Melodics

What Melodics is

Melodics is a practice app for learning drums, keys and pads. You connect a MIDI keyboard, pad controller or electronic drum kit, open a lesson, and play along while the app scores your timing note by note. The homepage calls it "the seriously satisfying practice app" and says it is made for players "beginner to pro." It is a learner product, built for practice rather than video teaching: the lessons are interactive pieces you perform, not recordings you watch.

The About page says Melodics was conceived by Sam Gribben, formerly CEO of Serato, in the summer of 2014. After a decade running Serato he had noticed how important pad and cue point drumming was becoming in DJing and production, and he was frustrated by how hard it was to learn new patterns on his own drum machines and pad controllers. "I've watched tons of videos from expert finger drummers, but it always felt so hard to develop the dexterity and muscle memory you need," he says on the page. Melodics is his answer to that problem.

The app runs on Mac and Windows, with an iPad version and a drums app for iPhone. The site says it has a "cult fanbase of over 1,000,000 musicians."

How a lesson works

The lessons page explains the format. Each lesson is broken into steps: it starts simple and adds another layer with each step until you are playing the complete track. Before you play, a pre-play screen lets you preview the audio, see where the notes are and "get pointers on where to hold your hands," with instructions written by the company's lesson creators.

Then comes the performance. You get timing feedback on every note: green means on time, orange means a little early, purple means a bit late, and the page's advice is to "keep it out of the red." At the end of each step you see your score and decide whether to move on or try again. Over time you can track your progress and see where you have improved.

Practice tools help with hard passages. The site names a practice mode, a wait mode and auto BPM, which let a learner slow things down or wait on a tricky section until it is right. Lessons can be launched from the home screen, from inside a course, or from the full lesson list, and the site says new lessons arrive every week.

The lesson library

The homepage promises "1000s of great sounding lessons covering rhythms, chords, melodies, rudiments and more." The library is organized in several ways so a learner can choose how to work. The site describes four routes: discover genres or master techniques in individual lessons, deep dive into musical concepts in courses, play a favorite song through a step-by-step deconstruction, or start at the beginning with the Guided Path, a ground-up skill-building sequence that "always has your next lesson queued up, so you never worry about where to go next."

Song lessons are a big part of the appeal. Melodics Premium includes "loads of song lessons for all skill levels, tastes and genres," and the homepage adds, "good ones - no nursery rhymes here!" The site says its lessons come from a wide range of international artists and that it works with contemporary musicians on them. Its own pitch is "Less theory lesson, more jam session." The About page grounds that in the music many of its users grew up on, naming hip hop, techno, jungle and EDM.

Artists quoted on the homepage include DJ Jazzy Jeff ("If you make beats… Melodics is like going to the gym for a workout!"), Ilan Rubin, drummer for Foo Fighters and Nine Inch Nails ("Great for on the go stuff, rudiments, learning songs"), and Butch Vig, producer of Nirvana's Nevermind ("I wish I'd had Melodics when I was learning drums!").

The practice method

Melodics is built around short, regular practice and game-style motivation. The About page says that when you start, you get practice goals that grow harder over time, and that "even with small practice sessions of just 5 minutes a day, your skills, timing & muscle memory will start to improve rapidly." The app rewards progress with stars, streaks, challenges, trophies and progressive stages, which the site sums up as "Easy to pick up, hard to put down."

The About page sets out the teaching approach in three ideas. Confidence comes from positive reinforcement and good practice habits ("greatness isn't born, it's grown"). Learning happens by doing, by diving inside the song itself to understand its patterns, theory and structure. And practice improves when motivational technology is combined with deliberate practice and work with contemporary artists. The page quotes the company's head of education, Rodi Kirk, saying that Melodics "can help students develop an active and confident relationship with music."

Hardware and setup

Melodics works with any MIDI-capable keyboard, pad controller or electronic drum kit and supports a wide range of devices by default. The homepage says it works "right out of the box with the most popular devices on the planet," and that it is "the official education partner for music's best brands." If a controller is not on the list, you can map it manually in the app, and the support team answers at support@melodics.com. You can play with a computer keyboard, but the site says it is "a much better experience" with a MIDI keyboard, pad controller or MIDI drum kit. A separate Hardware Controls section and pages for educators and parents sit in the site's resources.

Plans and trial

Downloading the app is free, and the site says you can "Access 60 free lessons straight away." Beyond that, Melodics is a subscription. The plans page offers a free 7-day trial that you can cancel anytime, after which you switch to the plan you chose: monthly or yearly, with the yearly option marked "Save over 50%." Its FAQ refers to two tiers, Premium and Standard, and the plans page markets Premium as the home of "All your fave tracks." Buyers who received a code with an instrument purchase can redeem it from the plans page, and the FAQ covers payment methods, a family plan and a gift option.

Who it suits

Melodics suits anyone who owns, or is about to buy, a MIDI keyboard, pad controller or electronic drum kit and wants to get better at actually playing it. Producers and beatmakers who have bought a pad controller and never learned to finger drum are the audience the app was first built for. Electronic drummers get rudiments and song lessons, and keyboard players get chords, melodies and song deconstructions. The 5-minute practice goal and the game mechanics make it a fit for people who struggle to stick with practice, and the free lessons and trial make it cheap to try.

It suits learners less well if they want a teacher watching their technique, since the feedback is about timing, or if they play an acoustic instrument that cannot send MIDI. Someone looking for a classical, theory-first course will also find the emphasis is on contemporary music and playing songs.