You can cover the entire range of melodies using just the three basic chords.
Conversely, you can compose melodies using only the three basic chords.
However, as you practise more and more, your melodies begin to get lost amongst those you’ve heard before or already hummed to yourself. And so, in a bid to find a way forward through complex chord progressions, you start spending time on the dry, academic study of harmony theory—a subject far removed from musical intuition.
Creating melodies based on counterpoint
Ever since I started playing hard rock, I stopped paying attention to chords. To begin with, chord books where the chord changes every beat seemed utterly unreasonable. So I started composing songs by listening to a melody of about eight bars on repeat and layering another melody over it.
I can’t seem to have a proper conversation with my friends
Having had no formal training in music, I don’t know the correct term for this technique. What’s more, no one I’ve spoken to seems to recognise it. I did come across the word ‘counterpoint’, but I’m not sure if that applies, and the theory behind it is so incredibly complex that I don’t have the nerve to mention it.
That said, when the melodies overlap, even though both use simple scales, they somehow end up sounding quite rich, which is a real bonus.