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Section 7—

Melody

ABBREVIATIONSRoman numerals I VII

indicate chordrelationships within a key

m maj minormajor

Song sectionsbr bridge :

c ch codachorus

hk i introhook

pch v versepre-chorus

Most of the chord-sequence examplesare standardized for comparison

intoFamous songs referred to in C or A minor. C major

orthe key of the original recordings A minor are not necessarily in.

More than anything else, melody impresses a song into the minds of its listeners. You hear people singing a popular
song in the street, taking pleasure in recalling the tune. So what makes a good melody?
Great melodies have a certain magic about them. They sound and feel right. They fit with the lyric in such a way that
it seems inevitable that those notes had to go with those words. Perhaps more than any other aspect of songwriting,
writing a great melody is a matter of inspiration. Even so, an appreciation of the shape of melodies, their rhythm and
their relationship to the chords that harmonize them will help you to write better ones, and to improve those you
have already composed.
How do you know which notes will fit with which chords? Many good songwriters have an "ear" for this, sometimes
backed up with no theoretical knowledge at all. For the rest of us, an understand of a few fundamental principles for
harmonizing a tune can help.
HARMONIZING NOTES
Melody notes have three basic relationships with their accompanying chords. We can describe these as "sits inside",
"sits outside" and "sits against''.
1 "Sits Inside" is where a given melody note is the 1, 3 or 5 of a chord. This means that if you strum a C chord,
your melody note will be C, E or G. If the chord is A minor, the melody note would be A, C or E. A melody note
that sits inside blends perfectly because it is part of the chord. If the chord has more than three notes, you could sing
the additional note of the harmony. For example, if you sing B against a Cmaj7 chord – C E G B – the note still sits
inside, though not so perfectly as 1, 3 or 5. The more complex the chord, the weaker the effect.
2 "Sits Outside" is where you use one of the notes of the scale apart from 1, 3 and 5. If you are in the key of C
major and singing over a C major chord, you would sing D, F, A or B. Each of these has a slightly different quality
in relation to the chord, but they all sound more or less tense. You will feel that they want to move to one of the
notes of the chord and sit inside the harmony. This tension can be very expressive. If you listen to the end of 'Good
Year For The Roses', you can hear Costello come down to the key note (1) and then move off it onto 2 for a more
expressive finish.