I'm no composing master or anything but here's what I say works for me, though I will use the word "WORKS" loosely here. I hate notation myself, its not natural to me still.
If you're using chord on bass, I'd use a mid range to high note selection, based off, as said before 5th's, 7th's work, and anynote in the chord you're playing should be ok. For example, the chord is C E G (2, as in bass note), so maybe you'd play some notes for melody on another instrument say piano at G5 B6 D7 (MIND YOU I AM NOT AT A KEYBOARD AT THE MOMENT TO TEST, THIS IS AN EXAMPLE ONLY AND SHOULD BE CONSULTED WITH REFERENCES TO CHORDS SINCE I DON'T HOLD THE MEMORY OF ALL CHORD ARRANGEMENTS, I HAVE A CHEAT SHEET BY THE KEYS)
Let me know if I'm wrong in what I have stated, cuz really, this is my weakest link.
This is why I sample classical music (alo, since you can't really tell where I get my samples from... I love encorporating 4/3 patterns into 4/4. You may say I'm crazy, but if you have sheet music of famous pieces in 3/4, or 4/3 but make 4/4 (hip hop) tempoed tracks, you can use simple math to find the right time signature. Here's a hint: Think of them as fractions and find the common denomenator.)
Its really kind of cool, 16/12 translates for the 4/3 to 4/4 (12/12), and this allows you to be extremely creative with how you arrange the notes, a lil leeway for you to place them where you want them, but also being able to drop it the same way as on the sheet music. Something I thought you may want to know.
AFAIK this should work with anything, kinda of my mathematical way of converting notes from different time sigs so I can manipulate the piece I wish to sample, without sampling, its all royalty free.
Anything that was before 1900 is all free to use as many pieces of it as you wish. This is why sheet music for like Bach is like gold to me.
Hope this helps. I'll post a second message to explain that with an example.
