Try speaking the first line of your chorus out loud a few times in a natural, relaxed tone of voice. Then start to exaggerate the pitches – raise the high words higher, low words lower. Exaggerate the rhythm of the phrase, emphasizing the stressed syllables. Now, turn those high and low pitches and stressed beats into a melody. This is the hook melody and lyric of your song, so you want to be sure it’s emotionally “true.” Using this method of deriving a melody, you can be certain that it is.

-from Notes on Songwriting by Robin Frederick

The beauty of the composing method above is that the melody is born quite naturally from the lyric. It may be comforting for you to realize that we are all natural melodists—if you don’t believe me, ask a question aloud right now. Did you hear yourself reach for a higher tone when you pronounced that last syllable?

If you listen closely, you’ll find that we all change pitch regularly in conversation. I’ve noticed that women seem to vary pitches in conversation more than men–they’re natural singers. Do you suppose it’s easier or harder to write songs in a language—like Chinese—in which the pitch of your voice can change the meaning of a word?

• Get into character. Like an actor, try to really get into the spirit of the song and feel the lyric.
• Take it one syllable at a time. A melody, after all, is just a series of pitches. Take it one note and one syllable at a time and the process will seem much less daunting.
• Emphasized syllables and words tend to be higher-pitched, or held longer–or both. Experiment with emphasizing different words in the line to find the best setting.
• Work on paper. I find it’s much easier to get my head around the task if I write my lyric below a music staff–that way I can easily see which note corresponds to each syllable. If you don’t know how to read and write sheet music, you might also try writing your lyric under a guitar tab, finding the note for each syllable on your guitar and writing it in above that syllable.
• Lyric structure will change your melody. When you’re setting a lyric to a melody, that lyric will shape your results. If you want all the verses to use the same melody, for example, you’ll likely need each verse to have similar syllable counts per line. If it feels like you’re having to squeeze words in to make it fit, you may have to prune the lyric. Be prepared to make changes to your lyric in order to smooth out any rough edges.
• Get rhythm. Some songwriters find it hard to work in a vacuum. A backing track or rhythm of some kind can help give you a context to work in–different rhythms will present different possibilities for your lyric. Experiment and don’t give up!

Good luck.

More Items of Interest

• Read the rest of Robin’s Notes on Songwriting.
• Pat Pattison: How to Sing as Naturally as You Speak
• Having Trouble Writing a Chorus?