![]() ![]() Sometimes days seem to move just like a big fat man A ![]() The first two lines are matched with the same repeated musical phrase and end rhyme, and the second two lines have a new rhyme and a new melodic phrase. One of my favourite examples of this is “Cruise Control” by Headless Chickens. ![]() ![]() If a four line verse has a rhyming pattern like AABB - the first two lines’ ends rhyme with each other and the second two lines rhyme differently but again with each other - then making your melody do something similar can really lock in the idea for an audience. Tying your motifs together in musical phrases also allows you to link with lyrical phrases. Remember, you can break words up with a motif, like in “ Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” “Some-where” gets split in half by an octave because the songwriter wanted to really draw our attention to the idea of longing for this magical place, reaching up to the next octave like it’s up in the sky. Once you’ve got something you like, try shifting it out of your normal speech pitch pattern by using steps (one note up or down), skips (a third up or down) or a leap (a fourth or more) between words. This will give you a really basic idea of the rhythm you might use and an inclination of where the pitch naturally rises and falls. Start by saying them out loud in a few different ways. If you already have some lyrics written, really think about how a motif would work with your most important words or phrase. And later in the song, you can even create a new motif, usually for the chorus. You can also vary the motif by lengthening or shortening the notes within it, and make it change direction by inverting it, creating its mirror image. And you can repeat it at either the same pitch or at a different one. The more times you repeat the motif within a song the more easily it will be remembered. A very good idea: Repetition is the songwriter’s friend. When you hear the motif, you know what song it is, such as the three notes that make up Paul McCartney’s "Yesterday" motif. A motif is a group of 2, 3, 4 and not many more notes that played in that way, that are ordered together to make a tune easily identifiable - like a mugshot. The notes in a well-written melody are organized into small groups called motifs. There’s as much grammar in a tune as there is in a paragraph. Melody isn’t made up of random notes anymore than speech uses random words. And yet, there are parallels you can take advantage of. This is what makes song so different from speech. Melody can change the amount of time we spend on certain words ( rhythm) lengthening or shortening the length of notes or space - by changing the pitch between words ( intervals), up or down. The answers lie in the way that melody takes words and frames them in a different time and space. So how do you write a tune that folks can remember irrespective of the lyrics? One that you can play as well as sing, one that is immediately recognizable covered by any one of a glockenspiel band, a choir, a bagpipe, or a thumb piano? It’s worth investing time developing a melody that allows your lyrical idea to fully register with the audience. This guest post originally appeared on the Soundfly Blog Flypaper.Ĭontent alone in a lyric may not be enough to sustain a listener’s attention throughout an entire song without a strong enough melody for the words to ride on - no matter how important the topic. ![]()
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