The Importance of Melodic Shape

Using line drawings of melodies gives you an instant view of the entire melody – a great diagnostic tool.

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I’ve often mentioned on this blog an important songwriting technique that involves drawing a melody line. All that means is that you’ll take a pencil and, starting at the left side of a sheet of paper, draw a line that moves up when the melody ascends, and down when it descends.

When you’re finished, you’ve got a line drawing that approximates the shape of the melody. It can be a useful tool for diagnosing melodic problems in a song.

But, you might say, all melodies, no matter what they sound like, will be able to be drawn in this way, so what’s the value of being able to draw a melody as a line? How do you use a line drawing as an indicator of melodic problems?

Its main value is this: Even though melodies may come across as moving randomly up and down, the best melodies have a discernible shape that becomes apparent with a line drawing. That shape happens as a result of two things: 1- repetition of short musical ideas, and 2- an overall direction in the melodic design. For example, verse melodies are likely to move upward to meet a chorus melody, which will sit higher than the verse, finally ending a bit lower.

For that reason, many song melodies, when drawn as a line, will show an approximate inverted-U shape, starting low in the verse, rising for the chorus, and then moving down again. Some start low, and continue in an upward direction through to the end of the chorus. Katy Perry’s “Roar” is a good example of this.

How do you know that you’ve drawn a line that tells you your song melody is working well? If you notice that the line moves more-or-less in one direction or another, and shows smaller shapes that get repeated throughout, you’ve got a melody that has potential to grab an audience’s attention.

There are other ways to convert music into lines. One other good idea, which will often look similar to a melodic line drawing, is to draw a line that approximates the energy levels of your song. If you do that to The Beatles’ “Yesterday”, you get a line that looks a bit like this:

As you can see, there’s a general shape that becomes apparent: a gradual upward direction that happens due to the fact that the energy gradually builds throughout the song.

Line drawings are great ways to get an instant view of some aspect of your song. For melodies, a line that moves randomly up and down probably means that the melody doesn’t have enough repetition or inner design to be memorable or attractive to the audience.

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