Once I’ve got the music for a song pretty together – the melody, the rhythm, and the harmony – I’ve learned that it’s very useful to…

s l o w   t h i n g s   d o w n.

When I slow things down I notice a lot of things that just fly by when I play the song up to tempo.

I play the melody (by itself, no chords) as slowly as I can, taking note of the –

Range.  Too narrow, making it monotonous?  Too wide, making it hard to sing?

Motion.  Do I have an appropriate – for the song – mix of steps, repeated notes, and leaps?

Does the melody tell a story?  Does it feel like there’s some kind of beginning, middle, and end happening in the melodic phrases?  Does it go somewhere… or just around in circles?

Then I pay attention to the rhythm of the melody.  Too repetitive?  Too many downbeats?  Does it have a jump, a flow, a life of its own away from the chords moving?  Enough variation, or too much?

(It seems with music, and particularly songs, that striking the balance between repetition and variation is the Eternal Question.  Too much repetition can lead to dullness.  Not enough repetition, and it doesn’t even feel like a song.)

Then I play the chordal harmony – s l o w l y – along with with the melody, asking myself –

Do the harmonies really fit the mood and tone of the song, the feeling of the words and melody?  Am I putting chords in just to be cute or clever… because I can?  In this case is simpler better?  Or am I missing a place where the melody can be enhanced by another chord, or a movement within an existing chord?

How does each note of the melody – played slowly at this time, lingered over – fit with its chord?  Does something need to change?  Does everything ultimately feel natural (though I may have to play it for a while to get to this ease)?

The faster the song, the more useful this technique can be.  In an uptempo song, melodies, rhythms, and harmonies go by very quickly, but I maintain that at a quick tempo we still feel all that emotion that’s contained in the music of a song, in the same way we feel it in a ballad.  Just quicker!  We don’t notice the response as much… but we feel it.  So the time spent being meticulous – and slow – about the details of the music pays off no matter what the final tempo ends up being.

At some point in the writing process, playing everything in the song like it’s a super slow ballad is a very revealing tool.