7 Tips on creating Melody for your song

Hi, ya'll

It was amazing to hear the positive responses from my followers about the tips and tricks they got from my last blog, 7 tips on lyric writing. As songwriters and musicians, they truly benefit from it.

How about you? You probably had fun with the exercises and created a few stories by now. I hope you were also able to use them to re-arrange them into parts of song like lyrics.
If not, no problem whatsoever. Just comment below this blog here on the website. Maybe we can connect and find out together if we can make section one work better for you.

Remember 1 thing while you are working on your skills:
​Rome wasn't build in 1 day.

It is important to take the time to learn the new skill(s) and play with them. Enjoy it and make mistakes, without getting stressed about it. Instead, have a laugh. You are going to make many more, so keep on going.
(I've been there, still get to the point of making new mistakes. And do not stop going into new mistakes. Hey, for what I know, making these blogs might be a mistake. ;-) )

Before we dive in, I would like you to realize this. There are way more techniques that come in to really using melodies in your songs, than the 7 I 'm going to give you.
​It is not my intent to write all of them, but just a few unique ones to help you with. To play around with and explore different possibility's with those tips.

Tip 1 on Melody:
find emotion within one note

Start with knowing the feel of 1 note and try to find its emotion. (use the picture below)
Can one single note evoke an emotion with you? Even faintly, a hint of doubt on a yes or no answer?

You can use your DAW, your VSTi or a standalone VSTi, or something else that can represent a piano surface. Yes, a real piano will do fine. ;-) Find the first note from the chart.
(I assume you know where the note is on a piano. If not, just let me know, and I'll get you some more explanation on how this works in music)

Play 1 of the notes. Just choose 1. What is the first emotion that you feel when playing this note? And it doesn't matter if you can't find any emotion at first? Nope!
Repeat playing this first note a few times. Does it give you an emotion now? No? That's okay. After doing this a few times, maybe take a new note from the picture and repeat the exercise. It is truly challenging to do with only one note to play. I can only assume you really want to know what emotion this should be. When you have joined my newsletter, it will be answered in there. If not, you can join my newsletter for the answer. (you can always unsubscribe anytime)

But if you would like to figure it out by yourself, then keep on playing the notes.
BonusTIP: play different rhythmic and dynamic variations. A few quickly played short notes, softly, and a few quickly played short notes loud. Same with buildup in volume or from loud to softer. Long notes with the different variations. And so on. Just have fun with this.
​

Tip 2 on Melody:
develop musical feel by combining two notes

Start playing a root note and get familiar with the emotions that are made by the steps. (use picture below for the example steps)
In a while you start knowing these emotions and almost instantly give the right musical feel to a melody line and the story you want to bring to the listener. Start without knowing the feel and note steps between a first note and a second note, by using this chart. In the newsletter I added a chart that show some emotions and put them with the interval note. We start from root note C. You can start with every other note, but the steps remain the same distance.

There is a possible stepped sequence, playing one note at the time. For example, the C (root note) and the E. (Major third)
Or you play the second note after the first, and hold both until they are silent.
Try to describe what emotions you feel when these steps are played. Write it down and keep on playing with all the steps. This is important to learn too. And it helps you also to connect the dots on Chords in the next blog section.
I'll send a picture with examples in my newsletter. Join my newsletter to get these examples. 

Tip 3 on Melody:
creative discoveries by researching your favorite songs

Listen to the songs you really like and discover the different melody lines, by playing the melody on an instrument.
But I do not have an instrument. Yes you do, even your phone is an instrument in these modern times. There are many apps out there, that are free, and you can play piano or even guitar on them. Start playing on them and figure out the melodies at the same time.

Back to figuring out the melody of a song. When you start with the vocals, you can figure out the emotion from the lyrics too.

But do they always tell the same story as the melody line of the vocals?
Figure this out, and maybe you'll find the answer confusing. I am going to let you dig in here, because I do not know which song you'll choose.
​
You can put a comment below the blog and tell me what you have discovered. And a link to the song, so all participants can have a listen and see if your findings are the same as theirs. And let me remind you on 1 thing here. We can all discover something different, and that makes all findings right. There is no wrong when it comes to creativity and interpretation of art. Ow, and can you now sing or humm the melody, without using the lyrics? I'll go more in to dept here in a later TIP, so keep on reading. :-D
​

Tip 4 on Melody:
making up your own melodies

A bit of the same as Tip3, but with a bit of a twist. Make up a melody line by humming a few notes. I know you can imagine a few notes by just humming, or whistling. Figure these out on an instrument and write down the emotions along the way. There are no limits on what you create, you can always use it in some way or another. Do you need to keep everything you come up with? That is up to you. I would keep as much as possible. Record it on my phone or play it in a DAW. Remembering might be a bit of a stretch here, but hey!
Go for it! Let me not hold you back by saying you can't do things. You decide what works best for you. Always. :-D

"YOU just made a melody line with the lyrics YOU wrote, and it was 100% right. Because YOU made it. YOU created it from scratch. Nobody but YOU. I say High Five all around. YOU made YOUR first song part. Everything else, suck it!  :-D"

Tip 5 on Melody:
creating melody lines by playing with speech melody

Read back your written story/ lyrics that you wrote as an exercise in my first section blog on Lyrics. Record it on your phone and play it back. You will now hear a bit of a melody. When you read it out loud, you will almost instantly use a speech melody. That could be your starting point. Then start singing it a bit more, every time you repeat a part of your story. You can start with one sentence, maybe the first one you have written down.

After you feel it could pass as 'a bit of singing', (your 'inner-critic' says so) you're on the right track. Keep at it, you are doing this. It doesn't matter if you have a feeling of failure of hitting the same melody and hear that you go a bit off-key. Keep going with this.
Now add the second line of your lyrics. Keep it in the same melody line as the first one. Repeat those lines a few times. And now you take a break. You did it. You made 2 melody lines for your lyrics.
Oh ooooh!!!! Here comes your 'inner-critic' with all things that went wrong!
You sang out of key, no stable melodies in both sentences, the words didn't rhyme, and so on, and so on........

Hey, snap out of this!
YOU just made a melody line with the lyrics YOU wrote, and it was 100% right. Because YOU made it. YOU created it from scratch. Nobody but YOU. I say High Five all around. YOU made YOUR first song part. Everything else, suck it! :-D

Come on, you are hot and ready. Keep going if you can. What can you add on the third lyric line? Maybe use the first melody, but make it slightly different. The listener get drawn back into the song when you do that. And finish the fourth lyric line with the same melody from the first 2. Now you have completed a verse, or a chorus or whatever part of the song, you have these lyrics planned for. Victory again, my friend! Well done!

Keep it going while you're on a hot streak! Find new melodies for new parts of the song lyrics. And when you haven't got any more parts written down, because I didn't explain 'you should continue writing' in my blog on lyrics, nor mention it in my earlier newsletter, I will give you permission to keep on writing lyrics and new parts for this or any other song.
(like you needed that permission... ;-) )

Another lesson lies in this is.

“Never let anyone slow your creativity down, certainly when you feel the excitement of creating anything”.
When you are in a state of flow, keep at it. And start creating new things when these come up spontaneously. You can always go back to what you have done, and make the creation start up from where you stopped last time. We all need some breaks, food, drinks and sleep at some point in a day. And our loved ones would like it too, when you take time to spent with them. And when they do not want you around, it will be a possible subject to write songs about. ;-)

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Tip 6 on Melody:
expanding melody lines

After you have recorded a melody line on your device. Start finding some second and third melody lines. They can be in a higher pitch, or a lower pitch. You can use your imagination. You can use it as a choir or backing vocals. As a bass line, as an arpegiated piano or synthesizer line. Make your own if you can, but you can start from one in a synth and remake it. It helps you figure out the Synths Arpeggiator, that are useful for other one's and for knowing a bit more about rhythm and how to use it.

WARNING. Do not take to much time with this, because you are writing melodies. In my blog on Sounds, I will do a deeper dive in this. I know, it is fun to play around with and you'll get the chance. All in good time. :-D

A hook for the instruments and a recognizable melody that returns from time to time in a song. In the next blog about chord progression, playing around with this, can help you figure out what chords would fit best in the song. But sometimes it can be a struggle to make it fit, and you might need to revise what you thought would be great. But that is something for the next blog.

Tip 7 on Melody:
finding instruments

Start making instrument sounds with your voice, and make melody lines for those. I give some examples and hope you will understand what I am aiming at:
Boom chicka Wowwah!
I bet you are hearing a sort of Wah guitar with reading that line.

Boom ----- Tah, Boom – Tah! Boom ----- Tah, Boom – Tah!
Are you now beatboxing?

I have seen a lot of people mimicking instruments or pieces of how instruments should sound. Telling the guitar-player how the solo must sound, without using the proper terminology.
'Yeah man, you should do: 
WhieieieieiehhhWhieieieiewhieiehwwwww
at that part of you solo'.

​​Please leave a comment if you never experienced anything like that. Better yet, leave a comment on what occasion you did experience that.

I have seen Memes on Social Media, that have some old song lyrics in them, and when I start reading those, I started singing the melody line instantly, while I was reading them. Did you have a song or instrument, that could do that to you? When you love listening to music, all of these can happen when a song comes along, that brings back a memory from before. This will help you too, with creating new melodies.
You can also find it useful to find the right instruments for your song, or the ones that should have a lead role in the song. But that will be a topic in a blog section in the future.

Bonus tip:
tonal range

When you play around with all the tips, you will get familiar with the different emotions of a one note you choose or steps between the sounds two notes can produce.
By challenging yourself to make more different melodies, through combining these tips, you are able to make more and more interesting melodies. Keep making instrument sounds with your voice, so you can create different melody lines. Don't try to use an instrument right away. I know this is tempting, but it will limit you when you are without an instrument. And yes, I've been there, stubborn and all :-). So feel free to explore all of these options for yourself. You also need to be stubborn to open your creativity. Just be alert when it starts to block your flow.

It's perfect to allow yourself to sing the steps a bit off-key at first, or even all the time. I still do that, but you know, I have an excuse: I am not a skilled singer ;-). Anyway, just to let you know: the skilled singers I work with all benefit from it.

However, the most important thing here is to enjoy doing this, and I do! . . It is not the goal (yet) to make you do all of this in the right pitch or key. The exercises of this blog are just to get the hang of making up melody lines.

It can be challenging. However, to only make a melody go up in tonal range. Or only go down. Maybe at one point go down, then up and back down again. Just see where it goes.

What happens when you take a random scale, and skip a note every step all the time.
Example: C Major scale upwards
C – D – E – F – G – A – B – C
Start with the upwards steps, but skipping 1 note from the scale until you are back at a C.
C – E – G – B – D – F – A – C
The next example could be starting from C upwards 4 steps with skipping one, but coming down after the fourth note in the sequence, but again starting the first note on a C that is the nearest.
C – E – G – B – C – A – F – D

Make your imagination work with all kinds of sequences. If you are playing, you'll find yourself already adding rhythm to the melodies, without paying attention to the outcome.
Your vocal melody, or just an instrument melody could have triggered it. Or because your unconsciousness knows music better, and to make something really feel like music, it just adds rhythm to it.
Cool huh?!?

"And it might be that your subconsciousness is trying to make you 'run from the challenge'. Give it a go, and if you fail at it, pick it up again in the next practice. I have plenty of experience, ask my girlfriend ;-).

Now go and start using these tips to your advantage. If one tip, didn't give you a feel of 'Yeah', but more a 'Mweh', take that one first. It will be a challenging one to integrate to your skill set, but I know you will surprise yourself if you persist. And it might be that your subconsciousness is trying to make you 'run from the challenge'. Give it a go, and if you fail at it, pick it up again in the next practice. I have plenty of experience, ask my girlfriend ;-).

Sometimes we just need a bit of a challenge, to overcome getting bored with the ease of getting everything done. No real effort was needed to achieve a skill. You get the point. That's why, instead of running away from a skill that is not appealing to you, picking it up and start on it can bring excitement and motivation. Take time to play with the new and difficult skill. You'll find out, it will ease up.
Meanwhile, enjoy the path of practice. Things you require help with, you can always outsource, without running from your challenge. When we worked with commitment for something, the joy of accomplishment is so much more sweet.

P.S. Want some specific examples of how to find out the melody lines from your favorite songs, so you can apply the techniques in creating your own unique song? Sing up for a Free Co Creation Call with me. Use the button below.

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