Songwriting: How To Write Chords To Your Melody Lines!

In my guitar and songwriting lessons, students often ask me how they can figure out the chords to their melodies when they are writing a song.

While this is pretty large topic to cover, I can get you on the fast track giving you some pointers to get you started.

Ear training:

The better your ear is, the lesser time you are wasting on “trial and error”.
If you can’t tell the chords by ear, you can literally spend for ever hitting chords, till you found the one that you think is the one you were looking for.

Ear training is THE most important thing to work on for all musicians Exercise 1:

Play random notes on your guitar, then sing the notes out loud, matching the note of your guitar with your voice.

Record yourself doing this.
If you never practiced your ear before, you probably will have a hard time matching the pitch you were playing with your voice.

Do 3–4 sessions of 4 minutes a day.

No worries! You will get better at it and it will get easier.

You want to record yourself doing this, and listen back to the recording so you can see how far you were off and hear where and how to fix your pitch accuracy.
It’s easier to hear what needs to be fixed when you can sit back and relax and listen back to a recording of your performance.

Originally published at www.zotzinguitarlessons.com.