Creating a song. Starting points / techniques.

Drange

Artist
Alright, so I am a rapper that has been vigorously improving on my singing and ear training recently.
A song behind all the production is a melody and accompaniment at a tempo.
Let's assume that there is no beat made and to make a song I need to provide melody, chords for accompaniment, choose a key, lyrics, and the tempo.

The tactic I am currently attempting IS to make all this BEFORE the BEAT.

1. Do most rappers have the production all done before even thinking of the melody / lyrics?

2. Writing lyrics does not necessarily mean writing the melody, can anyone elaborate on their method of equipping melody to lyrics? Or perhaps when writing melody do they have a melody in their head that they attach it to?

3. I can write melodies on piano and then write lyrics to them, however, that is a tedious process and I would love to find an efficient way to write lyrics first and then create a melody afterwards - any insight on methods would be greatly appreciated.

Like always, feedback is always appreciated.
 
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Tough questions with little in the way of easy answers; if any.

Every writer is different and has their own take on how these things should be done.

I have some tricks for taking words and rhythmatising them first so that adding a melody becomes easier, but it is a private project that I'm seeking a publisher for.

Moving beyond that, there are other books out there that discuss how to match up lyrics with a rhythm and melody.

The key to this is understanding rhythm in different ways. Pitch, even in rap is secondary as it tends to be minimal movement with occasional cadence reinforcement from the tendency tones - 7-1 and 4-3

Melody writing is a task that is best done both at and away from the keyboard.

You work at the keyboard to confirm your ideas and explore variations on them.

You work away from the keyboard to create ideas based on your understanding of scales: use simple writing tools like
  • . for rests/silence
  • - for notes that stay the same
  • / for notes that move up
  • \ for notes that move down
  • { for notes that jump a 3rd or other larger interval (you can add a number to help you decipher later, e.g. {4 means jump up a 4th)
  • } for notes that jump don a 3rd or more, same mods as above.

The first 8 bars of Ode to joy (Beethoven's Ninth Symphony) would be rendered as --//-\\\\-//-\-/-//-\\\\-//\\-: scale is C major and the starting note is E so the above renders as: E-E-F-G-G-F-E-D-C-C-D-E-E-D-D-E-E-F-G-G-F-E-D-C-C-D-E-D-C-C

Using 5mm|1/4" grid paper you can even set up a rudimentary rhythmic grid that breaks the beat up into 16ths or lower:

--//-\\\
EEFGGFED
\-//-\-
CCDEEDD
/-//-\\\
EEFGGFED
\-//\\-
CCDEDCC
 
For melodies I am a big fan of turning a recorder of some kind on and just improvising using vowel sounds and random words. The most important part of a melody (to me) is the phrasing, and natural phrasing comes to me most organically when I am performing without thinking. If you are struggling between something that sounds better and something that gets the message across clearer, I nearly always lean towards what sounds better. If your lyrics aren't crap then they should communicate what you intend for them to. Most of my best lyrics simply stumbled out of my mouth in the form of an interesting phrase or even a couple of words that rang true. Just don't ignore your intuition on this stuff.
 
I have made rap only a few times, and I can tell you that making the beat FIRST might be a better approach be ause you'll be able to focus more on the beat before any lyrics come into effect. Write the lyrics first, and you'll find yourself trying to complete the beat as fast as possible, which can probably lower the musical quality.
 
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