Basically, if you have the lyrics before you have the music, you should think of a melody.. something that comes to yer mind when reading the lyrics. Once you have a melody, write it down, or even better - when u you have a midi program like cubase - programm the melody as midifile.

Then it is a good idea to take the first few notes of the melody and search for a chord that has most of these notes in it.

If you have a very slow melody it is a good idea to build a chord on almost each note of the melody. if the first note is an A for example the first thing that comes to mind would either be an Amaj or Amin chord, or parts of it liker an A5 powerchord. If that isnt the sound you wanted try other chords. just improvise over the melody with chords..

Or the other way round.. go and think of a nice chord progression that hits the caracter of the lyrics. The improvise a nice melody over it. then go and fit the word into the melody or vice versa fit the melody to the words

[Edited by Azrael on 05-12-2002 at 09:53 AM]