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awareness will enable you to change whatever needs to be changed. For example, check to see if you are always
starting a melody on the same note of the chord.
When Morrissey came to fame as vocalist of The Smiths, it was not uncommon to hear people say they thought the
band's songs sounded alike. One major reason was Morrissey's use of certain step-wise movements in his melodies,
regardless of what the chord sequences were doing. He was fond of starting tunes on the fifth note of the scale and
moving step-wise down: 5, 4, 3 and then to 1. He also excluded any blue notes and blues-influenced phrasing. This
gave The Smiths a more English sound. Around the time of the albums Green and Out Of Time, Michael Stipe of
R.E.M. repeatedly moved from 1 to 4 and 3, exploiting the tension of the 4, as on 'Nightswimming'. Joni Mitchell
often ends phrases on the blue b7 note and then rises to the 1. Her melodies are full of unpredictable leaps and
descents. Paul Rodgers of Free established an immediately recognisable style with heavy use of blue notes,
especially the b3 and b7. Many classic Beach Boys tunes have phrases that end with a decorative 5-4-3 flourish, a
trick copied by 1990s bands like Supergrass in 'Alright' (bridge) and Foo Fighters in 'This Is A Call'. Natalie
Merchant's melodies with 10,000 Maniacs are often quite similar. During the mid-1960s Dylan often created tension
in his melodies by singing the fourth note of his underlying chord (in effect like a suspended fourth)
Singers
A melody can be given a certain amount of spontaneous decoration. This is called "melisma" and is frequently heard
in blues, gospel and soul and their derivatives. Soul singers such as Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding,
Wilson Pickett and their white counterparts and admirers – Dusty Springfield, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart
- decorate melodies by slightly extending notes in various ways at the end of phrases. In the 1990s, this was taken to
hideous extremes by Whitney Houston, following the example of Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder, who often
seems to use a melody to show off her vocal technique with rapid downward and upward scales at the end of a word.
This can be as witless and redundant as a heavy metal guitar solo. Don't overdecorate a melody – let it speak for
itself.