MELODY, SCHMELODY...
Why it's just as important as the lyrics!
By Jimi Heath Whitelaw

I love a great lyric.  I have vast amounts of respect for someone who has honed their lyric writing craft to a fine art.  It truly is a gift to be blessed with the ability to tell a great story from a unique perspective. That being said, the melody is JUST as important.

There seems to be this small battle between writers over which is more important, the lyric or the music.  I'd like to bury the hatchet and say BOTH.  It's like a marriage, you need two equally great parts to make a great marriage and you need two equally great parts to make a great song.  Unless you are writing instrumentals, which is a different story, but for the sake of this article I am talking about commercial songs with both melody and lyric.

So what if you don't play an instrument, can you still write a melody?  Absolutely.  If you can hum a tune to the lyric you wrote (doesn't have to be in key) you can write a melody!  If you can play just a few chords on the guitar or piano, you can write a melody!  I challenge those who think they can't to just TRY it!

 When you do write melodies, make sure you ask yourself:

1. Does the melody fit the feel of the song?  Does the melody feel real happy but the lyrics are very sad? etc.

2.Is there enough contrast in the sections of my melody?  Does what I'm singing in the verse sound a lot like what I'm singing in the chorus?

3.Is the melody dynamic i? Is the melody changing in the song where the more emotional parts of the song lyrically change?

4. Any melodic extras? Are you going to do something different in the 3rd chorus?  Modulate in the bridge?  etc.

While the ideas above are ones I use a lot, they obviously don't ALWAYS apply but for me, they usually do.

If you just aren't a musical person, if you don't have an ear for or you just aren't that great at creating melodies I encourage you to co write. You can find melody people online, at your church, in a music store, etc.  Just get out there and meet people.  If you show some of your lyrics to a melody writer they might be inspired to write music to them. 

Write a hit!
Jimi