Why I keep melodies simple (I have to)
Okay. New module. The Melody Problem.
We've spent a lot of weeks on chords and words. Chords, order, when to change, keeping the wrong finger. Words, what's true, the one line, plain over fancy. That's most of a song right there.
But a song needs a tune too, and I want to be straight with you about something before we go further.
Melody is the hard part for me. I can write words all day. I can build a chord progression in my sleep at this point. But landing an actual tune, one that sticks in somebody's head and doesn't wander off into nowhere — that's where I struggle. Always have. So the melodies I write are plain. On purpose, mostly, though also because the fancy ones get away from me if I try.
I used to think that was a weakness I needed to fix before I let anybody hear my songs. I don't think that anymore. I think plain melodies are just... a legitimate choice. A tool, not a compromise. Some of the best old songs run on four or five notes total. Nobody complained.
Here's the actual problem with melody
Words have rules you can learn. Say the true thing, cut what's not needed, land on the line that matters. Chords have rules too — three of them, in an order, changing where the words tell you to change.
Melody doesn't hand you rules like that. It's more like... you're feeling around in the dark for the note that sounds right, and "right" isn't a thing you can point to on a chart. That's what makes it hard, and that's why so many people quit songwriting right here. They can write a decent verse. Then they try to put a tune to it and nothing comes, and they figure they're not musical enough, and they stop.
I don't want you stopping here. So tonight I'm going to hand you the cheat I use.
The cheat: steal the shape, not the notes
You already know a hundred melodies. Hymns, radio songs, that thing your kid's music teacher taught at the school program. You don't have to invent a shape from nothing. Borrow one.
Pick a song you know well. Hum just the melody, no words. Now try singing your own words over the top of it. It won't fit right away — your lines are a different length, probably — but you'll feel where it wants to bend. That bending is basically what writing a melody is. You're not inventing from silence. You're adjusting something you already have in your ear.
This is not cheating in any way that matters. Nobody's going to sue you over a melody shape. And once you've done this a few times, you stop needing the borrowed song at all — you start bending toward your own shapes instinctively. That's the whole apprenticeship.
A story about a wrong finger
I've told you about keeping the wrong finger if it sounds good. I want to give you the actual story behind that, because it's a melody story too, really.
Years back I wrote a whole song around one chord I liked. Liked the sound of it, built the rest of the progression to lead into it and out of it, made it the anchor of the thing. Later, a kid at the school — one of my grandkids' friends, actually knew his chords — looked at my hand and said, "that's just a G, you've got your finger in the wrong spot."
He was right. I'd been playing a mistake for weeks and building a whole song's melody around the sound that mistake made.
I kept it. The wrong finger stayed in the song. Because here's the thing — the "correct" G didn't sound as good to me. The mistake had a little extra color in it that the right version didn't have. If I'd known the chord chart cold from day one, I never would have found that sound. Not knowing enough is sometimes how you find something.
That's the opinion, plain: three chords is plenty, and you don't need to know more before you start. People think they need theory, need to understand what they're doing, before they're allowed to write anything. You don't. Most of the songs that outlived their writers ran on three chords and whatever the writer's hand happened to find.
What to actually do this week
Don't try to write a big, ambitious melody. Try this instead:
- Take one verse you've already got — from any of the exercises the last few weeks.
- Hum a melody you already know. Anything. A hymn, a nursery rhyme, doesn't matter.
- Sing your verse over it. Let the words bend to fit. Notice where they don't want to bend — that's usually a sign the line's too long or too short, which is useful information for your words too.
- Once it fits roughly, start changing notes here and there until it stops sounding like the borrowed song and starts sounding like yours.
You will feel silly doing this out loud in your kitchen. Do it anyway. I still feel silly and I've been doing this for years.
If you've got a bad singing voice — I do, genuinely, I'm not being modest — that doesn't matter here. Nobody's grading the voice. We're grading the shape.
Before next time: bring one verse with a melody attached, even a stolen, half-bent one. It doesn't need to be good. It needs to exist. 🌞