Writing Melodies

Here's an idea to come up with new melodies: Go into a new tuning you’ve never used before and try to write something completely new, immediately.

Explore it a bit, try to see what is possible just by moving your fingers around. It sounds like a bit of a `caveman’ way of writing music, but it’s very liberating and it’s what a lot of the great songwriters from the past have done. If you imagine Kurt Cobain writing the riff from Smells Like Teen Spirit, he’s clearly taken that power chord and moved it round to places where it will sound good.

It's a great way to write. Almost everything that’s possible in standard tuning has probably been written, and as soon as you tune into a different tuning you can take that `writing with your fingers’ approach and find things nobody’s ever done before.

Alternatively, you could compose using scales and modes. You can also compose using large leaps, which makes the Star Wars theme so memorable. You could compose completely randomly, by the roll of a dice or play what you feel like; there really are no limits.

You could also try stimulating other senses to give inspiration while writing a melody; eating chocolate, looking at a painting, or smelling a scented candle.

See this video for an example of composing using scales. See this video for an example of composing a melody.