Pulling Out The Melody Guitar Lesson

Chapter 1: (00:30) Introduction Enjoy a short performance from Mark Lincoln! Chapter 2: (05:51) Introduction to Melody The last lesson was focused on the idea of pulling melody lines from chords themselves or finding desirable chords first, and then discovering melody within those chords. This week will be a continuation from the last lesson as we'll delve further into the idea of creating melody and lyric from chords. Please review the last lesson as this will help to refresh you on some of the concepts that we discussed.

Okay, so we'll need a working set of chords to play with today, and these chords will be the fuel by which we fire up our melody line and finally, our lyrics. So what chords shall we use today? How about G, Fmaj7, Am and C:

G
E_3_
B_0_
G_0_
D_0_
A_2_
E_3_

Fmaj7
E_0_
B_1_
G_2_
D_3_
A_x_
E_x_

Am
E_0_
B_1_
G_2_
D_2_
A_0_
E_x_

C
E_0_
B_1_
G_0_
D_2_
A_3_
E_x_

Get a good feel for these chords, and as usual, feel free to peruse my Intro to Guitar series if you need to review anything concerning chord formations. Let's go through the same process as we did last week using our new set of chords. Begin by singing the notes in each chord.

Exercise 1
Start with the G major chord and pluck each individual note. Hum or sing along with each note as you go. Make sure that you warm up your voice properly (also see my Performance series for more on proper voice warming procedures) before you attempt singing loudly or quickly. You should always hum before singing, and you should begin softly and slowly to avoid harming the vocal chords. Once you feel that your vocal chords are becoming warm and "slippery," you can begin singing a little louder and faster. Pluck each note in the G chord and then, using the strum or "down down-up down," strum the chord in a relaxed fashion. Hum the same notes that you hummed/sang while strumming. Also, make sure you are strumming consistently and in time. This is a great exercise to get better acquainted with playing and singing at the same time as well. Now, while continuing to strum the G chord, change the order of the notes that you are singing. In other words, mix up the notes, sing them backwards, jumbled, in different orders, the same notes twice or three times or four times...just mix 'em up! This can be a great way to find different note combinations within the structure of the chord. Have you found any combinations that you particularly like strike you in any way, that you found to be interesting or catchy? As we discussed previously, whether simply remembering your new found melody lines in your head, or jotting them onto a holiday napkin, it can be a great help in the writing process to find a way to remember musical insights that you have along the way. (I have notebooks full!) Chapter 3: (04:13) Exercises Tedium
Some of you may be saying "Gee whiz, this is a long and tedious process simply to find a simple melody line!" True, this can be kind of an arduous and painstaking procedure simply to find a melody line, but if you are a dedicated player and musician and find that you often spend many of your waking and idle hours strumming on the ole' guitar (like me), then experimentation should become part of your daily ritual. All we are doing is taking individual chords and dissecting them, if you will, to explore and find possible gems of melody contained therein. If you can find melody using other methods, then that's awesome! This is simply one possible way to go about it.

Exercise 2
Now, take the Fmaj7 chord and go through the same process as we did in Exercise 1. Once again, pay attention to the memorable note combinations that you discovered and keep track of them in your preferred way.

Exercise 3
Play the G chord with the Fmaj7 chord. Combine the melodies that you discovered in the G chord with the melodies in the F maj7 chord, and use the strum. Try to vary the melody that you found for the G chord with the F maj7 to keep your song interesting and varied. In other words, if you are doing an ascending scale over the G chord, then maybe do a descending scale over the F chord. Watch me in the video for more on this. One goal of this process is to avoid having a melody line that is monotonous and predictable, although sometimes that might be the goal of the songwriter. Remember: there are no rules to the songwriting process! Chapter 4: (08:23) Final Exercises Exercise 4
Go through the same process with the Am and C chords. Pay attention once again to any memorable melody lines. Remember that this is a trial and error process and inevitably you make the decisions as to whether the notes that you are grouping together are good or not. Note: you don't need to have the same number of notes from each chord. In other words, you may have selected six notes from your G chord and four from your Fmaj7 chord, six again from the Am but only one from the C. You can vary things up to make your song more interesting, but the decision is ultimately yours. Again, watch me in the video for more insight into this process.

Keeping Time Straight
Keeping the time signature straight in your song is incredibly important and can be challenging when singing varying numbers of notes in your melody line (from chord to chord). When singing different numbers of notes over each chord, you may have a tendency to lose time. Henceforth you will need to establish a method of keeping time in your song which could be as simple as tapping your foot or using a metronome. One of the more challenging facets of writing (or playing for that matter) a song is keeping time when other variables in your song are changing.

Exercise 5
Now put the four chords and their respective melody lines together. Strum the chords and sing each melody line over the top of each respective chord. One important facet to remember is that you will not only be varying the number of notes sung over each chord (probably) but you will likely be varying the length of each note that you are singing as well. This is an integral part of singing and can only be discovered by experimenting with the melody lines that you have created. Again, I'll give you some more insight into this phenomenon in the video and hopefully provide you with some new tools with which you can compose.

Alright! We've composed the beginnings of a song, albeit a rudimentary one. Nevertheless, this is a great beginning to something potentially beautiful and something that can be built upon. Were you able to find some melody lines that were meaningful to you? Could you go back through the process and find more melody lines that are perhaps more poignant and powerful? The great thing about discovering new melody lines is that you can always go back with the same chords and rework them, rethink them, and possibly rediscover new and better melodies.

Strumming to Discover
Once you've gone through the process of picking through each individual note of a chord to discover melody lines, you might find that you can also merely strum each chord to discover melody as well. Try to strum the chords that we used in today's lesson without picking the individual notes and see if you can find more melody lines that you hadn't noticed before. You can always go back to picking the notes for more insight, but this technique can be quite helpful when writing melody lines.

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