together and play random notes, listen to what you come up with now. The two scales combined can inspire some interesting musical ideas. There are twelve major keys and twelve minor keys. You don't even have to learn all of them if your main ambition is to come up with great melodies.

After recording some random notes, listen back and try to sing some of your lyric lines using the melodies you just recorded to see how they sound together. One important thing I need to mention at this point is that the chords you use over your melody greatly affect the mood and tone or your song. That is why I've written a series of three articles; the third will focus on chord changes. But if you're ready to jump on it now and can't wait for the next article, take some music lessons and a lot of the forthcoming information will appear.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Do I need a melody first and then write lyrics to the melody, or do I need a good lyric to put music to? It's different for everyone AND it's different for every song. I've done it both ways. Most of the time, however, I tend to get a good song title or lyric idea that I want to express and start writing down random lyric ideas first. While I'm doing that, musical ideas start percolating in my head, which in turn helps me to solidify the mood I really want to capture. I may not have a solid melody in mind. It's more of a mood thing at this point. This concept will be more familiar to people who play an instrument, but for those who until now have only written lyrics, it's a skill you'll have to learn.

Learning an instrument can also give you some visual aid to the unseen melody. What I mean is this: Listen to a song you like. Sing the melody. Okay, so you can feel the notes in your vocal chords, and hear it with your ears, but you can't see it, the melody is floating around in the air. If you don't read music, or play an instrument, you have no visual component to help you figure out the nuts and bolts of the melody.

If you take that same melody and reproduce it on a guitar or piano, then you can analyze what's going on, like how it fits into a major scale, or why parts of it don't fit. You can then study it and try things like changing one note, or two notes to see how it affects the song as a whole. You may be thinking that this all sounds mechanical and unmusical. Well, in a way, it is, but I play an instrument and I use these techniques and for me, they spawn a lot of fresh ideas. If you're stuck, playing your melody on an instrument is a good way to break free.

One way to learn how to write good melodies is to listen to great songs on the radio. If you're serious about songwriting, and if you haven't been living under a rock for any portion of the past sixty years, then I shouldn't have to name even one song or artist to jog your memory. Think of some tunes you love and pay close attention to the melody. Does the melody sound complicated? Is it simple? You may have heard the expression "less is more." Well, that's true, but there is a range, simplicity to complicated, you want to stay within, depending on the type of song you're writing.

Here's a simple rule I try to follow: On the one extreme, if I'm telling a story with my lyric, I want the melody to be simple enough that it doesn't detract from my brilliant lyric. But "simple" doesn't mean uninteresting. Sometimes a simple melody is the hardest thing to come up with because you have fewer notes to work with. Try taking four notes and turning them into an interesting melody. On the other extreme, if I'm writing a jazz tune that contains lyrics, I have way more room to get adventurous with my melody. But even here, you have limits. Everything else falls somewhere between those two extremes.

At the beginning of this article, I said that the melody is "one of the things that breathes life into a song." The key word there is "one" of the things that performs that function. The mood of the lyric can steer the melody one way or the other. When I'm brainstorming, I get melody ideas from the thoughts I'm writing down. You have to let the lyric speak to you musically. Now that may sound like a load of philosophical drivel, but next time you're reading a novel or short story, notice the atmosphere and the mood it creates in your imagination. Hopefully, your lyric will do the same thing for you and help steer you into an appropriate melody that will make your lyric soar!

The mood of a song is also affected by whether you're in a major key or minor key. I'll get into this more in the next article about chord changes, but for now you can look at it two ways. Now this is not written in stone because there are exceptions to every rule, but if you want to express a happy emotion, stick to using a major key. If you want to create a sad one, use a minor key.

Consider the song "Smooth Operator" by Sade; It's in a minor key and has a very melancholy vibe to it. In the lyric, the guy she's singing about is a lying jerk, thus the title "Smooth Operator." I like the song. My point is that she uses a minor key to express what the dark lyric is saying.

On the other end of the emotional spectrum, consider the song "You May Be Right" by Billy Joel? It's in a major key. The lyric is tongue-in-cheek and edgy so the correspondingly edgy, fun melody works great. The key is to find the perfect marriage of lyric and melody. By using a simple technique like changing from a major to a minor key, you can point yourself in the right direction. Again, these are skills most people have to learn. You may not have to work on some of them as hard because they're more natural to you, so spend some time on your weaknesses to even things out. These concepts become helpful tools you can pull out when you start a new song, or simply get stuck.

There are many more subtleties to song-writing and in particular, writing melodies, than one can fit into a brief "how to" presentation but hopefully, as you work your way through this information you'll walk away with a few gems you can use.

See you right here next month,
Tim Thompson

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About the Author

As a professional musician working in a competitive industry, Tim Thompson has learned to play his strengths in more than one area of the business. Not only is he considered a guitar virtuoso and talented singer/songwriter, he's also a much sought after independent producer and session player.

Thompson grew up in a musical family in Minnesota and began playing piano at age nine, then trombone, and eventually picked up the guitar. Ambitious and focused, he practiced and challenged himself and by age fourteen was playing guitar professionally.

Since moving to Nashville in 1993 Tim has released six albums and produced records for artists such as Kerrville Folk Festival winner Mike Brandon, and finalist Nelda Sisk. Tim's newest release, Revved Up contains five new original compositions plus complex arrangements of "Josie", "Eleanor Rigby" and an entertaining version of "The Flintstones".

Learn more about Tim Thompson and his music on the web at: http://www.timthompsonguitar.com/