Put your hands up if you feel that  you are not bad at writing melodies, but sometimes they sound  a bit, can I say the word boring? Sorry, but mine sound a bit boring.  Anyone else write boring melodies?  Let’s just hear it for the boring melody people.  The thing is,  it’s, it’s difficult, isn’t it? so what we’re gonna do  is we’re gonna talk about ways to try and think a little bit more.
 Not about the notes that we use in the ies, but the rhythm of the melodies.  So, hopefully it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be fun and we’re gonna learn something and I’m gonna share with you some of the techniques that have helped me get better at, writing better melodies.  And definitely these techniques have helped me get more successful as a songwriter and more songs, cut and more songs on records, and also got me in the room with some better artists and more interesting artists.
 So hopefully it’s gonna be fun. So, some of you will be new to this songwriting academy. Some of you will be, been here a while. So some of you might have seen a couple of the master classes I’ve done before, or some of you might even been to the bootcamp recently that I did. So we are gonna talk, for those who don’t know me, I’ll talk a little bit about who I am, ’cause it’s always useful.
I think, did the slide change then? Hands up if the, if the, oh my goodness, this is going so well. that’s insane.  PowerPoint is my friend today. This is really cool. So, we’re gonna  talk about tonight how to write melodies with more effective rhythm and phrasing.  I hope you’re gonna learn something from this
So  by the end of this session,  we will hopefully know how to make a melodic sections shine. Whoa.  We’ll get better at, troubleshooting our melodies.  We’ll have some new tools to kickstart our melodies  and hopefully be inspired to write fresher, more exciting top lines.
 So for those who dunno who I am  and why, it’s a subject that I think I know a little bit about.  I’m a writer and producer with BMG Publishing. That’s, a pretty big music publishers. I’ve had two songs on number one record this, this year, UK number one, which has been brilliant. songs on eight uk number one records  of a billion streams of Spotify.
And  as well as the kind of professional music stuff I’ve done. I’ve also done quite a lot of mentoring and teaching in songwriting. and some of  the, the, some of the problems people have come across I’ve really heard, because I’ve had to mark  up to about a thousand songs at the end of term. And, which is kind of really interesting from a songwriting point of view  that melodic problems seem to come up quite a lot in students’ work.
and I think sometimes lyrical problems are a bit easier to, to  solve. so I collaborate with a lot of amazing people. I’m very lucky to do my job. I do a lot of co-writing and I also produce, so of the people I’ve produced and worked with, pretty, pretty fun job as I’m sure you know, from people writing songs.
It’s also a lot of hard work and a lot of long hours. But I’ve been lucky enough to work with some of the really best writers and artists around, and I’m very grateful for them to go in the room with me and write. Â My philosophy on songwriting is basically, Â there are no rules. We all know that. Â And as soon as you think there’s a rule, a massive song will come out that breaks everything we’re talking about. So, Â bear that in mind that all we’re talking about is guidelines guide.
 The first thing I’d like to try and say  is  when I’m singing a melody,  this is, this is, I  I basically, this is, does anyone write melodies this way? Strum some chords.  I  am Writing a melody  chords, yeah, A David Brent moment.
That is so true, max. But  this is one of the, one of the first things  I realized that isn’t really helping me sometimes because  when I’m strumming I’m already doing a rhythm, which is generally a kind of neat rhythm.  So I tend to want to sing stuff that I can sing as I’m strumming the guitar.
 So  just by, first of all,  try not to write a melody while you’re strumming a guitar or playing an instrument. So either going away from your instrument completely and recording your guitar part and then trying to write a melody,  you can suddenly  start writing some more interesting melodies.  Have you ever tried to write a melody? But because your, your strumming goes out of time, so you give up on that melody and go like,  oh, well that can’t be good melody.
’cause I can’t sing it and play at the same time.  That’s not true, is it?  It just means that your brain isn’t very good. My brain isn’t very good to sing something really syncopated and play simp and play a guitar that’s strumming straight,  straight, strums at the same time. The same with piano. I’m not an amazing piano player, but I’ll certainly know that melodically  I’ll come up with more interesting rhythmic ideas.
If I’m not having to think how much of my brain I wonder is thinking of the guitars drumming, how much of my brain is left to think about actually what the melody should be?  So that’s why a lot of my melodies, when I  just sing what comes from my heart, this is what I’m trying to say, I sing from my heart,  it ends up singing  in quite a neat and on the beat way, which is fine.  You know, some songs suit that, some artists like singing that way,  but I dunno if you’ve noticed this, but a lot of pop music that’s really, really successful at the moment, the melodies are a little bit more interesting rhythmically than that.
 So  what I try and sing is I try and surprise myself. This is the craziest thing ever. I try and pretend that I’m not me when I’m singing. Okay,  go with me on this. I  imagine just as I’m about to sing, I’m singing in my song, I go, no, no, you’re not gonna sing that.
You’re gonna think of something different to sing  and try and shock yourself and try and surprise yourself  and always have your recorder on at this point, especially if it’s the first thing you’re gonna sing, the first thing that might fail. I  think this is what’s really important.  You’ve got to be willing to fail massively to come up sometimes with something more interesting. One of the reasons we are saying I’m singing  because, you know, it’ll work,  but  just ’cause it works doesn’t mean it’s great.
 Just ’cause it works doesn’t mean that anyone else is gonna really, really gravitate towards it and think it’s amazing. We don’t want good, we want amazing. And to write something amazing, we might have to fail massively a lot  to try and find something amazing. Most of my life is spent failing to do something really amazing, but I’m always trying to surprise myself into writing something that might be,  what could it be?
What could be that I’m not expecting to sing? I’ll  be doing this kind of nonsense for ages  and trying to find something  that feels like  interesting.  Okay.
And I’m not really thinking of the notes here. You could even think of just singing la la la la la la la la  Trying to get away from, I  am singing on the beat every single time. I find it really easy to sing on the beat.
Does anyone else have that same problem? That they’re good at singing on the beat, but to sing something a little bit more interesting is hard. Okay, quite a few of you raising your hands, which is cool. so getting away from your instrument  is a good thing. The other thing …..
