[King Singh]

Hey.

I've had writer's block for bloody ages. I pretty much always write the music for a track before the vocals.

I have recently written a track - a feat of which I was chuffed about, seeing as it had been so long coming. The problem is, I am finding it extremely difficult to write a vocal melody, for both the verse and chorus sections.

Here's the track - http://soundcloud.com/kingsingh/idea-may-2012-4/s-Q2XRa

It may be that the main guitar melody in the verse gets in the way, but even when I play the track without that guitar melody, I still find it very hard to come up with anything.

Does anybody have any suggestions of techniques that they use?

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Cheers.

[Kafla]

Welcome King Singh!

Something that works really well for me is muting all the tracks - just have the main chord instrument playing - piano , guitar

Write your melody and then record.

Unmute all tracks and remove anything that competes with your melody.

Simmer for 20mins and wash down with a nice glass of claret 

[tina m]

seeing as a songs only as good as its melody i always start with the melody & the riff/chords that go with it
if i write the music first & then try to fit a vocal melody in i fall into the same trap as you which isnt surprising realy becos your making it an after thought

[Boydie]

I think the problem is that you have already written the melody!

Your lead guitar line is taking the place of the vocal melody - and in the places where it stops the chords are short and stabby so the vocal melody line has pretty much already been written for this part as well

My suggestion would be to either concede and replace the lead guitar line with some lyrics

OR

Remove the guitar line and replace it with a more interesting melodic line


I think KAFLA is spot on - I would remove ALL melodic instruments (including bass) and just play the drums and chords

I fell in to the exact same trap myself last summer - I worked some songs up to the point where all they needed was a lyric & melody

Unfortunately in my case it was the bassline throwing me off and I couldn't get any finished


A far better way is what TINA has suggested so I would try this for the next one

I would suggest coming straight in with the guitar lead line as nearly 30secs is quite long for an intro (especially if it is intended as a demo) and then use this as a theme for your vocal melody

[King Singh]

Yeah, I think you're probably right. I didn't really set out to write a song. I noodled on guitar then recorded it. Then it became a song without vocals. I had already tried muting all the other tracks so it was just drums and piano, but I still struggled because the original melody was already in my head. I shall probably just leave it for a couple of days, then come back to it.

Thanks for the advice.

[Nekia]

You've written the vocal melody via guitar. It's very kings of leon-ish.

The thing I'd do is use that melody but in the last looped bit before the guitar loop starts again, let that bit of guitar remain to fill in for vocals, that's always a nice hook when the vocal melody gets repeated with an instrument instead of over lyricized.