1.

Melodic Improvisation, Part 1: Improvise melodies over a chord

progression. Make up melodies, either accompanied or not. As you create
your melodies, think about shape, rhythm, and use of repetition. Then work
out a 2-chord progression, play those two chords over and over (hold each
chord for 2 or 4 beats), and then.. start improvising. If you run out of ideas,
either add to your progression, or create a new one.
2. Melodic Improvisation, Part 2: Create short melodic fragments. Create a
short 4-chord progression. (There are 5 listed at the end of this blog post if
you want some that you know will work). Now, improvise a melody as you
play through the chord progression. Repeat your improvised melody, then
create a new one, repeat it, and on you go. No stopping between new
melodic fragments.
3. Lyric Imagery. Open any novel to any page. Find the first noun. Write it
down. Quickly develop a list of at least ten words that are either synonyms or
relate somehow to the word. Example: Your chosen word: ‘Story’. Your list
could be: ‘tale’, ‘yarn’, ‘account’, ‘facts’, ‘read’, ‘lie’, ‘fib’, ‘book’, ‘paperback’,
‘pages’… You’ll notice that my list went from thinking of ‘story’ as kind of tale,
to words relating to reading, to thinking of ‘story’ as a kind of falsehood, and
back to book again. It’s important to work quickly, and force your brain into
action.
4. Quick Rhyming. As in the previous exercise, open a book, choose any word,
and then quickly think of a word that rhymes. If you can’t think of an exact
rhyme, try an approximate one. (Example: ‘heroic’ – ‘stoic’). For a next step,
create short lines of lyric that use the rhyming words. Work quickly.
5. Song Title Creation. Create possible song titles and write them down. Work
quickly, and don’t worry that you don’t have a story yet. (Examples: “Love Him
or Leave Him”, “Aunt May’s Ghost”, “You Make Me Want to Need You”, etc.
Now pick up your guitar, strum any chord, and sing your title to an improvised
melody/rhythm. Try different melodies. The key is to work quickly.