Adventures in Songwriting: Tools to Help Write Harmony and Melody

Let me start by saying that I have no musical talent. I like listening to music but I've never spent any time studying it. Putting words to the page is my passion, so that's where I spend all my time and energy.

Having said that, I've always wanted to write a musical. And, recently, I've become interested in the idea of turning my mass of poems into song lyrics. I'm always looking for a new way to make my writing profitable and music is an avenue I haven't explored.

I don't know why but I got it into my head that technology might have reached a place where my lack of musical training would be less of an issue. In some ways I found this to be true. There are great tools out there to help the novice songwriter and I found some of them on my journey.

So I went to the web and did a search on songwriting. At first I found a bunch of links to websites and videos that explained songwriting in vague terms. Real quick I got tired of watching instructional videos with people saying things like 'have a sit down and play with your guitar or keyboard.' Like I couldn't figure out to do that on my own?

Mixed amongst all those unhelpful links was a bunch of content on writing lyrics. I guess some people use the term "songwriter" interchangeably with "lyricist." So I changed up my terms. Next I searched writing music and then on music composition. Suddenly I was getting somewhere.

JAMSTUDIO (HTTP://WWW.JAMSTUDIO.COM/)

The advice to sit down with an instrument and play around with some basic chords is a good one. Only I never learned how to play an instrument and I don't really have one lying around to play with. Luckily the first gem I found was this website called "JamStudio."

JamStudio removes the need for an instrument. You can write the harmony and beats for a song with a few quick clicks. You don't even have to know the keys in a chord. The site uses prerecorded loops of piano, guitar, drums, synthesizer, and so on. All you have to do it put it together.

MELODY OR HARMONY

In that last paragraph I wrote harmony. As in not melody. A week ago I didn't really know the difference between those two terms. But now I do. The melody is that music we sing, while the harmony is the music played on an instrument to go along with the song that we sing.

Even after years of watching fictional characters on TV sit down with a guitar and strum until they come up with a song, I never really put it together that the part they sung was different than the part they played. I was just listening to the pretty music.

I found myself playing around with JamStudio but I was still struggling to turn my poems into lyrics that fit over the music I was creating. You need both a melody and a harmony when writing a song. I was missing the melody.

MUSIC THEORY IS CONFUSING

I kept thinking that I really should look into music theory and see what it had to say about writing songs. I wanted to see if there were any websites that could provide me with practical steps to writing a melody to accompany my forays into harmony.

They say that music is math. Well, every site I visited that tried to explain music theory made my eyes glaze over the same way my eyes glazed over in math class. My search on the terms "music theory" lead me down a path of too much information. And information that was all written in the technical language of music theory. I was having a hard time finding a website that explained things in clear and simple terms.

MONEY CHORDS (HTTP://WWW.MONEYCHORDS.COM/)

And then I stumbled across MoneyChords. The explanations on MoneyChords were clear and easy to understand. I will warn you that MoneyChords links to other online music lessons that made my eyes go cross but I found the content written for the MoneyChords website easy to understand.

The combination of MoneyChords and JamStudio is a sure bet to writing a great harmony for a song. MoneyChords explains the music theory needed to write a great song and JamStudio allows you to play with some of that theory. But, once again, I'm talking about harmony.

The thing is this, more than one website informed me that these days popular music is usually written in the following order beat/harmony, melody, and then lyrics. MoneyChords provided some links to lessons about writing great melodies but they all seemed to imply that melody is built up from the harmony. Seems odd to me but that's the way the professionals do it.

MUSIC MASTERWORKS (HTTP://WWW.MUSICMASTERWORKS.COM/) AND VOICE-TO-NOTE

Still, I was looking for some help writing melody, because the melody didn't seem to be coming to me the way it was supposed to. It was during my search for "music composition software" that I first read the term "voice-to-note." This is the coolest thing ever. There's software out there that will listen to the notes you sing into a microphone connected to your computer and write it down as sheet music.

I ended up downloading a trial version of the software Music MasterWorks. You know at the beginning of all this, when I said I have no musical talent? It was this wonderful software that harshly reminded me of this fact. Even with software that will take a tune I hum and translate it into sheet music, I still couldn't come up with a melody.

Sure, with the use of JamStudio and MoneyChords I was able to put together some nice harmonies. But I kept coming back to the fact that a song requires a harmony and a melody. I even tried to record a bit of spoken word to go along with the songs I created on JamStudio but the result was awful. In hindsight it makes sense. I'm a white girl. I really shouldn't rap.

IN CONCLUSION

I was lucky to find the right tools to help me become a songwriter but unlucky in that they clearly demonstrated that I don't even have a smidgen of musical ability in me. Sure, I'd still like to write a musical one-day. And, if I'm ever lucky enough to find a composer in need of a lyricist I will jump on the chance to co-write some songs. But the whole part where I do it myself is totally not happening.

So, if you're lucky enough to have a little music in you just waiting to get out, I highly recommend the websites I've listed above. In no time at all they'll take you from idly humming an original tune to being an honest to goodness songwriter.