Use the Notes in Your Chords If you're really stuck on coming up with a melody, an easy place to get started is to use the experiment with using the notes in your chords as a basis for your melody.
For example, let's say you have a verse that switches back and forth between a C chord and a G chord.
Knowing that a C chord is composed of the notes C, E and G, you can use those three notes as a basis for your melody when you're playing the C chord.
A G chord has the notes G, B and D, so when you switch to the G, you can use those three notes in your melody.
Maybe the notes of your melody become C-E-G, over the C chord and then G-B-G over the G chord.
So your motif will be composed of the notes C-E-G-G-B-G, over the C and G chords.
You can experiment with different rhythms for the notes to see what works best, but this can be a good place to start.
Scales & Modes Whichever mode your song is in (i.
e.
Ionian, Dorian, etc), you can use that mode to create melodies.
If your song uses C Ionian chords, you can use the notes from the C major scale over your chords to come up with a melody.
If you're song is in G mixolydian, you can use the G mixolydian scale as a basis for writing your melody.
I'll show you an example of what I'm talking about in the key of D Aeolian.
Let's say the chords in our song are Dm - Gm - Am.
In this case we can use the D Aeolian scale to come up with a melody on top of these chords.
The Aeolian mode relates back to the major scale, or Ionian mode by having a flatted third, sixth and seventh notes.
So in relation to Ionian, it is: 1 2 3b 4 5 6b 7b 1 Since we're working in D Aeolian here, the notes will be: D E F G A Bb C D Since our chords are in D Aeolian, we can use the notes of the D Aeolian mode to come up with melodies over our chords.
Try recording a chord progression of Dm - Gm - Am, then play around with some of the notes of the D Aeolian scale over it, and see if you can come up with a melodic motif you like.
You're not soloing here.
Instead you're looking for a short catchy piece of melody you can use and modify to become the basis for your melody.
This concept applies to each mode.