Which comes first?

A common problem many songwriters and composers have is whether to write the melody first or the harmony. I think most people have a way they like to do things and they don't often deviate from it. I however think both are important and both have strengths and weaknesses.

When I first started I would try to write a melody and then fit harmony to it. This didn't work well because I didn't know enough about song structure or harmony to make the rest of the song fit my melody. Then I tried writing the harmony first(after studying for a bit). I had a bit more success, but now my melodies were weak and I could hide that fact sometimes, by writing a lot of different harmonies and adding unique rhythms, but I couldn't write a nice melody to a simple set of chords.

I finally realized that I need learn to write both ways. I know some people are thinking, "why learn to write another way? What is the point?". One great reason is that it opens up a lot if possibilities as far as what songs you can write. If you can only write melodies it might be hard for you to find interesting harmonies to fit your melodies. Most people sing melodies that fit into 1 key and they don't have many interesting notes.

On the other hand if you only write harmonies it might be hard to make a melody that sounds good. Even if you can make one, can you make one that flows together with the rest of the song, without sounding like a bunch of disjointed melody fragments.

In the next few weeks I'll go over how I write songs starting with melodies and starting with chords.

Songwriting: Chords First