7 Steps to Writing Song Melodies That Start By Speaking Your Lyric

When you speak lyrics melodramatically, important melodic shapes start to occur.

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It’s a common question that songwriters tend to get: how do you start your songs? Are you a melody-first, lyrics-first, or chords-first songwriter? There is of course another possibility: you use a mixture of many different ways. You might create a bit of lyric, and then work out how you might set it to a melody and chords.

If you work out your music by focusing at different times on different elements — lyrics, chords, melody, etc. — you help build a nice sense of cohesion and balance into your music. Also, when you constantly turn your attention from lyric to melody to chords, you also lessen the possibility of writer’s block.

And here’s another benefit that applies particularly to the creation of song melodies: when you speak your lyric out loud, you start to hear melodic shapes. Those shapes can then translate into full melodies that sound strongly tied to the words you are setting.

Here are some ideas for doing that:

1. Make a copy of your lyric.
2. Speak your lyric out loud in a normal, reciting voice.
3. Speak your lyric again, using a more melodramatic tone of voice. If certain words sound like they should be accentuated, allow your voice to rise dramatically in pitch. Then circle those high-sounding words on your lyric sheet.
4. Speak your lyric again in the same melodramatic tone of voice. Some words will sound longer than others. Circle the longest words. (In some cases you will be circling the same word twice — once for high pitch, and again for long rhythm.)
5. Study the circled words. Words that are circled twice are key words that will require a special place in your melody. Those words will usually sound best when placed high in pitch, with a longer rhythmic value than other words.
6. Speak your lyric again with the rises and falls that you used when you read it melodramatically. You should start to hear melodic ideas that match the gestures of your reciting. Improvise melodies that work well with your lyric.
7. Pick up your guitar, or sit at a keyboard. Try to accompany your improvised melodies with one or two chords.

At this point, your song should be taking shape, and you’ll love how the melody just seems to be “spiritually linked” to the lyric. It should all sound and feel pleasantly pulsed and natural.

The benefit to working out a melody this way is that it sounds as though the melody was written with the lyric in mind, which is of course what you’ve done. There is something very important about that kind of melodic-lyric relationship that really works well. (You can just imagine Leonard Cohen doing that with his chorus of “Hallelujah”)

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Written by Gary Ewer. Follow on Twitter.

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