Writing a Song Melody that Works Well With a Lyric

There are times when a climactic moment in a song melody may not be necessary.

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Do you find writing lyrics to be the fun part of songwriting, and melody-writing the difficult part? Sometimes you’ll find that the melody you’re creating sounds fine, but just doesn’t seem to work with the lyric. What can you do?

There’s a reason why some melodies sound good on their own, but lose their appeal once you add lyrics. It’s because throughout a lyric, there are words that demand attention, while other words are less important. Generally, important words need careful consideration and placement. And if you’re placing those important words in unimportant spots in your melody, both the lyric and the melody suffer.

Here’s a set of steps to help you create a melody that words well with a lyric. Let’s assume that you’re a lyrics-first writer, and you’ve got your lyric more-or-less worked out.

1. Read through your lyric dramatically. This means reading aloud with a great deal of expression in your voice. This helps you identify important words, words that will require special emphasis or placement.
2. Circle important words. As you become aware of the words that seem to be placed higher in your voice, circle those words. These are words that will help to contour your melody.
3. Read the text again, creating a touch melody where your voice rises and falls to match important/unimportant words. It may not make a lot of sense yet as a fully-fledged melody, but you’ll start to hear possibilities.
4. Play through a chord progression on a guitar or keyboard. Sing and adjust the rough melody to start matching the chords you’re playing.

At this point, you’re on your way. This procedure might give you a phrase or two that works really well, and there’s even potential to work out an entire melody with this method.

The benefit is that you’ll find that your lyrics’ strongest words – the ones that hold the greatest emotion – will get placed at or around melodic leaps upward or downward. That pulls the audience’s attention to those words. It makes the melody and lyric true partners, where one is accentuating the other.

-Gary Ewer. (Follow Gary on Twitter)

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