Songwriting - does anyone start with instrumental melody first?

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by lppier

Hmm what I mean is - instead of singing the melody, do folks just use a lead instrument , then hand it off to someone to write the lyrics and sing it ?

So lets define some terminology

#1 melody = the single notes that often defines the vocal notes

#2 harmony = the chord progression

#3 lead instrument ? for me that is an instrument that will sometimes play the melody or play runs and riffs based either the melody or the harmony and often the scales of the Key that the chord progression is in.

My method is I write play and sing my originals
While sometimes I start with a theme or "hook" for the lyrical content I have not written the lyrics and then tried to craft a melody or chord progression to fit the lyrics

I almost always start with the music first and usually by playing around with chord progressions and perhaps start to hum a melody. Then begin to try to write lyrics that fit

[ghostnote]

Almost every post in this thread contains some part of my process. I never sit down to deliberately write a song, but when I do write I almost always write music-first. It’s extremely rare for me to have lyrics already written and then put them to music, like Elton John, although I have done that. I sometimes do put a guitar line where the vocal will be, almost as a placeholder until I figure out what the song is about. Sometimes that gets deleted later, sometimes I keep it in - it all depends on what else happens along the way. But I try not to have a lot of rules about what I do - I don’t stick to any format. I try to let spontaneity happen when it will.

[broy]

I basically have 2 starting points to writing songs, I've either got a *jam down on the guitar that I want to add vocal, or vocals (at least a phrase or idea) that I want to add music.

Which ever way I start - I try to see how the first piece makes me feel, or the feelings I would like projected - then I add the second part.

Right now I've got an awesome jam in A I want to turn into a song - and now I'm thinking about what the right story would be to go with that jam. IMO, a jam gets changed when you add words, so i really like to think of them together.


*Jam (not sure I'm using it right, but this is what I mean) - loop, progression or something on the guitar that gets my juices going.

[SongwriterFan]

I did a poll on this a few months ago. As I recall, it was about 1/3 "music almost always first", 1/3 "lyrics almost always first", and 1/3 "some of both" . . . or something like that. I may have had five choices.

I have always written the words first.

[lppier]

Thanks for the discussion - lots of interesting insights. For me personally it was always vocal first , either with or without instrument. Then I realised that having a keyboard was a good way to visualise the melody lines , then I started to do that to refine ideas.

Which was why it got me thinking whether people actually submit demos with a lead human-like instrument.

[SongwriterFan]

Sorry, I misunderstood the question.

Once I'm ready to come up with a melody / chord progression for my songs (words always written first), I just pick up the guitar and sing along with it.

The one exception (so far) was the first one I wrote . . . I played that on piano, and used the piano to play the vocal line (along with the chords).

That being said, I typically "hear" the melody in my head even before I pick up the guitar. Sometimes I even hear the melody / chord progression as I'm writing the words to the song. That's becoming far more typical now . . . and it helps with getting the words right.

[Charlie Bernstein]

Originally Posted by SongwriterFan

Sorry, I misunderstood the question. . . .

It morphed a bit. All interesting questions, though.

[Chipotle]

I am a vocalist, so of course I hum/sing a melody rather than play it initially on the guitar. In fact, I don't think I'd want to come up with a melody on an instrument--you can play things that sound great that don't translate well to a vocal. By far the easiest way to write a part is to compose the part on the instrument in question, or at the very least have some familiarity with the instrument so you know what "makes sense" in that instrument's idiom.

That said, I have occasionally come up with a guitar lick I like for a song, and then incorporated that lick into the melody.

[Mbroady]

For the longest time i would start out with a groove and sing random melodies, adding syllables and words in the hopes that something would be downloaded from the song universe When it works it works well. But most of it was dribble.

These days I (try to) come up with at least the idea of a song. A verse or 2 that flows and says what i think I want to say. I 'm finding that I can achieve better prosody if I can latch on to what i perceive as the natural rhythm, stress, and intonation of the written words. once the train is rolling, then I will do whatever is working in the moment.

[Silly Moustache]

Originally Posted by lppier

I was wondering about this - suppose your intention is to write a song with vocals.
How often is it that you start off with an instrument on the melody line, instead of straight vocals/ humming ?

Ah! this is the age old question the TV and radio interviewers ash songwriters.
I think that the best answer either or both.

In one case, Mando Bob came up with a riff on his National, and said "Can you write a song for this?"

Considering that we are elderly men who always discuss our aches and pains before playing, this took about ten minutes :



This one was written with love for a friend who was losing his wife to incurable illness.



This one is my "Dad song" .... everyone should have a Dad song.



The chord progression is about as simple as it could be as it was really just about .. my Dad.

[Cecil6243]

Different strums for different bums?
Different picks for different hicks?

It seems there is a lot of variation out there and it depends on the artist?

[The Bard Rocks]

Though I mostly play tradit0nal or old music, I have written maybe 100. Normally I am in a nooding mood and something strikes me as better than what I have been futzing with. I work it around and around, changing things slightly as I experiment. Eventually it stops changing and I write down the notation. Ok, I've composed a tune, a melody.

Some of them cry out for words and won't let me alone until they have some In those cases, i first try to decide what kind of song it should be - a ballad, a love song, something funny.... Only then do the words come.

Sometimes they come easy and I get to the tweaking stage quickly. Then there are a few who stick around for years before the right words came to mind. If I get stuck, there are times when I just start singing and something close to what I want shows up. More often it's good old trial and error. The important thing, I have discovered, is to just do it. You can tweak it later (forever). Tweaking always take more time than a first draft, whether it is song writing or a chapter in a book. One of my favorite living writers said that she typically does 50 drafts of a book - which may have something to do with the quality of her published product.

[zuzu]

I write melody first about 90% of the time. Usually start out humming and then work the melodic phrase (my usual starting point) out on guitar and capture with my phone. Then I begin browsing related notes and phrases to compliment or "answer" the beginning phrase, as if connecting a chain together, eventually capturing a melody line on my phone, most often for the whole song, end to end. Days...or even weeks...later, I listen back to it to see if it deserves further development or the delete button. This happens several times a week, and I usually have a backlog of a couple dozen melodies in the queue. Once I retrieve one from the queue to work on finishing it I normally won't work on anything else until it is, in fact, finished. Just my normal approach...though, I must say... the 3 best songs (imo) that I've done were nothing like that. With those 3, it was as if the ceiling opened up and they just landed in my lap.

[zuzu]

Well, I say "my 3 best", but maybe it's really more like "the 3 I've done that people enjoy right away". There is a distinction, I suppose.

[fpuhan]

I suck at writing lyrics. I've written a grand total of two songs during my 56+ years of playing, and have performed exactly zero of them live.

But I really like playing with chords, rhythms and solos. I've currently been enjoying a progression that came to me out of work I was doing on another's song. My problem sometimes is that I feel my work is overly simplistic or derivative at times, so I'm reluctant to perform them (as instrumentals) live.