The Songwriters Starter - part 3
The melody Having arrived at a nice chord progression we can begin to build our melody and as a starting point I suggest you stick with what notes make up the chord. It is permissible to have a few 'passing' notes in there which are not in the chord but steer clear of any notes that obviously sound discordant. Play the chord with your left hand and look at what notes are available to you then try and fit your lyric into those notes while holding the chord for the required number of beats. Initially, stick to sections of 8 bars. You can play around with this for hours, even days. Nothing is set in concrete so try out different versions. Record you efforts and listen carefully because this will undoubtedly suggest changes and improvements. All we are trying to do at this point is lay down a basic melody. the final arrangement, harmonies etc. will come later. In our example we could have B, A, G, A, A for ' Nights in white satin'. B, B, B, A, G, A for ' Never reaching the end'. E, (one octave up) D, C, D, B for ' Letters I've written'. A, A, A, G, A, G, E for ' Never meaning to send'. If you simply can't find the notes you want because they are not in the chord remember that you have 6ths, 7ths, 9ths, and 13ths to choose from as well as augmented and diminished chords. Perhaps you are looking for a diminished seventh or a Maj7. All of this is covered fully in 'ChordFinder' along with some useful suggestions for progressions. Sevenths are very useful to take you back to the tonic chord such as a G7 leading to C or try a Bdim leading back to C.
The written score. So finally you can play a nice tune with some nice chords but have you written any music yet? You can't really say that you have written a song unless you can give the music to somebody else to play. When the day arrives when you hand somebody else your printed score and they play it exactly as you imagined you will be filled with pride and delight. Surprisingly it is not that easy for the untrained to actually WRITE the music. The problem is getting the note values and timing correct. You will be able to sing your song but you might have trouble getting it down on paper. Even great singers employ somebody else to write the music down. What will save you here and speed your learning is something called 'Notation Software'. There are a number of programs available and some will set you back many hundreds of dollars or even thousands but unless you are planning to turn professional you don't need em. I came across a handy little program called 'Score Writer' from GenieSoft for about $40 and, believe it or not, I can simply record the song and import the midi file directly into 'Score Writer' which produces the score. It is not that straight forward as humans cannot play with the accuracy of a computer so you end up with a lot of funny notes like 32nds and odd little rests worth a 16th so you have to spend an hour or two cleaning things up. You quickly learn that you do not have to play the entire orchestration into this software because you end up with 16 tracks when all you wanted was perhaps the melody and chords so just consider what you actually want printed before you begin otherwise you end up deleting a lot of unwanted stuff. I highly recommend this as a learning tool because it teaches the structure of the music. It teaches correct timing and a hundred other things. It also prints out a very nice score for you complete with chord symbols and lyrics. Oh! and of course you need the printed music so that you can remember how to play it later after you have written 200 songs. If you can't simply record your midi file into it then you place each note on the stave manually which is a good learning tool in itself. It provides you with a handy little play back so that you can correct errors as you go.
You can however use your keyboard for inspiration because there is already a heap of ideas waiting inside - you just need to look for it. Are there any phrases, sequences, arpeggios, licks, figures or riffs etc. hiding in your automatic accompaniment section that you could expand upon. Too often we hear something going on in our keyboard which seems very complex or is played too quick so we don't even try to understand it but if we can take this apart and analyse it note by note it can provide us with the embellishments we are seeking. The way to handle this is to record it into your notations software so that you can see exactly what is going on. Print it out and play it on your keyboard - get to understand it. If you are playing your chord progression then these sounds will follow the chords and provide you with a ready made embellishment to be used as figures, licks, riffs, etc. So what are figures, licks and riffs? Well there is confusion about that and sometimes one term might be used to describe another. Basically a figure is a sequence of 5, 6 or 7 notes which are used repeatedly throughout a piece. Possibly repeated 20 times. A lick - usually thought of as a guitar lick - is usually more than 7 notes and is played maybe once or twice in a piece but always in the treble. A riff is used once or twice in a piece but can involve the bass and chords as well as the treble. It is often used just before a chorus to add an additional 'hook' to the piece. Confusion reigns because you can come across something described as 'the worlds most famous riffs ever' and find that they are actually figures! But who cares? If you find a repeating sequence that you can use call it what you like. Just get it into your music and give it a lift. The important thing about this is that the notes are already correct because your keyboard has already adjusted them to suit the chord you were playing and has changed the notes when you changed chords. So it is a brilliant little songwriters helper and, boy oh boy, you are learning so much in the process. That's it for part 3 - get part 4 here
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