Hi I'm New Here, Problems With Melodies....

[lilmissnisi1]

I can write lyrics on the top of my head but I get stuck with melodies. They're either crap or not really melodies at all.

My problem is when I dream I end up having great melodies with the lyrics and it becomes a complete song. Then when I wake up, the melody just goes, I can never remember them again. I never have time to record it as I rush to get to work. Or if I have them in my head, never have time to record it, I listen to other music during the day, I completey lose the melodies that I dreamt of.

I'm thinking of writing jaws, blues and pop. Alicia keys and Kelly Clarkson inspired.

[john]

Have a recorder, recording app, dictation device by your bed. First thing you do when you wake up... Sing, whistle, hum the melody, or all the bits that you remember. Like anything else you get better at it with practice.

Get over any embarrassment and sing or at least hum, anywhere. Get used to carrying your recorder with you (easy if it is your cell\moby) and just click record any old time you hit on a bit of a melody you like.

Seriously worth the time any passing embarrassment you might fell. Tbh, people rapidly get used to you singing, and they just factor it into who you are. Some will even join in!

[MikeRobinson]

Believe me, lilmiss, what you're describing happens to everyone  â€“ most famously, to Samuel Taylor Colridge, the writer of the (unfinished) poem, Kubla Kahn -or- A Vision In A Dream.

 

According to the above-cited Wikipedia article:

According to Coleridge's Preface to Kubla Khan, the poem was composed one night after he experienced an opium-influenced dream after reading a work describing Xanadu, the summer palace of the Mongol ruler and Emperor of China Kublai Khan.^[1] Upon waking, he set about writing lines of poetry that came to him from the dream until he was interrupted by a person from Porlock. The poem could not be completed according to its original 200–300 line plan as the interruption caused him to forget the lines.

 

(Opium optional . . .)

 

In addition to "the tape recorder (phone ...) and pencil-and-paper beside your bed," just think about the song even though you can't at the present time remember all of it.  Part of you certainly still does.  Mull it around, and, as you might recall little pieces of it, capture those little pieces.  Make up other little pieces to go with it.  You can still create a good song from those inspirations.  Encourage your mind to be thinking about music whether you are awake or asleep.  Don't throw anything away:  lightly pencil through it; shove it into a different folder on your desktop.

 

And keep this thought in mind, too:  "songs are partly inspired, but mostly they are built."  The version that you remember dreaming was only one possible version of one of the musical thoughts that are running around in your head.  Spend some quiet, seriously concentrating time every day, removed from this world's endless electronic distractions ("turn the !@! thing off!!"), thinking about music and letting your thoughts just run around.  Capture them and put them down, but not with the expectation that they will ever just pop out of your head and present themselves to you as if to say:  "Here I am!  Au fait accompli!"  Yeah, they might do something like that in a dream, but even those are, really, unfinished.  Instead, you'll grab inspirations out of the ether ... fragments ... and forge them into a song (or, songs ...) of your liking.  You'll shape them, rearrange them, tease them, choose.  All of these things after "the dream has come and went."

 

It's the same principle for any, and every, application of human creativity.  Making an inspired piece of sculpture still requires a chisel . . .

[MoeJo110]

I hate when that happens! I know it's hard to record sometimes, but try to keep the melody in your head till you can get somewhere you can record it. Might have to sacrifice some conversations, but if you struck gold you gotta keep it! Just go to the bathroom or something, no one will question.

One problem I think is you think of the melody, then listen to other music, which causes you to forget if. That is a no no that messes me up a ton, so try not to do that.

One thing I tried, I don't know how it worked though, is I wrote the melody on paper, but not actual notes though. I just wrote out the melody with lines, up meant higher pitch and vice versa. Plus, the longer the notes the longer the lines. That's just if I'm desperate though. Might be worth a try though.

[TPistilli]

Seriously worth the time any passing embarrassment you might fell. Tbh, people rapidly get used to you singing, and they just factor it into who you are. Some will even join in!

 

That is some excellent advise - and so true! You just helped me out, man.  Thanks.

[john]

Let me know how it goes. I found most initial embarrassment had passed within the first hour or so of doing it. That said, I would run into new situations that felt initially awkward, and some that just weren't appropriate, but the exercise is not in forcing it on every situation, it is about overcoming embarrassment, letting go, maximising your practise time, improving your melodies etc. It is also great for building bridges, building confidence in general, and helping make new friends, break the ice etc.

it actually becomes funny to observe reactions, such as other people's initial embarrassment on your behalf, but they soon get over it.

[mrun213]

Have a recorder, recording app, dictation device by your bed. First thing you do when you wake up... Sing, whistle, hum the melody, or all the bits that you remember. Like anything else you get better at it with practice.

Get over any embarrassment and sing or at least hum, anywhere. Get used to carrying your recorder with you (easy if it is your cell\moby) and just click record any old time you hit on a bit of a melody you like.

Seriously worth the time any passing embarrassment you might fell. Tbh, people rapidly get used to you singing, and they just factor it into who you are. Some will even join in!

I second this. I used to make the mistake of hearing an amazing song in my dreams and would wake up later thinking I'd write it down later. Unfortunately I co0uldn't remember the lyrics OR the melody. Now I record anything I hear that sounds really good to me to make sure I have it for later use.

[Brad Barnett]

Have a recorder, recording app, dictation device by your bed. First thing you do when you wake up... Sing, whistle, hum the melody, or all the bits that you remember. Like anything else you get better at it with practice.

 

This is great advice.  Something you should have on you at all times.  The singers in my band use the recording device on their iPhones to record melodies or riffs they think of as soon as they think of them.

[Rudi]

I'm thinking of writing jaws,

 

I googled this and found nothing. What is jaws?

[TPistilli]

Probably meant jazz. But autocorrect fixed it.

[Rudi]

Ah...

 

As in Modern Jaws Quartet!

 

(..and why am I humming 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat' ?)