Melody and Harmony and Scales and Chords

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are.”

“Jingle bells jingle bells jingle all the way.”

“Some---where o---ver the rain---bow way up high.”

“Take me out to the ballgame, take me out with the crowd.”

These words trigger a nearly automatic response in western humans. I bet you sang all four
lines.

That’s what a melody is. In a song, the melody is the line that the singer sings.

I’m not about to attempt to explain how a composer creates a melody. I can’t even say where
the tunes I write come from, much less illustrate whatever incredible musical river Mozart might
have been tapping into.

But if you’re trying to play some of your favorite songs by ear, I can suggest some useful clues
regarding how to conduct a search for familiar melodies and the chords and harmonies that go
along with them. As always, there are patterns when you know where to look for them.

If you’re going fishing, where do you go to find fish? Obviously, the first requirement is a body of
water because that’s where the fish live. There used to be a lot of them. They rarely bother
anyone.

If you’re looking for a melody, the first place you go is to the major scale.

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It occurred to me that nearly all melodies are mostly major scale tones, and I had even briefly
glanced through a couple of songbooks that supported that idea, but I hadn’t ever really
thoroughly checked it out until recently.

I was teaching at Music Villa in Bozeman, Montana (www.musicvilla.com 406-587-4761) while

writing this book and there is always a wide selection of songbooks from all genres of music.

So I looked through twenty books. Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Californication, Motown
Anthology, Dave Matthews’ Band Under the Table and Dreaming, The Reggae Songbook,
Metallica’s And Justice for All, The Country Music Songbook Series Volume 4,
Rolling Stones’ Tattoo You, U2 All That You Can’t Leave Behind, Cole Porter’s Love Songs,
Neil Young’s Harvest Moon, Led Zeppelin’s The Best of Led Zeppelin Volume 1,
Sheryl Crow’s The Globe Sessions, Ani Di Franco’s The Best of Ani Di Franco for Guitar,
The Willie Nelson Songbook, Tori Amos’ MTV Unplugged, Tracy Chapman,
The Eagles Complete Volume 1, and the Grateful Dead Anthology.

I think it’s fair to say this is a wide enough variety of artists to constitute a cross section of
popular music. I intentionally stayed away from the jazz books, because jazz is not usually
considered “popular mainstream” and that is what we’re examining here.

Melody and Harmony 419

 I used over a hundred random tunes, a minimum of five songs from each book, and I counted
each melody note in those songs. Well, not quite random. I used the first five songs in each
book that were in major keys. Anyway… 100+ “random” pop tunes.

Then I counted every accidental in the melody… that is every melody note that was anything
other than DO RE MI FA SO LA or TI.

Over 90% of the melody notes were either DO RE MI FA SO LA or TI.

Over 90% of the melody notes were either DO RE MI FA SO LA or TI.

The majority of the remaining 10% of the notes were ♭3rds or ♭ 7th… in other words, “blues”
notes. Over 80% of the melody notes in all these tunes were 5 tones. DO, RE MI, SO and LA.
Can you spell M-A-J-O-R P-E-N-T-A-T-O-N-I-C S-C-A-L-E?

I really didn’t anticipate that the percentages would be as extreme as what I found. 80% to over
90% is a lot. (I can’t say for sure, but I’d be willing to bet a bundle that the melodies in songs in
minor keys are real similar to the structure I found in the major keys).

I counted them. You can take my word for it, or try it yourself. With any songbook. If you come
up with some real different results, I’m sure that Pinky would love to hear about it.

Now, just in case you’re a player who just wants to be the equivalent of the “lead guitarist” with
somebody else doing all the singing, you may think this is not especially relevant.

In fact, this idea is just as important to the soloist.

I did the same sort of exercise with a bunch of “classic rock” lead guitar solos, by people like
Jimi Hendrix, Joe Walsh, Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, Mark Knopfler, Jimmy Page, Jerry
Garcia and David Gilmour and got just about the same results. I intentionally chose songs that
had solos that I consider to be melodic and I didn’t actually sit down and count all the notes, like
I did with the vocal melodies… it’s more of an “estimate”, but it’s a good estimate.

Consider some classic guitar solos, things like Jimmy Page’s “Stairway To Heaven”, David
Lindley’s lap steel solo in “Mercury Blues”, David Gilmour’s ride in “The Wall” or Eric Clapton
and Duane Allman in “Layla”. Often, you can pretty much sing along with the entire solo. Maybe
you can’t hit the high notes, but my point is that for the most part, great solos aren’t
predominately about blistering speed. Melodic ideas, great phrasing, dynamics and tone are
elements that are usually more important than pure speed.

I didn’t look at metal shredders and jazz players, because they fall outside “mainstream pop”,
but this discussion is quite pertinent to playing melodic solos.

If you look at the notes used by country, bluegrass, reggae and folk lead players you’re right
back in the range of 90% of the notes being major scale tones.

Singing along with scale exercises is an important step toward being able to incorporate vocal
phrasing and melodic content into your solos. When your rides stop being more or less random
notes from the “blues scale” and you start choosing the notes from the same scale to create a
nicely phrased melodic idea … that’s when your solos start to sound like solos.

420 Melody and Harmony