generating melodies by theory?

The song that first brought me to this forum was 'Strangers on a train'. I was worried about me breaching copyright.

The first two verses came easily, but each time I set out to generate a chorus it somehow turned into another verse.

I wanted to enter the song into a songwriting contest so I paid for a local Croydon musician to transcribe the tune and accompany me at the contest. **

When I told him I had not been able to generate a chorus, he said there is a standard way of doing that from the melody of the verse, and told me how, all beyond me. However, it worked, and he generated the melody of the chorus from his algorithm and the melody of the verse.

It was the first triumph of theory that I had witnessed.

Does anybody on rmms have any ideas what could be method used?

David F. Cox ** (his house move came on that day, so I had to sing unaccompanied.

There's a ton of different techniques that could have been used.

Take the verse melody, transpose it a 4th up. Expand some of the rhythms, make some of the intervals larger and cut a couple of notes.

Your ear should always be the deciding feature.

Personally, I'd only use theory to generate a list of options and then see if I liked any and then I'd experiment with them to see if I could make them better.

BUT.

I usually start with the chorus and work the other way round.

Watson (the pencil neck) Davis

Well, my chorus' are usually written first but, regardless, I try to abide by the chorus being 'up' from the verses (melodically-start the chorus a 3rd up from the last tone in the verse, for instance), the chorus' pace or meter contrasting with whatever was set in the verse, and (very optionally) the rhyme pattern contrasts. The highest note in the entire melody appears once, in the chorus, towards the end of the chorus, and it seems like it's good to hold the note longer than any of the notes around it.

I don't think there is a chorus formula per se; it's just that after writing songs for awhile, the chorus just comes, regardless of the verse melody. We all have 'shortcuts', I suppose, is one way to put it . . .

Thanks to those that responded to my question. I remembered that he had done a tape, and went looking amongst many dusty boxes of them in my loft. Second one I picked up! :^) It appears to me that the method Watson described was the method used.

David F. Cox