Melody is a more advanced building block than rhythm. It is the pitches you sing, the part you hum. If you’re new to music, one way to become more familiar with melody is to draw the contours of songs. Choose a favorite song, then get a pencil and piece of paper. As you listen to the melody, draw a horizontal line — going up when the notes go high and down when the notes go low. Start a new line for each phrase (sentence) of the lyric. If there are multiple singers, listen to the song again and use a different colored pencil for each additional voice. Below is a melodic contour of Claude Debussy’s Syrinx, one of many videos available on Stephen Malinowski’s Music Animation Machine channel.
If you’ve studied acting, you may know Laban movement’s effort shapes, which are another tool to practice song contours. Three qualities of effort are time, weight, and space. Time is sudden or sustained, like the rhythmic variation of short and long note values. Weight is strong or light, like the tension and release of note pitches. And space is direct or indirect, like the steps and leaps of note movement.
Combining these effort actions yields eight effort shapes: flick (sudden, light, indirect), dab (sudden, light, direct), slash (sudden, strong, indirect), punch (sudden, strong, direct), float (sustained, light, indirect), glide (sustained, light, direct), wring (sustained, strong, indirect), and press (sustained, strong, direct). Write pieces of melody that reflect the contours of as many of these shapes as you can, perhaps connecting some into phrases.
Another exercise is to print a page of sheet music and white-out the words, then fill in new lyrics for the original melody. Start by noticing the rhythm and beat. Choose words that can fill the exact number of notes and patterns of stress in the melody. Remember, the stressed words are the important words in your phrase.
You can also print a copy of the sheet music and white-out the notes, then fill in a new melody for the original lyrics. To create your new melody, start by speaking the words over and over, listening for their natural pitch and rhythm. If you can’t get the original tune out of your head, try a nursery rhyme instead.
Add more emotion each time you read the lyric aloud — making the high words higher and low words lower, the short words quicker and the important words stronger. To highlight important words in a lyric, you can put them on a long note, a high note, or a note that is long and high.
When you’re ready, fill in the new notes (if you can write music) or record yourself singing or playing an instrument. Finally, review your pattern of notes, the contour of high and low in your melody. A melody with no repeating shapes can be boring, but one with too many can be hard to follow.
Another good source of practice lyrics is the packaging copy on snack bags and shampoo bottles. Four phrases are enough for one complete stanza. For example, let’s look at copy from a popcorn bag. “My father was a hopeless cook, but made the best popcorn. We’d spend hours experimenting with ingredients and seasonings, impatiently waiting for each kernel to pop, so we could try out our latest recipe.”
As you compose the melody, feel free to tweak the copy as you like. Let’s start with “My father was a hopeless cook.” Read it over and over, adding more emotion each time, until you have a melody. Next, try “But he made the best popcorn.” Notice that I’ve added the word “he” to make it a complete sentence. Read this phrase over and over, until you have a melody.
The next phrase is a bit long, so let’s trim it to “We’d spend hours in the kitchen.” Again, read and read, until you have a melody. Finally, let’s end with “Waiting for each kernel … to pop.” I’ve added a break in the phrase to emphasize the fun opportunity in the onomatopoeia “pop.”
To see how music and lyrics fit together, look at some of the songs in Big Book of Broadway (2000).
Next, music first.