I applied for a job on ‘Melody Maker’ once.
Traveling to Europe and traveling in the U.S.A. was a much different experience. ‘On the Road’ exemplified everything glamorous that was happening on this side of the planet. The book puts off some kind of sweet melody – part hope for the world, part nostalgic.
We’re falling into a place where melody is somewhat lacking in music. Everybody feels like, okay, too much melody or too much harmony, and it kind of goes over people’s heads; they don’t understand it.
When I sing, it’s different from when I speak in a very interesting way. I think that, when you’re singing, a message is carried in a different way. I don’t know if that emotion needs a melody.
Songs should have an infectious melody and rhythm and, I think, should elicit an emotion of happiness or of celebration or of sadness or of sorrow or of love or laughter, whatever.
We knew we wanted to put a lot of melody into it – a lot more than what we did on our first album.
As far as melodies go, I could probably write 100 songs in a day – with no words of course – just because I love melody.
You can’t read to yourself. It’s your inner ear that hears a poem. If you hear a poet read his own work, it becomes very exciting. The melody is a great part of it.
As a kid, on the cotton fields, I had this tune in my head. I hummed it and sang it. It was the same melody as ‘When A Man Loves A Woman.’ I could never, ever forget it.
Nothing matches the sheer euphoria of discovering a new melody or a new batch of chords that just come out of nowhere.
I don’t really have a favorite genre. I could listen to a rock song, a metal song, jazz, pop music, whatever. For me, whatever style it is, it always depends on the chord progression, the lyrics, and the melody used.
I rap on ‘Front Porch Junkies’ and ‘Whatcha Got in that Cup.’ I try to channel my inner Lil Wayne and Drake. It’s fun to be able to freestyle over a country melody and say country words over a rap song.
I’m good at melody – I’ll write the top-line melody and ideal words I want to go with it. But I’m not that good at writing lyrics. I bounce those back and forth with songwriters or someone who can sing.
I find I’m not one of these composers that are, you know, walking along a beach or walking on the mountainside in County Donegal that’s, you know, ‘Oh, a melody.’ It’s more a matter of eventually taking that moment with me to the studio, and it begins to evolve.
Sometimes songwriters and singers forget that. They get a melody in their head and the notes will take precedence, so that they wind up forcing a word onto a melody. It doesn’t ring true.
Rhythm, melody, message, that’s what matters. Our main concern coming out of the gate is to make sure those foundations are strong, the songs are speaking to us. Everything else, horns and strings, is sweetening.
They were singing in French, but the melody was freedom and any American could understand that.
It varies from song to song, but melody was always easy for me.
No matter what I’m writing, I almost always start with the music. Definitely, the melody seems to set the tone for whatever emotions come to follow, and whatever’s going to be written down. It always starts with the music, for me.
Always when I write my music, I take my guitar, and I improvise always with a melody, you know, lyrics in Spanish. But sometimes I use some words in English. I don’t know why. Maybe because I listen to a lot of music in English.
I started writing songs before I could talk – at three or four. It was in me, and I had to get it out. It was all freestyle, which is how I write anyway. I don’t write the words down; I scat and come up with the melody, then the lyrics.
I love great lyrics, and I love the way it could shape a tune into a very unpredictable one, and I also like taking a great melody and putting lyrics into it.
In ’77 there was no Internet, there was no Twitter or Facebook, and I think that, without being some old git who hates anything new, people’s attention spans are too short. Back then you had ‘Top Of The Pops’ and ‘Melody Maker,’ and you had to make the effort to go to a show so that you absorbed the culture of music.
A jazz tune, melody, or composition is usually based on either a traditional twelve-bar, eight-bar, or four-bar blues chorus or on the thirty-two-bar chorus of the American popular song.
There’s something to writing a hook and something to writing a memorable melody. That’s what I liked about musicals. Then I realized I could write my own songs, and I didn’t have to sing other people’s.
My biggest influences were 1980s punk and metal. Metallica were my biggest influence because they were good at everything – riffs, energy – but with such an ear for melody, it was hard not to get pulled into it and become a fanatic.
Lyrics are important, but it’s hard, because English isn’t my first language – although it feels like it is these days! I grew up with amazing melodies, so getting that right on a song has always been the key thing for me, but there’s no reason why a great melody doesn’t deserve great lyrics.
I feel pretty comfortable in a lot of different musical styles. I like rhythm, and I like melody and so forth.
Nobody heard records of you playing whatever the melody was on those low strings. It worked out good, you know, about 25 or 26 million records later. I guess it worked out alright.
At times I have a beat first and then I write. Sometimes I have a melody in my head and I pick up the guitar to develop the song. Other times I just write without any melodies, and I end up using those lyrics when I think I have the appropriate instrumental that would bring out and depict the emotions of what I have written.
I still have a passion for the music, which is such a beautiful thing. I still wake up in the middle of the night out of a dream and have a melody in my head, and run to my piano.
On ‘Black Ben Carson,’ I had strict no melody thing. I wanted straight, raw, rugged noise music.
For me, music always leads. Lyrics are only about how they sing. It is wonderful if they read well, too. In the very best scenario, sometimes a lyric will pop out with a melody, simultaneously. That’s a lovely thing, but you can’t rely on that.
The great musics of the world are great for very similar structural reasons: good melody, good harmony, and a balance of feminine and masculine energy.
After playing now for 60 years, it’s still very challenging for me to play a simple melody and have it clean and touch the reed at the proper time in the proper way.
For me Brazilian music is the perfect mix of melody and rhythm. It just bubbles rhythmically. If I had to pick just one music style to play if would be Brazilian.
I find it really irritating when a band changes the melody of a song you know.
With all the strife in the world, we must never forget that there is always a new melody, a new tune, a fresh star.
I’m not one for walking the beaches humming a melody. I love the discipline of sitting in the studio, writing and listening. That is my domain.
When I was in high school, I was doing all the plays. My drama teacher, Melody Duggan, was the one one who first made me do stand-up. She’s the origin of the whole thing; it’s all her. In high school in Denver, that was kind of the beginning of it all.
The film producers have to understand that melody is the base of Indian music – they have to come back to that. Else, we’ll have short lived chart toppers which dim on public memory that moment the film if off screens.
I’m completely open about the fact that I don’t love every genre of metal. I like what I like. It’s got to have some vocal quality and some semblance of melody.
I always try, when I’m singing songs, to interpret them the way that I would’ve arranged them. I think about the melody first, and then I pull out my guitar and start singing it.
When I’m writing songs, I write visually. When I’m writing the words down and I listen to the melody and the lyrics, I start seeing the video form. And if I can get through a song and from the beginning to the end have the whole video in my mind, I think that’s a great song.
The way I see it, there’s only one melody for any song.
Melody is the single most important thing to any song, period. I don’t care what anybody says, it trumps everything. Not because that’s my opinion but because I think it’s actually indisputable fact. The human brain retains melody easier than it retains words. It’s that simple.
I think my first experience of art, or the joy in making art, was playing the horn at some high-school dance or bar mitzvah or wedding, looking at a roomful of people moving their bodies around in time to what I was doing. There was a piano player, a bass player, a drummer, and my breath making the melody.
With iPhones, nobody has an excuse for writer’s block. If you’re at Whole Foods getting your green tea extract and you have a melody, you just drop it into your voice memo and save it for later.
When I write a song, I get the melody right first, and then hopefully I can back it up with a lyric that has to respect the melody.
Usually, the music inspires the lyrics. The lyrics just sort of fall off like a bunch of crumbs from the melody. That’s all I want them to be – crumbs. I don’t want to work any kind of fabricated message.
The only thing that I miss lately in all music is somebody that will put out a melody that you can whistle. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything happening like that.
