Having worked with singer/songwriters for many years, either as recording engineer or as music director/arranger, I’ve found that over time, a lot of singer/songwriters will continue to develop their lyric writing skills, but find it hard to develop their musical skills. The main reason for this is that they when they encounter any musical materials, they also encounter music notation, and that’s big deterrent for people to get a better control of their musical materials, since they don’t read music. So, they don’t develop this aspect of songwriting equation.

However, many of them have told me over time that if they could just see what to do on a keyboard, or have it explained to them on a keyboard, they could understand it, cause the idea of musical notation totally eludes them. So that’s how this training was born. Putting materials out there that everybody will understand upon hearing, and in a way that they can easily interact.

Another reason for doing this, is that whether in musical notation format or not, there is no system out there for objectively writing melody in a way that gets results and doesn’t get lost in theoretical analysis

Since music is something you hear, I thought that presenting this material as sound examples, with a visual that people could emulate would be the easiest way to teach these concepts.

Also, to my knowledge, this is first time that melody is being presented as a series of note groups, which I’m calling melodic words for simplicity’s sake. This is a modular approach to writing melody, making it a more tangible process. Think of it as melodic Legos. It's easier to write songs if you already have groups of notes that sound good, and put them together to make larger musical statements. Because all these melodics words are based on the chord, they're guaranteed to work.

The advantage of using “melodic words” is that you can build a melody quicker, and since the “melodic words” are based on the chord, they always sound right. In everyday language we have words. We say “cat”, “refrigerator”, “table”. We don’t look at the individual letters, we look at a group of words. Now when we create a sentence like “The cat is on the table”, we’ve made a statement. Similarly, by putting melodic words together we make a statement, the logic of that statement being determined by the chord being used at any point in the song.

Below are a series of initial questions and answers, that will grow as I get feedback in the future.

F.A.Q.

Who are you and have you written any music?

My name is Paul Radelat and I've been writing music for a long time. You can check out some of my music at www.soundclick.com/paulradelat.

What do I need in order to get the most out of this course?

The only thing you need is a keyboard to follow along and use as a tool to learn the melodic words. You don’t need an expensive keyboard, a small keyboard that can be gotten for $10 to $100 dollars is all you need. You’re not going to become a keyboard player, just use the keyboard to make it easy to remember and experiment with the melodic words. For guitarists, I would suggest getting a keyboard with a transpose, so you can tune the keyboard to your guitar. All the exercises are in C major, some guitarists do their songs in E, G, D, A and tuning the keyboard to guitar in these keys allow you to continue using the same white keys of the keyboard.

As an additional resource, I would recommend Band in a Box, a program that generates accompaniments. The reason for this is that you can have Band in a Box playing in the back, while you experiment with you melodic words to create a melody. Suggested but not entirely necessary.

What is the premise of this course?

What if melody was presented as a foreign language? What if it was presented so that it was something you can hear, not funny dots on paper? You don't learn theory, you take the chords you know and learn how to use that as a springboard, so you can learn the words of this new language. Putting those words together you construct a melody. The more words you know, the more experience you get putting together these words together, the more sophisticated melodies you can write. So, after putting some time into learning these words, you actually have something you can use in your musical life.

When you work with lyrics, you work with a notebook and a pencil, or do them on a wordprocessor. That's how you make these ideas in your head into tangible things that you can edit. In the world of melodic words, your notebook and pencil are going to be a keyboard. It could be a $10 dollar keyboard or a $50 keyboard, you're not going to learn to play keyboards, it's just something that going to work as your notebook and paper, so this melody thing becomes something tangible.

You don't need to know music theory per se, all you need to know is 3 chords and have a desire to write melody objectively, like you presently write your lyrics.

Who can use this course?

Mostly, people who have had experience writing songs for a while and want to expand their melody writing skills. Beginners with a good background in music will in all likelihood be able to follow along.

Is this course going to affect the way I write now?

Yes, you will use a different approach to writing songs than you do now, but in the end, if you learn enough melodic words and their mechanics, you will write more varied music than you ever did before and music that can stand on it's own.. It will based on the knowledge you have now, so your'e really just expanding on that knowledge.

I write my music along with my lyrics, how can this course help me?

Well, if you're a dedicated songwriter, you'll find that after you look at your song for a couple of days, you'll want to improve certain things. For most songwriters, this means improving the lyric. They leave the melody alone, cause they don't know how to improve the melody. It's amazing how may songwriters out there think that their lyrics are their song. A song is a combination of two elements: A good lyric and a good melody. Ideally, the lyric should be strong enough to stand as prose and definitely the melody played by itself should stand on it's own. Another thing is a song is not a vocal. If what was making a song was the vocal delivery, then that melody needs improvement. So, for this and other reasons, everybody needs the tools to be able to improve the fruits of their craft.

How quickly can these materials be assimilated?

Well, it would take a long while for anybody to memorize all the “melodic words” per se, but anyone can start using these right away. Once you grasp the logic, as you play through the melodic words, you’ll find some you like better than others, and start using those as the basis for your melodies. You don’t have to finish the entire course to start writing melody. However, you don’t get to start writing very expressive melodies until you have covered the “scale segments” and “color tones” section. Once you complete that section, you can write very sophisticated melodies.

People who have more facility with playing instrumental music, or are fluent in their instrument will have an easier time. People who use programming languages will probably have an easier time. Although material assimilation and memorization can take a long time, you don’t have to memorize anything to start using the materials. Just grab a couple of the melodic words and start using them as the basis for your melody.