How To Start Writing A Melody

Don’t know how to start writing your melody?

Do you have chords and lyrics, but are lost on how to start your melody? Or did you want to write your melody before doing anything else? Maybe you’re somewhere in between.

Let’s talk about how to start writing a melody.

Instrument Improvisation

As a songwriter, improvisation is one of your best friends. A great way to start writing your melody is to improvise using the instrument you are most competent with. 

If you don’t have any chords or lyrics yet, you get to work with a blank slate. How many syllables you have and what chords you need the melody to work with are yet to be determined. So that allows you to write the melody free of constraints!

Pick a key. Doesn’t really matter what key you choose, but note that your end goal is to have this song be singable for you. 

Now improvise in that key. If you chose the key of C, you know you have the notes C, D, E, F, G, A, and B to work with. 

If you chose the key of E, you know you have the notes E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, and D# to work with.

Knowing the notes you have to work with, simply play. Use only the notes in the key you chose, but try all kinds of combinations of those notes. Your only rules are to write something that will be singable for you.

If you already have chords for your song, I recommend recording those chords. Then play that recording as you improvise your melody with the recording. This will allow you to hear how well the melody is pairing with the chords. 

When in doubt, be sure to utilize your knowledge of music theory to figure out why your melody isn’t working. If you’re trying to hold an A in the melody over a G major chord and it sounds tension-filled, you should know why; a G major triad doesn’t contain an A.

Rhythm

One of the downsides of improvisation is you’re more limited to your improvisation skills. It might also be easy to tend towards writing the same kind of melodies over and over again.

Melody is basically comprised of rhythm and notes. When you improvise, you’re attempting to tackle them both at the same time.

What if we break it up and only worry about one part at a time?

So let’s start with rhythm. 

Just like with instrument improvisation, you can do this if you already have chords, lyrics, both, or neither. The less that is already written, the more creative room you have. 

So how do we figure out our melody rhythm without notes? We clap or tap. Sound odd? Think about it, have you ever found yourself tapping out the melody while listening to a song? Or maybe a mix of the song’s rhythm and the melody? 

Well, you can do that for a song you’re writing as well. Don’t hum a melody. Don’t play it on the piano or the guitar. Just tap it. You can worry about the notes later. 

Music Notation

Finally, you also can simply utilize music notation in order to write a melody or part of a melody that makes sense with your selected chords. Even if you don’t already have chords, this is a great method to write melodies.

This method allows you to physically see the notes that will go strongly with your chords.

In the below image, you can see that the chord progression is C major, G major, and F major.

Because the chords are spelled out note-by-note in the bass notation, you can easily see what the strongest notes you have to work with are. 

So, for the first chord, you can see your strongest melodic pairings are with C, E, and G. In the melody, you select E. For the second chord, you can see you have B, D, and G. So you choose G to work with.

Now this example is obviously simplistic, but it can be a great place to start. You can add grace notes and other melodic additions to make the rhythm and overall melody more interesting, but this is a strong foundation to start with.

With today’s powerful music writing software, you can even hit play and hear what your music you’ve written would sound like. There are even free tools that can do this in your web browser. 

It’s not uncommon for composers to do a lot of their writing this way. It allows you to write more complex music that still works very well.

Think of it like a coach drawing up a play on one of these:

Why don’t they just physically show the players exactly what to do?

Because drawing it up allows you to see the whole picture in one place. It allows all the players to see what the play is doing, how all the pieces fit together, and how it is intended to manipulate the opposing team.

This is the beauty of writing out music. You get to see all the pieces, how they fit and work together, and have a clear map of where they can go.

Also, it’s pretty hard to forget what you came up with when it’s written down in music notation.

Now, it might need tweaking after testing it, but drawing it up allows you to get 80% of the way there.

Now, you can play around and alter the melody into something a little more interesting like this:

 Eventually, you will have your melody.