Melisma: Lyrics & Melody

About

Type the words. See where they fight the beat. Every songwriting book teaches prosody — putting the stressed syllable of a word where the music is strong — and no tool has ever checked it for you. Melisma does. HOW IT WORKS • Bring a melody in from MIDI or MusicXML — any DAW or notation app — or tap the rhythm of the line with your finger. You don't need pitches; prosody is about where the notes fall, not what they are. • Type your lyric. Each syllable is placed under the note it lands on, with a dot above for the stress and a coloured line below for how badly it clashes. • Where a word is accented on the wrong syllable, Melisma says which word, which syllable, and why — in plain English, on the line itself. • Press Play and it sings the line back, building each syllable from its actual vowels and consonants, with the playhead lighting each syllable in time. WHAT'S INSIDE • Pronunciations from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary — 126,000 words with the stress marked on every syllable. A word it doesn't know is flagged rather than guessed at quietly; set the stress once and it remembers, in every song after. • Rhyme graded from sound, not spelling: perfect, family, additive, assonance and consonance. Rhyme from any word in any line, not just the last one you typed. • Syllable counts, rhyme scheme, and melisma marks for one syllable held across several notes. • An engraved score with the words underneath. • Export MusicXML for NoteFlight, MuseScore, Sibelius, Dorico or Finale; MIDI with the syllables as lyric events; the plain words; or the whole project, losslessly. • A multi-song library that saves as you type, keeps the last five versions of every song, and keeps a second copy outside app storage so your work survives a full phone and reaches a new one. • Finalize marks a song done and offers to lock the split with your co-writers — carrying the title, the names and the date. Never the lyric. • Fully offline. No account, no sign-in, no ads, no in-app purchases, no subscription. • Melisma collects nothing. Your lyric never leaves your device. WHAT IT WILL NOT DO It won't flag syncopation. Putting a stressed syllable on an offbeat is normal and good and most of popular music. What Melisma flags is the music accenting the wrong syllable of a word — the thing that makes a singer stumble. Melisma is by Songdeed. Pairs with Filigree for the melody, Mediant for the chords, and Continuo for the bassline.