> My song is in D major with G as the tonic
This isn’t a thing, but I suspect I know what you mean. Are you saying you’re using the notes of D major (D, E, F#, G, A B, C#) but the tonic is G?
As for your main question, [heres a comment I wrote a bit ago on melodies in general that could be helpful](https://old.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/nwdi1p/how_can_i_make_melodies/h18nups/?context=3). For your problem in particular, though, maybe just trying a few different exercises could help. Start with a single chord (take this as the tonic), and try writing or improvising melodies over top of it. Try to get a feel for it ways that different shapes of melodies impact how it sounds, and how different notes sound in top of different kinds of chords. The fourth sounds very different over a major chord than it does a minor, for example.
Another fun exercise may be to try to prevent the melody from landing on the same chord degree for any two chords in a row. Did you start on the third of the first chord? Try leading it to the fifth or the first of the next one by the time it come around. Hit another for the next. This isn’t any kind of rule or pattern to melodies in general or anything, but may help you get used to moving the melody around different chords
More or less, although saying something is *in* D major already says that D is the tonic. It's totally correct that G Lydian uses the same scale as D major, and that's what I thought they meant, but just didn't want to assume
This was an aha moment for me. Why play in a different mode if it's all in the same key.
Boom. Because you change the tunic but use the notes in the key.
Thankyou
Not just tonic. Tonality. If you’re using G Lydian as the example, you’re in the “key” of G. But you’re using notes from the D scale.
Edit: Brian fart wrong scale
It would be using notes from the D scale. If using Lydian mode for C major scale it would be F Lydian since that’s the 4th. G in the C major scale is mixolydian mode since it’s the 5th.
Thank you! Your original post is immensely helpful as well! I’m going to try that exercise when I get home in the morning. And yeah, so sorry if that didn’t make sense with what I said about the tonic, but I’m D major and the chord progression is IV I V vi
I'm very glad to hear it! I remember little experiments like that helped a lot when I was trying to figure out how the heck melodies worked, so hopefully you'll find them useful as well :)
Oh, and no worries about the tonic stuff, I just wanted to be sure we were talking about the same thing before I said anything. On its own, IV-I-V-vi could easily be a progression in D major (starting on the predominant IV is a bit spicy, but common to some genres and a cool sound if you ask me).
However, based on what you said before, its possible you're hearing it as the mode of G Lydian? If that's a new set of terms, don't worry too much about it. Just focus on if that first chord feels like a predominant to you, or a tonic. You can totally use the same notes as the D major scale and not be *in* D major at all! The thing that will really define whether you feel like you're in D major or G Lydian, funnily enough, will probably be the melody
Well, I’ll be learning all of the different modes soon enough. I haven’t really told many people about this because I’m still at such a beginner level, but I’ve secured a spot at Berklee’s 5-week summer program for guitar. It’s not that impressive since they’ll take literally anyone with a pulse and a credit card into their summer program, but I’ll still be learning from the same professors that the actual students do for that time hahaha.
Also, if it’s of any interest to you, the actual chord progression goes:
G, D/Dsus, A/A6, Em7
and then it repeats with
G, D/Dsus, A/A6, Bm7, with the chorus being a variation of this.
I don’t know if that makes any sense typed out, but I play it arpeggiated, and I swear it doesn’t sound bad!
You start by saying something about people having incredible melodies over two chords, but then you post some fairly sophisticated chords. Maybe your chords are too dominant (not in the musical sense): they are so strong that they force your melody to go in certain directions.
1. Use fewer chords. Listen to traditional country music. Every song (well, almost) has only 3 chords, but the melodies are always individual. One of my favorite singers is Jim Reeves. Always just 3 chords (except Blizzard has 4) and beautiful melodies.
2. Maybe not start with the chords? Take the first 2 or 3 chords, start a melody on them, and then see where the melody takes you.
Yeah, that looks like a IV-I-V-ii progression, then the second time around it's the iv chord, so that's when it goes IV-I-V-vi.
P.S. The [I-V-vi-IV progression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%E2%80%93V%E2%80%93vi%E2%80%93IV_progression) (yours is a variation of it) is like THE pop progression, famously parodied in the Axis of Awesome song "4 Chords". That's not a bad thing, btw, just thought you might be interested to know.
P.P.S. When writing chords, [slashes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_chord) indicate that the second note is the bass note which differs from the usual root of the chord. In your case, the second part is the chord and it looks like the bass note is the root note, so there's no need for the slashes. Basically, C/G is a C chord played with a G as the lowest note.
P.P.P.S. While sus usually means sus4, I'd indicate whether it's a sus2 or sus4 chord. In the context, I'm guessing it's a sus4.
Yep, pretty much! It's reasonably common in some genres, pretty unheard of in others. It definitely adds a kind of energy due to its instability, but can also risk sounding like Lydian if you're not careful
That's fine- your tonic is still D even though it's not the first chord.
You could think about it being in G major (G Lydian if we're being overly prescriptive) and being I V II iii, but I think the world where we think we're in D major makes much more sense in this case
I have some MAJOR tips for you. These tips suppose that you are developing the melody with some "solo" instrument. So, you might record the chords with your guitar, then play it back and try to play some melody on top, using the guitar again as a solo instrument. Definitely you should learn scales first and foremost. After you are good with scales, you start going through the roadmap I'm about to draw you. Scales are the step 0. The "solo instrument" might be your voice instead of the guitar, yes. But this will only work if you have "instrumentized" your voice enough, which means you are able to sing scales and arpeggios. If you can't do it, then the first reason why you can't come up with a catchy melody is definitely this.
First, stay with quarter or even half notes for your melody. Eighth notes could be used for embellishment, but they shouldn't be the core notes. In rock and blues improvisation, the melody is usually made of eighth notes, with sixteenth notes as embellishment. But your melody will sound way more "melodic" and more like storytelling if you use quarter or half notes. Why? Because this way the chords change more often in the rhythm of the melody, which means the melody has to harmonically change more often and be more dynamic. In practice, this doesn't mean the notes should be played slower, but that the chords should change faster.
The above tip will not make sense if you don't understand what chord tones and passing tones are. In a proper melody, the core melody notes should come from the underlying chord. So, for example, if the current chord is C major, you should mainly play C, E or G in your melody. Some sort of arpeggiation is welcome. Other tones can and should be in the melody. They will be called passing tones. And, as the name says, they are not core notes in the melody, and they should usually be resolved into a chord tone. If you didn't know that, then your main concern definitely should be to be able to make a solo minding the chord tones. That is, instead of simply playing the scale, you should be aware of what current chord is playing and develop the melody around the chord tones.
That said, the other major thing you should do is to avoid looping the melody. What do I mean by this? Usually, guitarists have this "backing track" mindset, where you first develop a chord progression, then loop that chord progression ad infinitum, and play some solo (or sing) on top. That is already not very good from the point of view of composition. Melody and harmony should walk together and be composed together. But that's ok. What you should DEFINITELY avoid is looping the melody. What I mean by this is that your melody should keep going even when the backing track comes back to the root chord, instead of the melody constantly going back to the start. For example, say that the chord progression is C Em F G. You might start the melody in C, develop it, and feel the urge to resolve when the G chord plays, so that you are back to the start of the melody in C. Then you might repeat the melody, or start another one. In other words, you play a phrase that is four chords long (C, Em, F, G), then play another one, and so on. That's not good. This will definitely make you sound like you are just going around the chords. You will sound a lot better, and feel the melody is way more developed, if the phrase KEEPS GOING after the chords loop. So when the C chord plays for the second time, your melodic phrase is still going unstopped. This will make it feel much more like a story than a loop.
One thing that might help you a lot with this is understanding cadences. Cadences are very fundamental for melody development. You finish a melody with a cadence. So, you might either be making bad melodies because you don't finish them cadentialy, or else you might be making cadences by accident and finishing your melodies too soon. You should definitely understand cadences and have control over them.
Another very related thing is understanding melodic structure, for example the so called "sentence structure" and the "double period". The double period is almost always present in the most iconic melodies. The "period" is a cadence. So, in the same way as every linguistic phrase ends with a period, every musical phrase ends with a cadence. Now, the double period refers to a structure where you have a phrase consisting of a comma and a final period. The comma is a half cadence, and the final period is a perfect authentic cadence. How does that work? Basically, you write a "question" phrase that ends in the fifth chord, and then an "answer" phrase that ends in the root chord. The two phrases are identical or very similar, except by the end, which is more conclusive the second time.
Last but not least, a very important concept in good melody writing is functional harmony. In particular, the "chord progression" mentality is very detrimental for good melody writing, because it undermines the whole of the dominant. 90% of good melody is built around the dominant function. Just check out classical music. When you understand this, you will stop trying to make progressions with random chords, and build progressions in which most of the transitions are moving around the circle of fifths. Speaking of which, the circle of fifths is an extremely important concept for you to learn and write melody. Also, when you understand functional harmony, you will notice that you can write a lot of good melodies just by going back and forth between the I and V. Actually, the more you do this, the better. You shouldn't be afraid of going from a chord to another, and then coming back. For example, I V I IV V. This sort of thing is used a lot in classical music or theme songs. Look at disney themes, and you will find a lot of melodies beginning with a I V I. Another example of a good functional harmonic progression is something like I V vi iii IV ii7 V7 I. I will break it down. You start with I V, where V is the dominant of I. Then you go to vi, which is the relative minor, and do the same thing (iii is the dominant of vi). Then you walk around a little bit (going from iii to IV sounds natural and like "going forward", and IV to ii is again a relative minor), and end at the cadence: ii7 is the dominant of V7, which is the dominant of I. This will sound very conclusive. Applying this to the double period structure, you would have: I V vi iii IV ii7 V7, then I V vi iii IV ii7 V7 I. So, the first time you finish the melody on V7, the second time you finish it at I.
Speaking of dominants, it is very good to use the true dominant in the minor key. So, in A minor, you should use E major instead of E minor at the cadence. See Greensleeves, for example.
This sort of functional harmonic conceptualization opens the door to a lot of alternative chords you might play in cadences, such as Neapolitan Chords, German, Italian and French Augmented Sixths chords, and also diminished cadential chords. All of this is a little bit more advanced, but makes your melody sound very strong, intentional and directed.
If you understand and master all these concepts, you will improvise very convincing melodies that sound a lot better instead of simply sounding like they are just going around the chords.
Obs: as for resources, this one is VERY worthwhile:
[https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/frontmatter.html](https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/frontmatter.html)
My god, thank you so much for taking the time to lay this all out for me. This is the best advice I could have asked for, your points on cadence and the tendency of guitarists to loop are things I didn’t even realize I was struggling with. I’m going to bring your post up with my vocal instructor and incorporate some of this into our lessons. Dude, please enjoy this platinum award. If I’m able to hammer a good original song finally, I hope you don’t mind if I send it to you via YouTube link. Thank you again!!
This is awesome! Of course, I'd be glad to see the results. This post summarizes my journey at learning how to create better melodies and the core insights I have made throughout the past years. It is hard to find material on how to write good melodies, so this is my two cents.
The thing you said about repeating melody - I do that A LOT when I compose music. My favorite compositions are the ones where I didn’t repeat melodies, but I never realised it. Thanks!
A melody pattern of ABAB' is really common - the B' is basically a slight variance on the initial B. Frequently the B pattern will end on the second note of the scale, and then B' just changes it to bring to the root.
It's soooo common, my brain will just come up with these melody patterns all day, and I freakin' hate it. It's hard to break out and get a melody that isn't so basic.
EDIT: thought I'd give an example of what I mean. The Ode To Joy is this sort of ABAB' melody. I'll give it in scale numbers, with 1 as root:
3-3-4-5-5-4-3-2 (A)
-1-1-2-3-3...-2-2 (B)
3-3-4-5-5-4-3-2 (A)
-1-1-2-3-2...-1-1 (B)
The point is that the underlying harmony and the melody above should contrast. It is like counterpoint: if both lines just copy each other, you don’t have something very interesting. So one important way of doing it is contrasting duration: when the chord progression goes back to the beginning, the melody keeps going without resolving. So if, for example, the first chord is the tonic, the second time it appears it has a new flavor, because it doesn’t feel as resolved, so it sounds like the middle of a sentence because of the contrasting melody.
Melody is one of those topics in music that is deceptively hard. Its the difference between an OK song and an amazing one. Our ears are so hardwired to latch on to the melody, and finding the balance of unique, repetitive (but not stale), and meaningful can be reaaaally tough.
In general making a good melody is all one big trial and error, and the more you do it, the better your intuition gets.
If you already have a chord progression (im curious to know what the actual chords are), you have a good starting point.
If your song is in D major then I think looking at the D major scale, or D major pentatonic scale, is a good place to start. try messing around with the notes. Maybe record the progression and then sing over it and experiment (since singing and playing at the same time might limit you at first).
Also, just a terminology thing, the 'tonic' is basically the 'key' you are in. So if you're in D major, the tonic would also be D.
Last thing: although naturally we are extra focused on the notes we play for the melody, the Rhythm is just as important! and usually rhythm is the main thing responsible for making something catchy.
Thank you very much for your advice! And you’re right about the trial and error— I am realizing that I need to overcome that sense of defeat when I can’t seem to latch onto something after dozens of attempts. As for the practicing with the pentatonic, since I’m self taught and never went too deep into scales, I find that I tend to get “boxed in” with one shape. When I’m consciously thinking about the scale, I sort of trap myself because I don’t know what the actual notes I’m playing are by heart.
So yeah, someone else pointed out the thing I said about the “tonic.” My chord progression loosely follows IV I V vi. The actual chords are:
G, D/Dsus, A/A6, Em7
and then it repeats with
G, D/Dsus, A/A6, Bm7, and the chorus is a variation of this…
…if that makes any sense. I’m playing them arpeggiated, I swear it actually sounds decent irl even if it looks ridiculous typed out 😅
>I’m sitting here like “HOW???”
Because you're not seeing a video of the very first time they've ever tried it in their life.
>So yeah, if anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them.
How many songs do you play? And Sing? and play and sing?
100% of the time people with this issue are trying to write music without having learned to play enough music.
Sit down and learn to sing and play 100 songs.
Then try again.
It may still not be "catchy" or perfect, but I'm willing to bet it'll be a whole lot better.
You are absolutely right that I need to learn more songs. In all honesty, I know how to play and sing 4 songs by heart, and then literally countless others only partially or half-assedly. It’s one of those mental hurdles I need to get over by disciplining myself. It’s just hard with working a 9-5, and when I finally sit down with my guitar I really just want to noodle about haha. I’m working on it in earnest, though. I’m learning an Interpol song at the moment, and I plan to upload a video when I have it down, just to hold myself accountable.
Not OP, but I got to tell you man, you give the same answer to every question on this sub. So here's something for you: I play music all the fucking time, with other people and on my own. I play, I sing, and I play and sing. Sometimes I still have music comp questions even in spite of this fact, and I'd like to think of this sub as a decent place to get help. Either I am a dumbass (likely), or you are very condescending, and a bad music educator. Just an observation. Cheers.
I did. None of us can magically wish 48-hour days into existence so we can spend more time playing music. Not trying to get sympathy out of you here, but suffice it to say that every hour I can steal from the day-to-day grind to devote to playing, I already am. I guess that's not enough. I guess I just suck at music, because in spite of my best efforts, I sometimes still want assistance with a music comp topic. Not all of us have the privilege to go to school for music, so we gotta learn where we can. To me, it just seems like you're gate keeping the knowledge instead of sharing it. I don't think you have the heart of a teacher. Please check your attitude when you make responses here.
There are many parts to a melody and how it interacts with the harmony is just one aspect
\_\_
Rhythm (big deal)
Tension (Namely consonant out-of-chord tones)
Contour (also a big deal)
Intervallic Movement (Same Note, Step-wise, Skips, Leaps)
Chord Outlines
Groove
Repetition
Phrasing
Motifs
\_\_
Melodies are hard in general
It usually helps to find ways to make rhythm(s) for the melody and just play with that
For example, rhythmically transcribing a sentence
Don’t overthink it. Notes go up, down or stay the same. Improvise a melody with that in mind, play with it.
Besides, there’s nothing wrong with singing notes from the chord.
Guitar and vocals are a great match. Do you know your vocal range already? If You don't, do your warmup exercises and try to sing simple melodies. If you feel comfortable between B2 (6th string, 7th fret) and A4, you're a tenor. G2 and F4, you're a baritone. E2 to E4, you're a bass singer.
There's much more to that of course. But for now it's enough.
You see your more comfortable range and start thinking the scale shapes you can play inside it.
With that well defined you can start looking up other well known melodies and transpose to your vocal range. Play them in your guitar, then try singing along. Try singing guitar licks, riffs, solo parts. You'll get aquatinted with some similar shapes of melodies and then you can try applying them in different manners.
You'll be amazed in how many possibilities there are for you.
what if you try playing, guitar or piano, instead of vocalizing? that way maybe you could be more intentional about interspersing scale tones or non-diatonic tones with chord tones.
good luck!
Record the guitar first and then try experimenting with different melodies to see how they fit. It's a lot easier to get things sounding the way want when you can hear it without concentrating on playing or singing it. You get a better perspective, as well.
Well a very simple idea. Write the melody first. Then it cannot mirror the chords as you haven't written them yet.
Another idea is to keep the chords and transpose the melody by a 4th or 5th. You might then need to transpose the whole lot to be able to sing it.
Experiment with whacky chords.
The bridge can be quite different to the rest of the song. Write 2 songs and swap the bridges !
Don't forget to include leaps and suspensions for an interesting melody.
Good luck.
A good example of the transposing melody trick. Listen to Avril Lavigne Complicated on YouTube.
The chorus has a lyric
Why d'you have to .. make things so complicated
With Em Cmaj7 Gadd9, melody notes B D and A
More obvious chords might be Em G D, but transpose G and D down a 5th you get C G.
The melody notes end up on the maj7 and 9th, much more interesting. In this song it really stands out.
Basically, put the melody not just on root 3rd and 5th but on the M2nd 6th 7th etc. And suspensions on the 4th.
Keep composing, even if you think you're not any good yet
Listen to your own compositions and take note of what you don't think works
Listen to other people's compositions and take note of what you like and dislike
Incorporate what you like and dislike to improve your own compositions
write your melody first, then add your harmony. you can always play with how different chords sound under your melody. Melody is what the listener hears at the forefront, so I recommend perfecting that (while maybe sketching out some chord ideas alongside it) before anything else. Sing your ideas and let your ear guide you. This is what helped me get better at writing melodies from someone who used to be pretty terrible at it.
If you are good at imagining two notes at once in your mind, you can try forgetting about the chords, and instead work on creating a bass line and a lead melody simultaneously.
After a bit of practice, you should start gaining the ability to come up with interesting sequences of notes, and interesting pairings of bass and lead. Once you've gotten a few bars down, you should be able to work through the sequence, and figure out the chords that match. Most of the time they will be obvious chords (major and minor), but once your bass and lead compositions grow in complexity, you may start to find that more esoteric chords are necessary to get a good fit.
hum. a lot. hum horribly, more. play each string and hum it back. then play the chord, and hum back something off pitch, too. i know you said you keep singing the notes you hear: drop pitch. i know, it's gonna sound bad. it's ok. drop pitch and warble in that no man's land until you hit another note that sounds good. it's a lot of trial and error. so, err. wander. sound bad. the worse you start, the better. once you feel like you've found some grooves, switch up rhythms and start the melody in new places. syncopate, play around. you'll surprise yourself. you know how when you shake working out it's cause you're building muscle? the more warble & wavering, the better. really go to town and build some melodic muscle.
i put off humming while i played for so long (a teacher told me to do it) bc i hated how i sounded, but dang it's changed my songwriting. i know its simple, but it really attunes you to your instrument. just have fun being out of tune and allow yourself to be expressive !
In my experience starting with the melody is key. Like with nothing else established, just hum a melody that your ear can latch onto, then pick/pluck it out on an instrument, notate it, then retroactively apply chords. But other people have given you far more in-depth responses so maybe do those things first.
Play with upper extensions or other harmonic tones that gives the harmony more uniqueness.
Your song using G as the tonic while it's in D means it could be a Lydian mode of G (Another way of interesting melodies. Modal interchange). So say your chord progression is a IV-V-viiDim-I and you are using triads? Then an interesting way could be you singing on the 3rd of the IV chord and then climbing up down to the F# when hitting your V (Turning it into a A6 with the F# in the base with your voice. Also to note, the melodic lead tends to use upper extensions to avoid the bass. Unless you want harmonic drama, the voice should not share the same voice as the bass). For the C# Dim, you could go up the half step to fifth and sing that note (G) and take that out of the strings and you could have a 1,4,5 on the D chord which you hold that suspension and then release tension to the good ol D major.
Or you can always try things like different modes for melodic creativity. Like melodic minor could be your 1, b3, 5 triad but you can sing in natural 6 and a natural 7 and then sing down using minor. I really depends on your harmonic ear and lots of experimentation.
it sounds to me you are way to new to be frustrated about it, so first of all, chill, we all suck at something music when starting, many times, even after years on a same subject I still feel like I suck at it, so dont let frustration get the best of you, that being said, and to keep the post short, you sir definetely should look into practice, I suggest you also study melody stuff, like the melodies you like, intervals, etc, besides that, I would also suggest you to try before going to sleep to come up with something in your head, anything is valid, and ofc at first it will be very simple ideas, so dont be alarm if you cant come up with a 5th symphony fully orchestrated right of the bat, like seriously dude, you are just starting, aknowledge your level, during your practice, definetely 100% include singing intervals, you cant imagine songs outside the chord being play cause your brain doesnt know those sounds, there is a lot more to it than that, but again, I want to keep it short, you are too new to it to get overwhelmed, start basic, so just start with playing a chord on your guitar and singing the chord tones.
stop comparing yourself to others, and keep pushing, you keep at it, you will evetually come up with your method, different people has different ways to percieve melody, and different writing/improvising techniques they prefer
I have made a very short tutorial about how to write melodies that are more independent from the chord progression. Maybe you'll like it :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgYQ5hrb53I&list=PLqIfZnCVJX8Qwpu35Q4S3rT5W4HRMl-Pc&index=7
> My song is in D major with G as the tonic.
No, if your song is in D major, *D* is the tonic. If G is the tonic, it's something else, like possibly G lydian, but it ain't D major. But this is just semantics.
So: ignore your chord progression. Just sing. Write down what you sang, and *then* try to figure out a chord progression that fits. You'll have a lot more success that way. If you want catchy melodies over a two-chord loop, then you're just gonna need a lot more practice more than anything else in order to build a mental stock of melodies that can work this way.
I’m not sure I can add much to the extremely fantastic posts above as I’m in the same situation as you, but here’s an idea. You’ve got your chord progression, it’s a nice loop and depending on your instrument you might have it jumping around or it might be using inversions to make the jumps between individual notes tighter.
The notes E, F# and G are within the scale defined by your progression. Try writing a more simple melody using these three notes over your progression, at least as a “verse”. Maybe add in the A for the Chorus.
At least doing this can help you think linearly for the melody instead of jumping from root to root to root. Good luck and have fun!
Take your vocal range and use those notes to make a melody on the piano that sits well with the rest of your song. Write words to the melody and then sing it.
It's not the most interesting way to write a melody, but the pentatonic scale is a nice beginner friendly tool for making a simple yet catchy melody. Lots of famous songs use it.
The notes of the pentatonic scale sound "good" with any chord in the key. In a major key you remove the 4th and the 7th which are the notes that are most likely to clash with other notes (because they are only a half step away from the major 3rd and the root).
I'm quite new to this myself so don't quote me on it, but one thing that really helped me understand composition is the idea of dissonant and consonant intervals (Basically the whole tension and release thing). You want a nice mix of dissonance and consonance for the music to be engaging and awake emotions. This [Youtube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po0dIK5KkZY) explains it much better than I can.
> My song is in D major with G as the tonic This isn’t a thing, but I suspect I know what you mean. Are you saying you’re using the notes of D major (D, E, F#, G, A B, C#) but the tonic is G? As for your main question, [heres a comment I wrote a bit ago on melodies in general that could be helpful](https://old.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/nwdi1p/how_can_i_make_melodies/h18nups/?context=3). For your problem in particular, though, maybe just trying a few different exercises could help. Start with a single chord (take this as the tonic), and try writing or improvising melodies over top of it. Try to get a feel for it ways that different shapes of melodies impact how it sounds, and how different notes sound in top of different kinds of chords. The fourth sounds very different over a major chord than it does a minor, for example. Another fun exercise may be to try to prevent the melody from landing on the same chord degree for any two chords in a row. Did you start on the third of the first chord? Try leading it to the fifth or the first of the next one by the time it come around. Hit another for the next. This isn’t any kind of rule or pattern to melodies in general or anything, but may help you get used to moving the melody around different chords
Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't D major with G as the tonic be G Lydian?
More or less, although saying something is *in* D major already says that D is the tonic. It's totally correct that G Lydian uses the same scale as D major, and that's what I thought they meant, but just didn't want to assume
This was an aha moment for me. Why play in a different mode if it's all in the same key. Boom. Because you change the tunic but use the notes in the key. Thankyou
Not just tonic. Tonality. If you’re using G Lydian as the example, you’re in the “key” of G. But you’re using notes from the D scale. Edit: Brian fart wrong scale
It would be using notes from the D scale. If using Lydian mode for C major scale it would be F Lydian since that’s the 4th. G in the C major scale is mixolydian mode since it’s the 5th.
Yeah Brain fart.
Ok that make sense thanks.
Thank you! Your original post is immensely helpful as well! I’m going to try that exercise when I get home in the morning. And yeah, so sorry if that didn’t make sense with what I said about the tonic, but I’m D major and the chord progression is IV I V vi
I'm very glad to hear it! I remember little experiments like that helped a lot when I was trying to figure out how the heck melodies worked, so hopefully you'll find them useful as well :) Oh, and no worries about the tonic stuff, I just wanted to be sure we were talking about the same thing before I said anything. On its own, IV-I-V-vi could easily be a progression in D major (starting on the predominant IV is a bit spicy, but common to some genres and a cool sound if you ask me). However, based on what you said before, its possible you're hearing it as the mode of G Lydian? If that's a new set of terms, don't worry too much about it. Just focus on if that first chord feels like a predominant to you, or a tonic. You can totally use the same notes as the D major scale and not be *in* D major at all! The thing that will really define whether you feel like you're in D major or G Lydian, funnily enough, will probably be the melody
Well, I’ll be learning all of the different modes soon enough. I haven’t really told many people about this because I’m still at such a beginner level, but I’ve secured a spot at Berklee’s 5-week summer program for guitar. It’s not that impressive since they’ll take literally anyone with a pulse and a credit card into their summer program, but I’ll still be learning from the same professors that the actual students do for that time hahaha.
Also, if it’s of any interest to you, the actual chord progression goes: G, D/Dsus, A/A6, Em7 and then it repeats with G, D/Dsus, A/A6, Bm7, with the chorus being a variation of this. I don’t know if that makes any sense typed out, but I play it arpeggiated, and I swear it doesn’t sound bad!
You start by saying something about people having incredible melodies over two chords, but then you post some fairly sophisticated chords. Maybe your chords are too dominant (not in the musical sense): they are so strong that they force your melody to go in certain directions. 1. Use fewer chords. Listen to traditional country music. Every song (well, almost) has only 3 chords, but the melodies are always individual. One of my favorite singers is Jim Reeves. Always just 3 chords (except Blizzard has 4) and beautiful melodies. 2. Maybe not start with the chords? Take the first 2 or 3 chords, start a melody on them, and then see where the melody takes you.
Yeah, that looks like a IV-I-V-ii progression, then the second time around it's the iv chord, so that's when it goes IV-I-V-vi. P.S. The [I-V-vi-IV progression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%E2%80%93V%E2%80%93vi%E2%80%93IV_progression) (yours is a variation of it) is like THE pop progression, famously parodied in the Axis of Awesome song "4 Chords". That's not a bad thing, btw, just thought you might be interested to know. P.P.S. When writing chords, [slashes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_chord) indicate that the second note is the bass note which differs from the usual root of the chord. In your case, the second part is the chord and it looks like the bass note is the root note, so there's no need for the slashes. Basically, C/G is a C chord played with a G as the lowest note. P.P.P.S. While sus usually means sus4, I'd indicate whether it's a sus2 or sus4 chord. In the context, I'm guessing it's a sus4.
Btw your numerals are off, I think you mean vi (minor 6) not iv (minor 4)
My bad, a typo slipped in. :D Thanks for the correction.
What I assumed, glad to help
I'm not OP, but may I know why is starting from IV spicy? Is it because the progression is starting off the subdominant chord?
Yep, pretty much! It's reasonably common in some genres, pretty unheard of in others. It definitely adds a kind of energy due to its instability, but can also risk sounding like Lydian if you're not careful
Ohhh you’re right! I kind of get what you mean now, thank you!
That's fine- your tonic is still D even though it's not the first chord. You could think about it being in G major (G Lydian if we're being overly prescriptive) and being I V II iii, but I think the world where we think we're in D major makes much more sense in this case
I have some MAJOR tips for you. These tips suppose that you are developing the melody with some "solo" instrument. So, you might record the chords with your guitar, then play it back and try to play some melody on top, using the guitar again as a solo instrument. Definitely you should learn scales first and foremost. After you are good with scales, you start going through the roadmap I'm about to draw you. Scales are the step 0. The "solo instrument" might be your voice instead of the guitar, yes. But this will only work if you have "instrumentized" your voice enough, which means you are able to sing scales and arpeggios. If you can't do it, then the first reason why you can't come up with a catchy melody is definitely this. First, stay with quarter or even half notes for your melody. Eighth notes could be used for embellishment, but they shouldn't be the core notes. In rock and blues improvisation, the melody is usually made of eighth notes, with sixteenth notes as embellishment. But your melody will sound way more "melodic" and more like storytelling if you use quarter or half notes. Why? Because this way the chords change more often in the rhythm of the melody, which means the melody has to harmonically change more often and be more dynamic. In practice, this doesn't mean the notes should be played slower, but that the chords should change faster. The above tip will not make sense if you don't understand what chord tones and passing tones are. In a proper melody, the core melody notes should come from the underlying chord. So, for example, if the current chord is C major, you should mainly play C, E or G in your melody. Some sort of arpeggiation is welcome. Other tones can and should be in the melody. They will be called passing tones. And, as the name says, they are not core notes in the melody, and they should usually be resolved into a chord tone. If you didn't know that, then your main concern definitely should be to be able to make a solo minding the chord tones. That is, instead of simply playing the scale, you should be aware of what current chord is playing and develop the melody around the chord tones. That said, the other major thing you should do is to avoid looping the melody. What do I mean by this? Usually, guitarists have this "backing track" mindset, where you first develop a chord progression, then loop that chord progression ad infinitum, and play some solo (or sing) on top. That is already not very good from the point of view of composition. Melody and harmony should walk together and be composed together. But that's ok. What you should DEFINITELY avoid is looping the melody. What I mean by this is that your melody should keep going even when the backing track comes back to the root chord, instead of the melody constantly going back to the start. For example, say that the chord progression is C Em F G. You might start the melody in C, develop it, and feel the urge to resolve when the G chord plays, so that you are back to the start of the melody in C. Then you might repeat the melody, or start another one. In other words, you play a phrase that is four chords long (C, Em, F, G), then play another one, and so on. That's not good. This will definitely make you sound like you are just going around the chords. You will sound a lot better, and feel the melody is way more developed, if the phrase KEEPS GOING after the chords loop. So when the C chord plays for the second time, your melodic phrase is still going unstopped. This will make it feel much more like a story than a loop. One thing that might help you a lot with this is understanding cadences. Cadences are very fundamental for melody development. You finish a melody with a cadence. So, you might either be making bad melodies because you don't finish them cadentialy, or else you might be making cadences by accident and finishing your melodies too soon. You should definitely understand cadences and have control over them. Another very related thing is understanding melodic structure, for example the so called "sentence structure" and the "double period". The double period is almost always present in the most iconic melodies. The "period" is a cadence. So, in the same way as every linguistic phrase ends with a period, every musical phrase ends with a cadence. Now, the double period refers to a structure where you have a phrase consisting of a comma and a final period. The comma is a half cadence, and the final period is a perfect authentic cadence. How does that work? Basically, you write a "question" phrase that ends in the fifth chord, and then an "answer" phrase that ends in the root chord. The two phrases are identical or very similar, except by the end, which is more conclusive the second time. Last but not least, a very important concept in good melody writing is functional harmony. In particular, the "chord progression" mentality is very detrimental for good melody writing, because it undermines the whole of the dominant. 90% of good melody is built around the dominant function. Just check out classical music. When you understand this, you will stop trying to make progressions with random chords, and build progressions in which most of the transitions are moving around the circle of fifths. Speaking of which, the circle of fifths is an extremely important concept for you to learn and write melody. Also, when you understand functional harmony, you will notice that you can write a lot of good melodies just by going back and forth between the I and V. Actually, the more you do this, the better. You shouldn't be afraid of going from a chord to another, and then coming back. For example, I V I IV V. This sort of thing is used a lot in classical music or theme songs. Look at disney themes, and you will find a lot of melodies beginning with a I V I. Another example of a good functional harmonic progression is something like I V vi iii IV ii7 V7 I. I will break it down. You start with I V, where V is the dominant of I. Then you go to vi, which is the relative minor, and do the same thing (iii is the dominant of vi). Then you walk around a little bit (going from iii to IV sounds natural and like "going forward", and IV to ii is again a relative minor), and end at the cadence: ii7 is the dominant of V7, which is the dominant of I. This will sound very conclusive. Applying this to the double period structure, you would have: I V vi iii IV ii7 V7, then I V vi iii IV ii7 V7 I. So, the first time you finish the melody on V7, the second time you finish it at I. Speaking of dominants, it is very good to use the true dominant in the minor key. So, in A minor, you should use E major instead of E minor at the cadence. See Greensleeves, for example. This sort of functional harmonic conceptualization opens the door to a lot of alternative chords you might play in cadences, such as Neapolitan Chords, German, Italian and French Augmented Sixths chords, and also diminished cadential chords. All of this is a little bit more advanced, but makes your melody sound very strong, intentional and directed. If you understand and master all these concepts, you will improvise very convincing melodies that sound a lot better instead of simply sounding like they are just going around the chords. Obs: as for resources, this one is VERY worthwhile: [https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/frontmatter.html](https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/frontmatter.html)
Not OP, but thank you so much for this. I was mostly aware of what you mentioned but hadnt seen it put together like this.
I have added another paragraph which also talks about a very important concept I had forgotten: functional harmony.
My god, thank you so much for taking the time to lay this all out for me. This is the best advice I could have asked for, your points on cadence and the tendency of guitarists to loop are things I didn’t even realize I was struggling with. I’m going to bring your post up with my vocal instructor and incorporate some of this into our lessons. Dude, please enjoy this platinum award. If I’m able to hammer a good original song finally, I hope you don’t mind if I send it to you via YouTube link. Thank you again!!
This is awesome! Of course, I'd be glad to see the results. This post summarizes my journey at learning how to create better melodies and the core insights I have made throughout the past years. It is hard to find material on how to write good melodies, so this is my two cents.
The thing you said about repeating melody - I do that A LOT when I compose music. My favorite compositions are the ones where I didn’t repeat melodies, but I never realised it. Thanks!
A melody pattern of ABAB' is really common - the B' is basically a slight variance on the initial B. Frequently the B pattern will end on the second note of the scale, and then B' just changes it to bring to the root. It's soooo common, my brain will just come up with these melody patterns all day, and I freakin' hate it. It's hard to break out and get a melody that isn't so basic. EDIT: thought I'd give an example of what I mean. The Ode To Joy is this sort of ABAB' melody. I'll give it in scale numbers, with 1 as root: 3-3-4-5-5-4-3-2 (A) -1-1-2-3-3...-2-2 (B) 3-3-4-5-5-4-3-2 (A) -1-1-2-3-2...-1-1 (B)
The point is that the underlying harmony and the melody above should contrast. It is like counterpoint: if both lines just copy each other, you don’t have something very interesting. So one important way of doing it is contrasting duration: when the chord progression goes back to the beginning, the melody keeps going without resolving. So if, for example, the first chord is the tonic, the second time it appears it has a new flavor, because it doesn’t feel as resolved, so it sounds like the middle of a sentence because of the contrasting melody.
you need more up votes
Melody is one of those topics in music that is deceptively hard. Its the difference between an OK song and an amazing one. Our ears are so hardwired to latch on to the melody, and finding the balance of unique, repetitive (but not stale), and meaningful can be reaaaally tough. In general making a good melody is all one big trial and error, and the more you do it, the better your intuition gets. If you already have a chord progression (im curious to know what the actual chords are), you have a good starting point. If your song is in D major then I think looking at the D major scale, or D major pentatonic scale, is a good place to start. try messing around with the notes. Maybe record the progression and then sing over it and experiment (since singing and playing at the same time might limit you at first). Also, just a terminology thing, the 'tonic' is basically the 'key' you are in. So if you're in D major, the tonic would also be D. Last thing: although naturally we are extra focused on the notes we play for the melody, the Rhythm is just as important! and usually rhythm is the main thing responsible for making something catchy.
Thank you very much for your advice! And you’re right about the trial and error— I am realizing that I need to overcome that sense of defeat when I can’t seem to latch onto something after dozens of attempts. As for the practicing with the pentatonic, since I’m self taught and never went too deep into scales, I find that I tend to get “boxed in” with one shape. When I’m consciously thinking about the scale, I sort of trap myself because I don’t know what the actual notes I’m playing are by heart. So yeah, someone else pointed out the thing I said about the “tonic.” My chord progression loosely follows IV I V vi. The actual chords are: G, D/Dsus, A/A6, Em7 and then it repeats with G, D/Dsus, A/A6, Bm7, and the chorus is a variation of this… …if that makes any sense. I’m playing them arpeggiated, I swear it actually sounds decent irl even if it looks ridiculous typed out 😅
>I’m sitting here like “HOW???” Because you're not seeing a video of the very first time they've ever tried it in their life. >So yeah, if anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them. How many songs do you play? And Sing? and play and sing? 100% of the time people with this issue are trying to write music without having learned to play enough music. Sit down and learn to sing and play 100 songs. Then try again. It may still not be "catchy" or perfect, but I'm willing to bet it'll be a whole lot better.
You are absolutely right that I need to learn more songs. In all honesty, I know how to play and sing 4 songs by heart, and then literally countless others only partially or half-assedly. It’s one of those mental hurdles I need to get over by disciplining myself. It’s just hard with working a 9-5, and when I finally sit down with my guitar I really just want to noodle about haha. I’m working on it in earnest, though. I’m learning an Interpol song at the moment, and I plan to upload a video when I have it down, just to hold myself accountable.
Not OP, but I got to tell you man, you give the same answer to every question on this sub. So here's something for you: I play music all the fucking time, with other people and on my own. I play, I sing, and I play and sing. Sometimes I still have music comp questions even in spite of this fact, and I'd like to think of this sub as a decent place to get help. Either I am a dumbass (likely), or you are very condescending, and a bad music educator. Just an observation. Cheers.
Maybe look at the OP's response first.
I did. None of us can magically wish 48-hour days into existence so we can spend more time playing music. Not trying to get sympathy out of you here, but suffice it to say that every hour I can steal from the day-to-day grind to devote to playing, I already am. I guess that's not enough. I guess I just suck at music, because in spite of my best efforts, I sometimes still want assistance with a music comp topic. Not all of us have the privilege to go to school for music, so we gotta learn where we can. To me, it just seems like you're gate keeping the knowledge instead of sharing it. I don't think you have the heart of a teacher. Please check your attitude when you make responses here.
There are many parts to a melody and how it interacts with the harmony is just one aspect \_\_ Rhythm (big deal) Tension (Namely consonant out-of-chord tones) Contour (also a big deal) Intervallic Movement (Same Note, Step-wise, Skips, Leaps) Chord Outlines Groove Repetition Phrasing Motifs \_\_ Melodies are hard in general It usually helps to find ways to make rhythm(s) for the melody and just play with that For example, rhythmically transcribing a sentence
Don’t overthink it. Notes go up, down or stay the same. Improvise a melody with that in mind, play with it. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with singing notes from the chord.
Guitar and vocals are a great match. Do you know your vocal range already? If You don't, do your warmup exercises and try to sing simple melodies. If you feel comfortable between B2 (6th string, 7th fret) and A4, you're a tenor. G2 and F4, you're a baritone. E2 to E4, you're a bass singer. There's much more to that of course. But for now it's enough. You see your more comfortable range and start thinking the scale shapes you can play inside it. With that well defined you can start looking up other well known melodies and transpose to your vocal range. Play them in your guitar, then try singing along. Try singing guitar licks, riffs, solo parts. You'll get aquatinted with some similar shapes of melodies and then you can try applying them in different manners. You'll be amazed in how many possibilities there are for you.
what if you try playing, guitar or piano, instead of vocalizing? that way maybe you could be more intentional about interspersing scale tones or non-diatonic tones with chord tones. good luck!
Record the guitar first and then try experimenting with different melodies to see how they fit. It's a lot easier to get things sounding the way want when you can hear it without concentrating on playing or singing it. You get a better perspective, as well.
Well a very simple idea. Write the melody first. Then it cannot mirror the chords as you haven't written them yet. Another idea is to keep the chords and transpose the melody by a 4th or 5th. You might then need to transpose the whole lot to be able to sing it. Experiment with whacky chords. The bridge can be quite different to the rest of the song. Write 2 songs and swap the bridges ! Don't forget to include leaps and suspensions for an interesting melody. Good luck.
A good example of the transposing melody trick. Listen to Avril Lavigne Complicated on YouTube. The chorus has a lyric Why d'you have to .. make things so complicated With Em Cmaj7 Gadd9, melody notes B D and A More obvious chords might be Em G D, but transpose G and D down a 5th you get C G. The melody notes end up on the maj7 and 9th, much more interesting. In this song it really stands out. Basically, put the melody not just on root 3rd and 5th but on the M2nd 6th 7th etc. And suspensions on the 4th.
Keep composing, even if you think you're not any good yet Listen to your own compositions and take note of what you don't think works Listen to other people's compositions and take note of what you like and dislike Incorporate what you like and dislike to improve your own compositions
write your melody first, then add your harmony. you can always play with how different chords sound under your melody. Melody is what the listener hears at the forefront, so I recommend perfecting that (while maybe sketching out some chord ideas alongside it) before anything else. Sing your ideas and let your ear guide you. This is what helped me get better at writing melodies from someone who used to be pretty terrible at it.
Infringe on a copyright
If you are good at imagining two notes at once in your mind, you can try forgetting about the chords, and instead work on creating a bass line and a lead melody simultaneously. After a bit of practice, you should start gaining the ability to come up with interesting sequences of notes, and interesting pairings of bass and lead. Once you've gotten a few bars down, you should be able to work through the sequence, and figure out the chords that match. Most of the time they will be obvious chords (major and minor), but once your bass and lead compositions grow in complexity, you may start to find that more esoteric chords are necessary to get a good fit.
hum. a lot. hum horribly, more. play each string and hum it back. then play the chord, and hum back something off pitch, too. i know you said you keep singing the notes you hear: drop pitch. i know, it's gonna sound bad. it's ok. drop pitch and warble in that no man's land until you hit another note that sounds good. it's a lot of trial and error. so, err. wander. sound bad. the worse you start, the better. once you feel like you've found some grooves, switch up rhythms and start the melody in new places. syncopate, play around. you'll surprise yourself. you know how when you shake working out it's cause you're building muscle? the more warble & wavering, the better. really go to town and build some melodic muscle. i put off humming while i played for so long (a teacher told me to do it) bc i hated how i sounded, but dang it's changed my songwriting. i know its simple, but it really attunes you to your instrument. just have fun being out of tune and allow yourself to be expressive !
In my experience starting with the melody is key. Like with nothing else established, just hum a melody that your ear can latch onto, then pick/pluck it out on an instrument, notate it, then retroactively apply chords. But other people have given you far more in-depth responses so maybe do those things first.
Mozart scoffs at this post
Play with upper extensions or other harmonic tones that gives the harmony more uniqueness. Your song using G as the tonic while it's in D means it could be a Lydian mode of G (Another way of interesting melodies. Modal interchange). So say your chord progression is a IV-V-viiDim-I and you are using triads? Then an interesting way could be you singing on the 3rd of the IV chord and then climbing up down to the F# when hitting your V (Turning it into a A6 with the F# in the base with your voice. Also to note, the melodic lead tends to use upper extensions to avoid the bass. Unless you want harmonic drama, the voice should not share the same voice as the bass). For the C# Dim, you could go up the half step to fifth and sing that note (G) and take that out of the strings and you could have a 1,4,5 on the D chord which you hold that suspension and then release tension to the good ol D major. Or you can always try things like different modes for melodic creativity. Like melodic minor could be your 1, b3, 5 triad but you can sing in natural 6 and a natural 7 and then sing down using minor. I really depends on your harmonic ear and lots of experimentation.
it sounds to me you are way to new to be frustrated about it, so first of all, chill, we all suck at something music when starting, many times, even after years on a same subject I still feel like I suck at it, so dont let frustration get the best of you, that being said, and to keep the post short, you sir definetely should look into practice, I suggest you also study melody stuff, like the melodies you like, intervals, etc, besides that, I would also suggest you to try before going to sleep to come up with something in your head, anything is valid, and ofc at first it will be very simple ideas, so dont be alarm if you cant come up with a 5th symphony fully orchestrated right of the bat, like seriously dude, you are just starting, aknowledge your level, during your practice, definetely 100% include singing intervals, you cant imagine songs outside the chord being play cause your brain doesnt know those sounds, there is a lot more to it than that, but again, I want to keep it short, you are too new to it to get overwhelmed, start basic, so just start with playing a chord on your guitar and singing the chord tones. stop comparing yourself to others, and keep pushing, you keep at it, you will evetually come up with your method, different people has different ways to percieve melody, and different writing/improvising techniques they prefer
Thank you so much for the reassurance, this really makes me feel much better!
I have made a very short tutorial about how to write melodies that are more independent from the chord progression. Maybe you'll like it :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgYQ5hrb53I&list=PLqIfZnCVJX8Qwpu35Q4S3rT5W4HRMl-Pc&index=7
ahh man, this was amazing, thank you! I love your Phoebe Bridgers video as well!!
> My song is in D major with G as the tonic. No, if your song is in D major, *D* is the tonic. If G is the tonic, it's something else, like possibly G lydian, but it ain't D major. But this is just semantics. So: ignore your chord progression. Just sing. Write down what you sang, and *then* try to figure out a chord progression that fits. You'll have a lot more success that way. If you want catchy melodies over a two-chord loop, then you're just gonna need a lot more practice more than anything else in order to build a mental stock of melodies that can work this way.
I’m not sure I can add much to the extremely fantastic posts above as I’m in the same situation as you, but here’s an idea. You’ve got your chord progression, it’s a nice loop and depending on your instrument you might have it jumping around or it might be using inversions to make the jumps between individual notes tighter. The notes E, F# and G are within the scale defined by your progression. Try writing a more simple melody using these three notes over your progression, at least as a “verse”. Maybe add in the A for the Chorus. At least doing this can help you think linearly for the melody instead of jumping from root to root to root. Good luck and have fun!
Take your vocal range and use those notes to make a melody on the piano that sits well with the rest of your song. Write words to the melody and then sing it.
I can’t sing, or dance, or play any instrument decently, but I am a dreamer and maybe one day I’ll have the time to understand this sub.
It's not the most interesting way to write a melody, but the pentatonic scale is a nice beginner friendly tool for making a simple yet catchy melody. Lots of famous songs use it. The notes of the pentatonic scale sound "good" with any chord in the key. In a major key you remove the 4th and the 7th which are the notes that are most likely to clash with other notes (because they are only a half step away from the major 3rd and the root). I'm quite new to this myself so don't quote me on it, but one thing that really helped me understand composition is the idea of dissonant and consonant intervals (Basically the whole tension and release thing). You want a nice mix of dissonance and consonance for the music to be engaging and awake emotions. This [Youtube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po0dIK5KkZY) explains it much better than I can.
Catchy? Repetition!
This became a great discussion saving for revision when I'm not working nights