Building Your Inner Store of Melodies
There are many techniques for writing and revising melodies, ranging from simple exercises to complex music theory.
But nothing can substitute for the inner store of melodies you develop as you grow both as a music listener and a songwriter.
When musicians speak of flashes of inspiration, it’s not some magical force working through them (or at least it’s not just that!). They are drawing on their own deep intuitions about what makes for great music.
You don’t have to leave it to chance whether (and how) you develop intuitions of your own. In this post, we’ll look at how to consciously build your inner store of melodies.
Then we’ll consider three exercises for synthesizing those melodies into something new.
The melody as centerpiece
In popular music, the melody is normally the centerpiece of the song. This is reflected not only in how much time is given to it, but also in how the entire mix is often built to support the melody, placing it front-and-center.
The melody more than anything else reveals the personality and perspective of the artist who performs it. It is also the part of the song most likely to resonate strongly with the audience. Unless we’re talking about riff-based music, it’s often the one part listeners remember.
How many times have you only identified a song once the melody started?
All of this means melody is one of your greatest opportunities to develop your own unique and recognizable voice as a songwriter. And it all starts with intuition.
The limits of theory and the importance of intuition
When it comes to writing melodies, there are many technical details that can be useful for a practicing songwriter. We’ll discuss many of these ideas in future posts on this site. But it’s important to put them in context.
As I’ve written before, music theory can help you write songs you hate. This applies especially to melodies (given their central and highly personal role).
If you mechanically apply theoretical techniques, your melodies will probably sound stilted and lifeless. And your personal voice will be nowhere to be found.
Theory can help you understand your options, explore new approaches, and possibly fix problems in your melodies. But it will be worse than useless if you don’t develop an intuition for good melodies.
That intuition will not only be an endless source for creative ideas, but it will also guide your judgments about what works and what doesn’t.
Your inner store of melodies
St. Vincent has talked about↗(opens in a new tab) how she knows basically every note of every Steely Dan song by heart (and it’s assumed, many other songs as well). The melodies are there inside of her, ready to draw on when she writes her own music.
It can sometimes be useful to think of your mind as a synthesis machine. The more ideas you feed into it, the more it will combine and re-combine those ideas into something new.
And all of this takes place without you even being aware of it.
When it comes time to write your own songs, these creative recombinations are available for you to build on. They often come to you in a form that people call “inspiration”.
Not only does an inner store of melodies provide you with inspiration, but it also shapes your intuitions.
Whenever you judge that a melody is good (or terrible), you are probably relying on intuition. Your intuitions have been built up over a lifetime of listening to (and writing) music.
Your inner store of melodies provides a set of models and templates that guide these judgments.
The most important point is that this inner store is never fixed and final. It constantly changes as you grow. And you can consciously develop it over time.
Developing your inner store of melodies
Common advice for fiction writers is to read more than you write. And preferably to read many different kinds of writing.
The same applies to songwriting. Listening to a wide range of music will help you better understand music, build a vocabulary, and develop your intuitions for what you think is good music.
This is great advice, but it’s also very general. There are many specific things you can do to build your intuitions about melody in particular.
It’s definitely worth learning many different kinds of songs. You can come up with a “set-list” to play through in your mind when you’re bored, or on a walk, or whatever. And this set-list can keep changing!
You don’t need to memorize every note of every song, but it’s worth following St. Vincent’s lead and at least memorizing some. Critically, you need to take an active approach, paying attention to the small details.
When people learn their favorite songs, they often smooth away the variations that occur from verse to verse and chorus to chorus. But for a songwriter, these variations are a valuable source of ideas. These small details are a big part of the momentum and expressive power of a song.
Listen carefully to each part of a song, and pay attention to how (and why) the melodies vary over time. Often these coincide with a changing number of syllables or a different pattern of stresses in the lyrics.
If you want to play around with this, you can try singing new verses with your own lyrics. This allows you to explore new variations within the context of a song you know is good.
Exercises for consciously synthesizing melodies
We’ve talked about how your mind will combine and re-combine different musical ideas while you’re busy doing something else.
But this is also something you can do consciously, and without needing a degree in music theory.
Let’s consider 3 ways you can do this:
- Building on intervals
- Stealing the rhythm
- Combining two or more melodies together
Building on an interval from a melody
Every time a melody moves from one note to another, it’s moving by an interval.
The technical details aren’t that important here, but think of an interval as the distance between two notes. You can measure this distance in half-steps on the piano (a half-step goes from one piano key to a directly adjacent key).
Fortunately, you don’t need to do any measuring for this exercise.
Sing through a part you particularly like in a melody you know. Now focus on the first two notes of that part. Sing those two notes over and over.
You’re singing an interval.
No one owns an interval. The soaring interval of an octave, for example, is found at the beginning of the verse of “Over the Rainbow” (over “some-where”) and the chorus of “Starman” (over “star-man”). This connection seems to be intentional on Bowie’s part.
You can freely use any interval in your own melodies. And that’s exactly what you’ll do with the two notes you were repeating above.
Try starting a new melody with this interval. Or try building up to it. Explore as many variations as you can.
If you lose the interval, just go back to the melody you memorized and find it again.
Stealing the rhythm of a melody
Although people normally focus on the notes (and intervals) in a melody, the rhythm is equally important. And interestingly, the same melodic rhythm can generate many very different melodies.
Sing through part of a melody you’ve memorized. As you sing, tap out each note you’re singing. Once you have the rhythm down, try to transform the melody into a monotone. That is, sing the same note over and over but keep the rhythm from the original.
You’ve just extracted the rhythm!
You can now use this rhythm to write a melody of your own. Try to make sure your new melody doesn’t sound anything like the original. And again, try out many variations.
Don’t worry if your new melodies start to stray from the original rhythm. The point is to develop new ideas! And you can always go back to the original if you need to extract the rhythm again.
Combining two or more melodies together
This last exercise is probably the trickiest of the three we’re looking at. But it can teach you about how to manipulate melodies, which will come in handy when writing your own from scratch (and revising them).
The goal for this exercise is to take two or more melodies you’ve memorized and combine them together into something new.
Focus on a short part of the melodies, maybe just 1 or 2 bars. You’re going to take little pieces from these parts and build a new 1 or 2 bar phrase by combining them.
So how do you do this? If you want to guarantee you’re not directly plagiarizing, you can just take 2 notes (i.e. an interval) from each “source” melody and try to combine them together.
It’s probably more effective to take 3 notes, however, since that’s the point where the character of a melody starts to come through.
It’s also the point, it’s worth mentioning, where copyright can start to come into play. But since this is an exercise, we don’t need to worry about copyright yet.
Taking these little snippets from each melody, start by combining them in different orders until you find one you like. Feel free to repeat a snippet more than once.
As you proceed, pay attention to how small snippets of melody can be recombined, developed, and shifted. Play with the rhythmic structure of the whole, and don’t be afraid to change the notes!
The results might seem too busy at first. Just drop some of the notes until your new combination flows smoothly.
Once you have an idea that sounds “right”, you can come up with a lyrical line to sing. Fit the line to the exact melody you’ve developed, or let the lyric bend the melody in new directions.
You’ll have to carefully compare your new melody to the originals to make sure it isn’t too similar. If the similarity is recognizable, focus on the recognizable part and try changing the pitches and placements of the notes (or add and remove notes).
Maybe the most important lesson of this exercise is that melodies can be modified in countless ways, both subtle and extreme. This is a skill that can be learned with practice, even if you know nothing about the theory.
Next steps
Your inner store of melodies acts as a constant source of inspiration and a guide for your musical intuition. And there are many ways to purposefully develop it over time.
Keep learning new songs. Pay attention to the little details. Play with the songs you know. And consciously apply what you learn when writing your own melodies from scratch.
The more you internalize, the more ideas will be at your fingertips the next time you need to improvise a melody.