How would you go about making melody on this?

[shawshawraw]

lol, I was a La Ti Do guy and Jan talked me into Do Re Me (thanks Jan!). It took a good month or two rebuilding my hearing, but the benefit comes out huge, because the relationship to the tonic is much much clearer. Worth a try! See how that contribute to your internal language

[jancivil]

Who puts slashes before 7s? I've literally never seen it.

Who is saying use roman numerals for chord charts in lead sheets?

the problem that this only works if you specify the actual chords.

This begs to be mocked. In what you replied to, guess what, I used the_actual_chord_name. No one does what you're arguing.
The only possibly headache-inducing thing there is the incoherence and the strawmanning, while I was making perfectly reasonable points, and already granting the pop or lead sheet usage prevails and actually stating

It's not used for lead sheets with chord names

Evidently you aren't comfortable with - or particularly versed in - roman numeral with figures analysis.
Somehow lower case "v" is insufficient and needs the quality of its 3rd appended to it? It looks ignorant (and who_does_that).

One expects when doing so the reader is familiar or can figure it out.

(whether it makes a difference specifically or not)

includes in implication that in some contexts - let's say a singer-songwriter strummy strum artist in open position - one is not doing voice leading. It would not be meaningful. In harmonic analysis, it is.
To indicate the difference - in function and in sound - between a real add6 and a minor 7th/third in the bass I think it's ok in that context to be educational, saying vi6/5. My bad.
When there is a slash chord it's probably suggesting a voice moving.
HOWEVER, a whole chord chart thingy, eg.:
Am, Am/G#, Am/G, D/F#, F^7 | G Am / [] [] is going to convey Stairway's opening bit more easily to most and that's what I would write, in most if not all cases. This is what a chord depiction in a lead sheet does. Explaining the voice-leading in an analysis is a different job. Chromatic figures are complicated and unless we need to understand it, doing too much here.

one supposes your strawman thinks something there unique to your 'tude.

[Functional]

You seem to be misunderstanding; the slash is pointing out what's in the bass in relation to the chord. The quality of the third doesn't necessarily have to be explicitly written out, except it helps in few specific instances to clarify things. Pretty easy example would be the seventh: i - i/7 - i/b7, indicating the very same Stairway's opening. Which is something that can happen with third too, where for instance the bass goes from minor third to major third. Why the slash? No other reason except avoiding small text formatting when you can get away with it - that's really it.

We use this system between friends because it has been pretty helpful.

And it's loosely based on this way of notating bass: https://youtu.be/g-h2dNjE4ng?list=PLnxJ ... GWYGYFBVbJ (the purple text at the very beginning explains how it goes; stuff like "6" or "63" would be "3"). Here you can also find things like b6 in bass (during 3:47, the B/G). No slashes of course, because you wouldn't use them like this

It ain't that deep and I'm not sure where any supposed strawmans are? Like jesus

Also, typically if I play bVII6 - it's going to be a bVII6 with 1-5-1 bass on the bottom. I get your point about it being just v7 with third in bass, but the sonority of that matches pretty poorly when not only the third gets doubled, but also the seventh. It doesn't sound like any kind of v7 to me

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

All I wanted was to sing to God. He gave me that longing... and then made me mute. Why? Tell me that. If He didn't want me to praise him with music, why implant the desire? Like a lust in my body! And then deny me the talent?

Antonio Salieri in Schaffer’s “Amadeus”.

One thing species counterpoint hasn’t got any universal reciepes for is how to write a good cantus firmus, the main melody. The melodies were already given in exercises. Not even this system tells the reader how to write his melodies, only to arrange them harmonically and polyfonically. It was the eternal question without answer, left to the relation between God and man, and the talent the former gave the latter. Making melodies is a spiritual thing in classical music, and no harmony analysis of any kind is going to help. This is the part of it all that is you and you alone. Best advice I can make from it is: Save a prayer, relax, forget all words, listen and let it arise from subconsciousness by help from your muse. Best thing is to start with the melodies and make progressions accordingly, imo, not vice versa, but it can work as well, and sometimes I have been there myself.

And that’s my two cents. Hand them to your muse with a kiss, and she may reward you accordingly.

Happy music making.