Billy,
Interesting post. This is certainly something that most people (including myself for sure) should pay more attention to, so I am intentional about it. Lazy melodies are not catchy, and often monotonous, literally. As in monotone.
Here is a snippet of Hey Jude showing the notes leading in to the chorus, and the chorus.
Since these are "male vocals" they are written one octave up like guitar music, which makes it convenient. You can easily play then on the fretboard in first position. See tab.
Now this song is in F, but note that the lowest note in the whole thing is an E on the d string second fret, and the highest note is a G on the first string third fret. Not much more than an octave range, give or take. The higher notes, of course are saved for the chorus.
My point is, there aren't A LOT of notes, or even a great range, but the notes are carefully chosen.
In your example, in the A chord, you could use a C# sure, but you also could go A to C# or E to C#, or any number of things--but the point is, first pluck the notes on your guitar until it starts to sound interesting in that very simple range, then sing THAT.
A lot of people just walk up to the mic and start singing (no melody planning) and it sounds boring.
So, yes, we should all sit down at a piano or pick up the guitar and pick out the melody more often, if we want to write something as catchy as Hey Jude. We need to fiddle with our melodies more--and maybe I mean that literally too.
Does that make sense??
(P.S. A lot of pop songs these days after two note melodies and that seems all the range, so maybe all of this is moot.)
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