Chasing Holdsworth's tone

      The first time I heard Allan Holdsworth I was 16 years old. I remember reading online someplace that he was a completely unique player that resembled John Coltrane on guitar. Being a huge fan of Coltrane I thought I'd check him out. I bought 'Metal Fatigue' on LP for about $2 despite the fact that I didn't have a record player(nobody was listening to records anymore back then). Luckily my uncle had one and I remember thinking it sounded a bit dated, but interesting. Then it got to the solo and I was blown away. As I listened to more songs on the album I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The tone, the technique, the melodic-ism, the harmonies. It was all so impressive and it still is. It took me a long time to figure out how to get close to his tone. It's not exact, but hopefully I can help some people get close to his tone. Anyway here is the video explanation of how I go about getting his tone.

If you don't want to listen to the explanation just watch this, which is just the demo songs.

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Songwriting: melody first

Last time I talked about starting with chords and then adding a melody. This time we're going to reverse that and start with a melody.

Obviously you can just do this by ear, but there is a faster way. First find the key of your melody. After that's done try to determine if your melody is major, minor or perhaps some sort of modal tonality. Once you know this, look at your melody and try to find the strong notes of each measure. Here is a melody I composed quickly. It's in the key of C major,

I'm sure you're thinking, how do I know which ones are the strong notes. Look for long notes, notes that occurs on down beats or notes that are repeated. Of course use your ears, but in general those tips will help you identify them. Here are what I chose as the strong notes, but keep in mind this is more art than science, so it's possible to come up with different notes than what I have here.

Now you should have 1 or perhaps 2 strong notes for every measure of you melody. Once you have that look at the chords in the key you found before. Take the notes that make up the chord and assign them to measures containing those strong notes. Of course this doesn't have to be random. Use your ears and think of common progressions that sound good. After you've done that insert the chords into your song and see if it fits your melody.

I think it's best to consider the overall key and common chord movements. For example have the 1st chord be the Root major chord of the key and have the last be the V major chord of the key. Check out my post on common chord progressions for ideas. That said, you can try some new ideas and try to come up with something a little more original. Here I added some 7th chords with extensions to get a different sound.

Ultimately you have to decide for yourself though and as I always say let your ear be your guide. Also another method to use when there are few long notes is to look for arpeggios inside the melody as often then can be you guide. That's it for this article. I hope it helped and if you have any questions, leave them below.

Songwriting: Chords first

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Songwriting: Chords first

So you have a chord progression that you think sounds awesome and maybe you even have a rhythm. Despite that for some reason you can make a good melody. The easiest answer is to just listen to the chords and hum a melody.

Here is an example of a melody I came up with by humming over a typical chord progression. 

chords only

 

with melody

This is so easy you I imagine most of you have already thought of it. Don't worry I'm not going to waste your time by only giving you that. 

Another option is to look at the chord tones of the progression and then choose one note for each chord. That note will be you main melody note over that chord. When picking these notes it's usually best to pick notes that flow smoothly into each other rather than jump around although some jumps can make a melody interesting. Then embellish the main notes with shorter notes to add some interest. Also remember that you don't have to start on the 1 of every bar. Remember that even though this method is more mechanical than just humming you still need to let taste be the ultimate judge.

Just the chord tones

 

With some short notes added

  

Now with some rhythms changed 

 

I hope this gave you some ideas on how to write a melody when all you have is some chords. Of course there are some other techniques you can use to develop the melody, but hopefully this will give you a starting point.

Next time I'll go over how to start from a melody and then add chords to that.

 Which comes first: Melody vs Chords
Songwriting: Melody first