SkyCanyon

Thank you for elaborating the importance of a strong melodic idea. Perhaps what gave me trouble at first was that our European music tradition has a well-developed sense of melody and chords, whereas I've been listening quite a lot to African or African-derived rhythm. I was trying to do both at the same time. I have to *start* somewhere, so I need to decide which part of the song will be the focus, and allow the other parts to support that.

And here it is, in my opinion. Alison Goldfrapp's beautiful voice carries the primary melody soaring above a slow throbbing rhythmic theme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S85nT1n5fzg

In this case, the melody is the one tied to the lyrics. It's the primary melody as Tom said, unless I add a lead guitar or other instrument to take over and do a different melody for a while. So far, this is only vocal, keyboard, bass and drum. So I'm dealing with the primary melody / rhythm (drum) on a very elemental basis. I've been listening to the radio with this topic in mind and found a good example of a tight relationship between primary melody and rhythm: Ben E. King's "Stand By Me" Now I'm trying to find an example of a loose relationship.

Something tells me you hit the nail on the head regarding the way/sequence this was put together. This is the first time I've written and mixed tracks at the same time. Something was bound to go off course. I'll go tidy up! (Hey aren't you the guy who wrote Pentatonic Playground? I've had that in my iTunes for quite a while.)

I'm building a song on my computer by recording tracks and then mixing down. This first tune has a distinctive rhythm pattern, and I'm noticing now that I put all the pieces together that my melody sounds detached from the rhythm. I have a few ideas about how to fix this, but I'd like to hear any tips that someone would like to offer? (Several heads are better than ... )