How to Write a Melody for Lyrics You've Already Written

To write a melody for lyrics, get the rhythm from the words first: say each line aloud and put the syllables you naturally stress on the strong beats of a slow count. Then chant the line on one note and lift the words you care about a step or two, the way your voice rises when you mean them. Chords come last, chosen to contain the notes you land on, and you don’t need to play an instrument for any of it.

Start with the rhythm of the words

Words have a rhythm before anyone sings them. Say “jacket” out loud and the first syllable is heavier: JACK-et. A melody that fits its words puts the heavy syllables on strong beats, and that match is a big part of what songwriters call prosody. Get it wrong and the listener hears jack-ET, which sounds like a mistake even to people who have never thought about stress.

Work through each line like this:

1. Say it at talking speed and capitalize the syllables you lean on. Take a made-up line: “i KEPT your JACK-et BY the DOOR.”
2. Pick the two or three heaviest stresses. Not every stressed syllable needs a strong beat of its own. Here KEPT, JACK and DOOR carry the line, and BY is lighter.
3. Count a slow 1, 2, 3, 4 and speak the line over it so the heaviest syllables fall on beats 1 and 3, the strong beats in 4/4 time. Tap your foot or set a metronome to around 80 BPM.
4. Put any unstressed syllables that come before the first stress ahead of beat 1. “I” comes before KEPT, so it goes on the “and” of beat 4, just before the bar starts. That’s called a pickup, and a lot of English lines start with one.
5. Leave space at the end. Hold the last word and rest for a beat or two so there’s time to breathe. Two bars (eight beats) per line is a comfortable default.

Then compare lines. Lines that will share a melody, like the lines of a verse, need roughly the same pattern of stresses. The syllable count can be off by one or two: an extra syllable becomes a quick note, and a short line can stretch one word over two notes. If one line has a completely different pattern, rewrite it, or give it a melody of its own and make it the odd line out on purpose, usually the last line of the section.

How to come up with a melody for lyrics by speaking them

Your speaking voice already has a tune in it. Say the line to someone across the room as if you mean it, and listen: your pitch jumps up on the word you care about and drops at the end of a statement, while a yes-or-no question usually rises. That contour is the rough shape of your melody.

Turn it into notes in three passes, recording each one on your phone:

1. Chant the line on one note in the rhythm you worked out. It will sound like a robot reading a shopping list, which is fine. You’re checking that the rhythm still holds when you sing.
2. Lift the word you care most about a step or two above the chanting note, and let the syllables after it walk back down one step at a time. A leap is fine going into a stressed word, as long as most moves are single steps.
3. Choose how the line ends. A line that finishes a thought ends on the home note of the key, called the tonic. A line that leads into the next one stops somewhere else, which leaves it hanging.

Pairs of lines work well as a question and an answer: the first ends in the air, the second comes home. Here is the example with a second line, “in CASE the RAIN came BACK for YOU”, in C major. Both lines have the same stress pattern, so they share a rhythm and most of their notes. The chanting note is C. JACK and RAIN lift to E and walk back down, and each line leaps up into its first stress from a pickup on low G:

Only the last two notes change. Line 1 stops on D and sounds unfinished, while line 2 steps from B up to C and lands on the tonic. The whole thing uses five notes between low G and E, a range almost anyone can sing.

If you’re stuck for notes, sing only the C major pentatonic scale: C, D, E, G and A. None of those five notes sits a half step from another, so nothing grinds whatever order you pick. If you don’t read music, write the note names above the syllables, or scale numbers (C is 1, D is 2, E is 3), so you can sing it the same way tomorrow.

Make the chorus melody lift

If the chorus reuses the verse melody, the song sounds like one long verse. The chorus should feel like an arrival, and these are the changes that get it there:

The example verse sits between low G and E, and both lines start on a pickup. So start the chorus on the G above that E, right on beat 1, and give the title’s main word the highest note in the song: the A just above that G, or the C above the A if your voice has room. Hold that word for two beats or more. Sing the title line with the same notes at the top of the chorus and again at the end, and listeners hear the hook twice before the chorus is over.

How to put music to lyrics: adding chords

Once the melody comes out the same way twice, give it chords. There are two ways in.

Melody first. Look at the note on beat 1 of each bar and any note held long, then pick a chord that contains them. In the example, bar 1 leans on C and E, so a C chord (C E G) fits. Bar 2 holds D, so G (G B D) fits. Bar 3 leans on C and E again, and Am (A C E) makes a change from C. Bar 4 holds C, so it’s C. That gives C, G, Am, C, or I V vi I. Stopping line 1 on the G chord makes it sound even more like a question, and musicians call a stop on the V chord a half cadence. How to find chords for a melody walks through this for any key.

Chords first. Loop a four-chord chord progression such as C, G, Am, F, one chord per bar, and speak-sing the lyric over it in your rhythm. Aim each stressed syllable at a note inside the chord that’s playing:

• Over C: C, E or G
• Over G: G, B or D
• Over Am: A, C or E
• Over F: F, A or C

The small words in between can use any note of the scale. The guide to writing a melody over chords covers this route in more depth.

Last, check that the key suits your voice. Sing the highest chorus note at full volume. If it strains, move everything down three half steps, from C major to A major. The loop C, G, Am, F becomes A, E, F#m, D, and every note of the tune drops by the same amount, so the melody keeps its shape. If the verse sinks into a mumble at the bottom of your range, go up two half steps to D major (D, A, Bm, G). Settle this before you record a demo, since a key change later means singing everything again.

Writing a melody for lyrics without an instrument

Everything above works with your voice and a phone. A few tools make it quicker:

• A voice recorder. The Voice Memos app is enough. Record every pass, even the bad ones, and name each take by its line. A melody you only remember drifts a little each time you hum it, and the recording keeps the version you liked.
• A metronome at the tempo you counted in the rhythm step, so line 3 comes out with the same rhythm as line 1.
• A chord player to hear chords under your voice. The free online chord player on this site plays the chords of all 24 major and minor keys from pads, with triads or 7ths. Pick C major and tap C, G, Am and F, one per bar, while you sing. GarageBand is free on iPhone too, and its Chord Strips play a whole chord from one tap.
• A way to find the notes you sang. Gelato Synth has a Notes mode: pick a root and a scale and the pads play only that scale’s notes, so picking out your tune in C major can’t land on a note outside the key. Each scale degree keeps the same color, which pairs well with scale numbers written above the lyric.
• Chords and melody in one place. Gelato Chord has seven keys that always play the chords of your key, and its melody plate lights up the strings that belong to the chord you’re holding. That shows you at a glance whether the note on a stressed syllable sits inside the chord.

Get the verse and chorus down as rough recordings before you polish any single line. A melody that works for the whole song with one awkward word is easier to fix than one perfect line with nothing around it.