how do you guys come up with vocal melodies, or come up with overarching harmonies for a song?

[ratscratch]

i'm wondering if this is something there are techniques for as far as music theory goes because from what i can see it's an art that eludes explanation, and despite immersing myself in the roots-oriented style a lot of people play on the road my mind just goes blank when i try to write anything... was wondering if anyone had any advice or just similar experiences. peace

 

[roguetrader]

the conventional approach to 'melodic' singing involves fitting your lyrics to a musical scale - probably the major or minor scale - this is basically what the plug in Autotune is used for - a singer may be off key but this software drags the pitch variations up or down to the correct note making the singing 'correct' HOWEVER historically many great songs weren't always in key - the singers just found a way to get round that tricky bit ! also there are plenty of great singers who didn't exactly sing 'musically' Johnny Cash for example.... the key to developing any musical ability is practice, practice, and more practice - to me natural talent is a myth, ANYONE can play music you just gotta put the time in to improve.....

with regards to your mind going blank when writing, what about taking a song you love and re-writing it your way - this is how most people start out - famously the Rolling Stones took American Blues songs and passed them off as their own to a white British audience - most styles of music rely on blatant plagiarism, some admit this, some don't...

So @ratscratch todays homework is - Write A Fucking Song On A Topic You Love No Matter How Good Or Bad - think of all the complete and utter shit that sells millions of copies every day - surely you can do better !

 

[Tony Pro]

most styles of music rely on blatant plagiarism, some admit this, some don't...

This is true but that's not how I'd phrase it -- this is how music has existed since the beginning of time, and nobody ever thought of anything in terms of 'originality' until it started to become a marketable commodity, at which point you had to start pretending, as with any other commercial product, that you didn't rip off the idea from someone else.
I forgot the statistic, but something like 75% of every word and note Bob Dylan ever recorded is unoriginal, and he didn't pretend otherwise because he came out of the folk tradition, not the pop tradition.

@ratscratch I don't know if this is an answer to your question, but here's how I write songs: Start with the lyrics, think about what their mood is, then choose 3 or 4 chords that suit that mood. Then I strum and sing along with the same notes as the chords I'm playing. When I've gone through the song enough times, I start to think of ways to embellish the vocals.
Probably not the best way to do it; I don't even begin to understand musical theory.

 

[Mankini]

i'm wondering if this is something there are techniques for as far as music theory goes because from what i can see it's an art that eludes explanation, and despite immersing myself in the roots-oriented style a lot of people play on the road my mind just goes blank when i try to write anything... was wondering if anyone had any advice or just similar experiences. peace

Load 3 or 4 youtubes. Then, start the song you want to cover or take inspiration from at different, staggered times. You can slow down or speed up various youtubes. There ya go-instant harmony... (MUCH easier w/ the right software, of course )

What's yer favorite chords? I'm a Chopin guy...so I just study the keys he usually writes in and transpose for guitar.

Also I get my best stuff from lucid dreaming. If you read Beatles biographies it was always JL in my opinion, that came up with the best stuff. Paul-Pssshhh George WTF EVER, But John did Day in the Life.

 

[iamwhatiam]

I've only written and completed a few of my own songs because I can never seem to get out of this writer's block funk I'm in. I usually do it the opposite way of @Tony Pro . I start out by creating a harmony and then whatever mood I feel the harmony is, I write the lyrics out verse by verse. Sometimes verses come quickly and other times it's taken me a year or more to finish a song because you just can't force lyrics for a good song.

I also agree with Tony's explanation of plagiarism. Probably just about every musician throughout history listened to and was influenced by other musicians before them and thereby incorporated different licks/styles/lyrical phrasing/etc into their own music. It helps you become a more well rounded artist.

One tip that I find helps me, like @roguetrader said, is to take a well known song and write your own lyrics to it. I like to make spoofs off of songs, and write raunchy or funny lyrics to them. Also I'd definitely recommend taking some basic music theory classes if you haven't already and if you are playing guitar - learn the different ways to play each chord on the fretboard of a guitar. Don't just play bar chords. Because sometimes, using a different chord inversion(s) of a basic chord in your progression can make all the difference to inspire a melody or lyric that you hadn't considered before.

 

[roguetrader]

yeah @Tony Pro that is a better way of putting it - until very recently musicians came out of the master / pupil tradition as this was the the only way to learn....

as @iamwhatiam says a little bit of music theory can help greatly - there are plenty of online or print resources out there many of which can be accessed for free... one thing that definitely helped me was learning the concept of intervals - the way that 2 or more notes sound when played together - this relationship is either unison, consonant, dissonant, octave etc and is what gives different chords there melodic character - but i got to stress this again the only way to get better at singing / playing / theory is to put the hours in....

anyway, what say @ratscratch ? how are you getting on with your songwriting ?