Wanting To Make My Songs' Melodies Less Redundant

So you all know I am in a band, and our instrumental factor is pretty solid. I do the singing and stuff, and was wondering how you all go about coming up with great catchy melody lines. I was laying down vocals for our song "Shania" and my roommate was saying how it just sounded kind of sing songy, with not enough variety. I was just wondering if you all had any suggestions, because honestly, it has kind of gotten me down on my music a little bit!! Thank you in advance.

Much Love,

Ethan

*moved from Off Topic.

You will be more likely to get a response in a music related forum for this kind of subject than the OT.

This is hard... A melody, or at least the start of a melody, is one of the only things that really come from "inspiration", whatever that may actually mean. I really think there's no tools to create a good melody.

However, if you are writing pop or rock songs, chances are you fell into one of two traps:

1) The melody isn't catchy because you wrote the lyrics first, and then basically fitted them to guitar or piano chords. Because of this, you didn't really think about the melody seperately. Sometimes this works, but you need to have one hell of a text. Listen to Paul Simon, for example. He usually writes lyrics first, and you really hear it. But his lyrics are good enough to pull it off.

2) You started with writing guitar or piano accompaniment, and you made it somewhat special to the song (as opposed to simply strumming chords). The danger here is that you copy the cool accompaniment into the melody, so your melody is essentially the voice leading of the accompaniment. Try leaving the accompaniment for what it is, writing a melody seperately (or over the same chords), and afterwards put them together.

In any case, I would advise to really focus on writing melodies in and by themselves. I'm sure you hear them; write them down when you do. Write chords around the melody instead of the other way around. This isn't easy if you're not used to it, but this way the melody isn't restricted by the chords it's suppoed to fit. If you can't find good chords, just write down the melody, you might be able to use them over a chord progression you think up later.

Keep in mind, these are just general tips, mostly from my own experience. I have no idea if you have any of these problems.

Melodies just can't be forced out, like you can do with chord progressions, through trial and error. You give birth to them when it's time for them to come out. So when you do, hold on to them.

I have a completely different take on this one if you're interested.

I listen to the radio a lot, I really do try and dissect some of the songs I listen to on the radio. Kelly Clarkson, Lady Gaga, even Miley Cyrus... they either write their own songs or perform songs written by professional song writers.

One of the biggest things to overcome is to make the melody clearly and expressively represent the meaning you're conveying in your lyrics. Check this out...

David Cook sings Mariah Carey

So, Cook takes Mariah Carey's song, Always Be My Baby, and arranges it to 'his style' of performance. Love him or hate him for it, he does a great job. He takes meaningful words from the lyrics and creates musical significance out of them in the melody.

Pay attention when he sings the lyric after the chorus comes in, "... and you will linger on..." and hear how he pulls it right out of the page, launching his voice like a damn rocket into the sky. And is this lyric important to the song? Yeah, it's probably one of the most important lyrics, one could make the argument.

This is smart, intelligent songwriting and arranging. It's not by chance that it works this way, because the meaning of the lyric is equally matched and reinforced by the melodic treatment. So, if you take your song's lyrics and pick out what really is the most essential idea you're trying to convey in your words... just one line or something... and do something intelligent and musical with it, then your melody is going to draw interest.

Songwriting, unlike strictly instrumental forms, gives you some unique opportunities to create and reinforce meaning in your music in how you treat the lyrics. You have 'context' in the form of music you're writing that other strictly instrumental forms don't. Take advantage of the availability of context. I would encourage you to return to your lyrics and review the most significant words or phrases... how are you representing their importance musically?

That, I feel, makes the biggest difference between a song and a GREAT SONG. Just my take on it.

Good point. It is definitely important that the lyrics and the melody are connected. But you must be careful that the emphasizing and special musical treatments of certain words doesn't become a gimmick. In my opinion, if you can hear these things on a first listen, it's too obvious.

Also, I think this is already a step further from what I was talking about earlier. I would think it's hard to really construct a melody solely from the meaning of the lyrics. I personally would rather use the lyrics to emphasize or maybe alter the melody afterwards, but in my experience, staring at the words doesn't inspire the best melodies.

I think a lot of melodic material can come from simple spoken inflection of the lyrics. Saying the lyric in different ways, like naturally, in haste, in sorrow, and so on can give you many different rhythmic and inflectional variants of the lyric itself.

But I think you're right that the lyric alone won't make the melody. It's good to take the lyric away at some point just to hear how the melody is working without the words. In the end, the more context you can bring to a song's lyrics through musical elements, the more interesting your song will be in general. That's songwriting for ya.

AA is talking about the Sondheimian method of lyric writing, which is awesome! Sondheim ALWAYS wrote the song first, and then spoke it... And wrote how he spoke it on the page, then copied it to musical notes. Obviously he didn't ALWAYS do that, but that was the gist of his philosophy. You write the lyrics first, then you decide how it sounds and put it to music. It should be as CLOSE to speech as possible with embellishment to make it artistic. Why? Becaus then people will listening and feel line you are talking to them. The most important thing in music is it's meaning. You have to write a text that means something to you... Or it will be lifeless, and God help you if you could find a melody for that.

Just... Keep in mind that your melody will come easier if you already have the emotional subtext to convey it.

I like redundant pieces.....

o.O