Chapter 7
Melody
When you write a song on the guitar, the most important part is actually the melody and vocal part. A lot of guitarists heavily underestimate the importance of it. They think that the songwriting is done with harmony and rhythm. It isn’t. The vocals (melody and lyrics) are the distinguishing feature of your song and if you don’t get this right, you won’t have a song that touches your audience.
My uneducated guess is: The power of a song lays 30% in harmony and rhythm and 70% in vocals.
We will start with the melody first and then think about the lyrics.
Here’s another big pitfall, I have heard it so many times and don’t want you guys to tap into it: do not overload your vocal melody. Try to make it simple and give your melody a rest (or two). If your vocal melody is a constant flow of notes, it WILL lose its power. A melody needs rests in order to have room to breathe.
How do you come up with your melody? Play your chord progression repeatedly and hum some notes over it. This is how I always do it. I will admit that this is really tricky part and will need some time to come naturally, but eventually, it will.
Once you have a melody (or a fragment of a melody) that you feel is fit for your song, repeat it immediately and start playing this fragment in a loop. While doing so, try to come up with some dummy words first. Or if no dummy words come to your head, just sing la la la at the beginning. The important step here is to fix the melody line. Record it somewhere (I will usually use my mobile phone for that).
Move on to the next part of the melody that you want to create. Don’t forget to put a rest into your melody.
Repeat until you have your full melody.
Now that the melody is composed, you know how many words and syllables you will need to fit into your melody. It might feel like a constraint, but it isn’t. It will force you to focus on the essential in your lyrics. Again, less is more.