Melody:
It has been said many times that no one can teach you how to write a great melody. This is true but there are a few tricks that will help you write a good one.
First, find a title and a few lyric phrases using the
EXERCISES above, and begin to sing them to the chords and rhythm track you've created. Try starting your melody in different places, on different notes. Stretch the words out or sing them quickly.
Here what I've been taught for writing melodies...
Speak the words without trying to sing them at all. Listen to the natural melody that occurs. All speech includes melody, it just isn't as exaggerated as the melodies we sing so you may have difficulty hearing it at first. When you hear where the words naturally fall, then exaggerate that. Make the high notes higher, the low notes lower, make the intervals larger.
Melody lines have their own rhythm, too. The relationship of short notes to long, held-out notes creates the rhythm of the melody. When you speak the words, ask yourself which ones are emphasized, which seem to be held out longer. Exaggerate those speech rhythms into your long and short notes.
By doing this you create a natural lock between your words and melody.
Now start your rhythm track and try to retain as much of the natural rhythm and melody as you can, then create a chord progression to go with it.
If you come up with something that sounds okay but not great, try starting the melody a couple beats later. This is the great trick I learned from listening to Corey Fish and LohnRiver. Most of their melody lines are fairly simple.
It gives their melodies a haunting quality. It took me a while to learn how to do it but I now use it in many of my songs. Reinforce the message of the lyrics, is possibly THE most important tool in your songwriting kit.
No one can copyright a chord progression, and that's a good thing because the same ones get used over and over. There just aren't that many different chords you can use in a pop song. But a melody is something quite individual. It IS protected by copyright and you must be careful not to consciously or unconsciously use someone else's legally protected melody.
DO NOT go listen to anyone's project and try to base your melody on one of theirs.
Step 1: Try singing or playing a melody to your rhythm track and chord progression. See if you can create a chorus section, something that repeats and is easy to remember. When you have a chorus, erase the rest of the chord progression you played and sing or play a melody to the rhythm track only. When you have a verse melody that leads into your chorus section, then add chords to it.
Step 2: Using the rhythm track only, speak the chorus lyric without trying to sing it. Listen to the where the natural speech melody occurs and exaggerate that as described above. Do the same with the speech rhythm. Then add a chord progression.
Songwriting is both a craft and an art form. The craft part of it can be learned: song forms, basic chord progressions, melody, rhyming and meter. You can acquire a lot of skill just by listening closely to your favorite recording artists.
The best songwriter education is right there in your CD library. But craft is best used in the service of art. As an artist, only you know what you want to communicate and how best to do that. A song will be effective only if it has it's own integrity, and only the songwriter can ensure that it does. That integrity comes from the honesty of the song's creator. If you keep your song true to your emotions and to your journey of discovery, others will respond to it.
It doesn't matter what your song sounds like. You have created something where there was nothing. If you choose to write another song, going through the same series of exercises, it will be different. It will always be different. If you keep it honest and you work on it until YOU like it, it will always be beautiful.
Tapes or CD:
The point of writing a song is... writing a song. Do it because you want to.
But when it's done, if you'd like to take it a step further, here's how:
Advances in recording technology have revolutionized home recording. It is now relatively easy and affordable to put together a home demo studio. All you really need is a computer, a sound card and a microphone. The sound card converts the microphone input into digital numbers so your computer can save it as an audio file. Everything else is in the computer itself.
There are software programs that replicate the look and sound of synthesizers, other software programs that look just like mixing boards where you can mix your vocals, guitar, drums, and keyboards together to create a really great sounding demo. You'll need a good-sized, speedy hard drive and you need to keep it optimized (de-fragmented) if you want it to handle audio files well.
Or you can record the old-fashioned way: straight to tape. Multi-track cassette decks are very affordable these days because so many people are switching to digital recording. If you are writing songs for guitar and voice, this is a great way to do it. The deeper we move into electronica and digital effects, the more people will hunger for the simplicity and humanity of voice and acoustic guitar. It's just the way things work.
I want to be in control of the final sound of my songs, so I record and
mix EVERYTHING in my home studio. But this can be very time-consuming and it does take away from the time you can spend writing songs. If this is a bit more than you want to take on, never fear, there are some alternatives.
Go to your local University and talk to someone in the music department. You'll find a half dozen students with home recording facilities who will either be willing to collaborate with you, record your song for a nominal sum, or do it as a school assignment for credit.
There are studios in many cities that specialize in arranging, recording and mixing demos. You can find them in the phone book. Most local bands know someone with a home studio, so ask around at the clubs. Meet as many people in the local music scene as you can. You'll find resources, collaborators, and information that will be very helpful.
When you have a few songs recorded, you can go to www.lulu.com or www.garageband.com or if you want to go further, you can pay a distribution registration and barcode for each album you want to sell, and put them into digital distribution on the Internet.
One last thought
Of course I haven't begun to scratch the surface of what songwriting is all about but then, no one ever can. Besides, everything you need to know is right there in your CD collection. That's one of the things I've been trying to show you. Study the work of your favorite artists to learn what they are doing. Don't copy them, but adapt what you learn and work with it to create a style and sound of your own.
Let's say Celine Dion is looking for songs for her new album. The record label calls the publisher, the publisher calls the songwriters, the songwriters call each other. Then the songwriters get together and hole up until they've got a nice up-tempo love song with a killer chorus.
Singer-songwriters tend to work alone and strictly from their emotions. This can be a problem. What if you're not feeling anything this week... at least nothing worth writing about?
I like having a deadline just so long as it isn't five minutes from now. But knowing there's someone who expects you to write and deliver something does help, otherwise writing tends to take second or third place behind, something like the ironing is on hold, or spring cleaning.
So give yourself a deadline. Or, better still, find a friend who's interested in writing and set a mutual deadline. Promise to show something to each other once a week or twice a month. You can do this via email or in person. Although it seems like a simple thing, it can make all the difference in whether you actually write or not. Personally, I feel that uploading to www.lulu.com is a way of protecting your works, and also being a self publishing site.
Give us some feed back on your views in regards to our TIPS AND TOOLS on BLOG at lulu.com
Jennarosa
