Melisma: Lyrics & Melody

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.