Episode 253: Logan Grimé: The Secret Formula for Creating Unforgettable Songs

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Logan Grimé, founder of ViB3 MACHiNE and co-founder of the band Mini Matilda, is a trailblazer in the music industry known for his melodic genius and innovative approach to songwriting. With a career shaped by early musical influences and a passion for creativity, Logan combines artistry with technology to inspire and elevate aspiring songwriters.

In this episode, Logan discusses the power of melody in songwriting, how technology—including AI—can amplify creativity, and practical tips for crafting unforgettable music.

Key Takeaways:

  • Discover how Logan’s early experiences shaped his approach to songwriting.

  • Learn why melody is central to creating music that connects with audiences.

  • Explore how AI and technology can be used to enhance creative processes.

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Transcript:

Michael Walker: YEAAAH! All right. I'm excited to be here today with my new friend, Logan Grimé, not to be confused with Logan Grime. We were just talking backstage about how Grimé sounds like gourmet and Grime sounds like the opposite. But it is in fact Logan Grimé. He's the founder of ViB3 MACHiNE. He's cracked the code on songwriting, helping artists transform their music. And he's personally got over 10 million streams, sync deals, and he has a thriving online academy where he teaches artists how to simplify and streamline the process of making melodies in their music. There's some magic happening because literally backstage, before we started this, he said something fascinating. He was like, "Technology," and then it turned into a whole bit where we were singing the "technology" song. So the melodies are literally pouring out of him. I'm excited to talk with him today about what he's learned in terms of using things like Instagram and social media to share your voice, as well as where he focuses on melody creation and being creative as an artist in today's day and age. How do you actually use that to express yourself and cut through the noise? Logan, thank you for being on the podcast today.

Logan Grimé: Thank you for having me. I'm stoked to be here.

Michael: Absolutely. So, to kick things off, maybe for anyone who's meeting you for the first time or connecting with you, could you share a little bit about your story? How you got started, and really what you designed? What was the origin, the Genesis of ViB3 MACHiNE?

Logan: Well, I grew up in a family where my dad was a rock star, but he was not a rock star that the world knew of. He was a rock star in sort of a past life when I was a young kid. My dad was a prolific songwriter and the singer of a band. Before I was born, in the eighties, he was going out and playing with his band, writing songs, writing on the piano, writing on the guitar and bass. Then his band would bring the songs to life in my grandparents' garage. My family invested a lot in a recording setup, and at the time it was super modern. They had, you can't really see it, but behind me, there's a Mac computer from the eighties that they used to run MIDI, one of the earliest computers that could do that. It was like 10 grand when they got it. I always just grew up with a lot of musical instruments laying around our home and in our garage. When I was born, my dad had sort of stopped doing music when I was really young, and my sister, who's older than me, was young. Then my brother was born, and my dad slowed down his music career. He was more at home with us. I didn't really understand this when I was growing up. I just knew my dad had long hair, loved music, played beautiful piano, and loved pop songs. He had played in a band. I grew up just knowing that about my dad, and it really set the tone for me to be curious about music.

Then my dad brought home a new purple Xterra when I was in sixth grade, and inside of it was a Blink-182 CD. I heard Blink-182 for the first time and the song "All the Small Things." This was before it was a single. Before that, I would fall in love with a pop song, and then my dad would get me the CD, and I’d listen to the single on loop, ignoring the other songs on the album. I wanted the single because that was the one that hit the mark. So when he brought that home, I heard "All the Small Things," and I immediately knew there was something special about it. It’s not that I knew it was going to be a hit, but I could just feel it. Right after that, I started learning how to play drums. I had these oversized drumsticks, actually sitting next to me, that were from my dad's band, and old drum pads. I learned to play drums on those, and then my parents rented me a Tom, a rock star white drum kit, which I still have hardware from. I started playing in our garage, just playing along to songs. My love of music was always about being a part of the music and supporting the song. This was a shared love of music that I had. My dad was always listening to current music, introducing me to songs from different genres, but always melody-centric. His music reflected that as well.

I think in my family, the plan was that my dad was going to be a rock star and famous and all these things, but that never happened for him in that way. He tried starting a music publishing company and getting his songs used by other artists. He tried a lot of things, but his real gift was just making music. He was very prolific. I have a box of hundreds of lyrics from him and all of his tapes, multi-track, some two-track, eight-track, 16-track, tapes sitting behind me. They would just record, but the songs were never released. You have to remember back in the eighties, there were no CDs, no internet. All the opportunities were completely different. The power wasn't in your ability to make a decision to put content out or find people or do ads. It was more about luck, knowing the right people.

And so, when I was 16 years old, my dad tragically passed away, and his music was never released. At this point, I was continually recording bands I was in. I would play in a lot of pop-punk bands or instrumental rock bands, always melodically centered. I didn't even know that was what was happening. I was just always trying to make music that sounded like the music I loved, which is still my goal.

I would play in bands and play lots of shows. Ultimately, I decided to go to college for a school up in the Bay Area, where I'm from, called Expression. It was an audio engineering, audio production-based school that was very modern at the time. We got to learn on big consoles and play around in multimillion-dollar recording studios. You could rent out the studio space, and I did that more than any other student at the school. I'd basically steal time from other students to be in the studio nonstop.

While I was at that school, I met a buddy named Skylar. He was a really prolific songwriter, singer, guitarist, and multi-instrumentalist. We started a band and self-produced our music out of college. We decided not to play shows anymore for about a year because we had played a lot of shows. I know a lot of bands think playing shows will lead to more reach or more opportunity, and yes, it does help build connections, but we took a step back and said, "This is a lot of work."

There weren't people at these shows that we didn't know. Many bands play shows thinking there are people there to see them, but how many of those people actually came to see your band or your artist project? For us, it wasn't just about the friends and family at the shows. It was about building something that resonated with people, so they would come and discover us through the music. We wanted them to show up in person.

So, we focused on songwriting and production to create something that would draw people in. We also did video production and editing. I've been directing music videos since I started making music, so I was making our videos while we were doing our thing. We needed a name for our band.

I used a name inspired by an image I grew up with—this drawing of a robot, a musical robot, named MIDI Matilda. It's got a keyboard wrapped around it, and a microphone sticking out of it. My dad had a friend create this drawing for him. The idea was that my dad, who was a songwriter, wanted a technology that could just take his songs and bring them to life so he could make more music. He called it MIDI Matilda, named after my great-great-great grandmother, whose name was Mini Matilda.

We named our band after it and made our music and music videos. In 2011, we released our music, and it resonated on the internet. At the time, there was this thing called Hype Machine, which was like a blog aggregator. If your music got pushed around to all these blogs, it would show up on this chart. Within a day, we had released something that hit the right spot and ended up on 80 blogs around the world.

Through that, we got a manager, a booking agent, and someone asked us to play a show. We were like, "Okay, I guess we'll play a show now." We were gearing up to play, planning to perform as a full band. That’s what we knew how to do. But when we did a test show, we realized that the energy wasn't right with all the band members. It wasn't adding magic. When you remove other people, it forces you to entertain and fill up the space on stage.

So, we decided at the last minute, "It's just going to be the two of us." We played drums and guitar, and we moved to the headlining spot of the show. Our first show was a sold-out show with over 400 people in San Francisco. From there, we were off to the races. We got signed and toured all over the country. We even got to open for Paul McCartney at one point.

We were doing the whole band thing, but in the middle of tour, our manager passed away from leukemia. In the midst of that, we found ourselves trying to deliver an album to the label.

And they were just not having it. They weren't liking the music. We had half of it, which is what we got signed with, and we were trying to deliver the other half. That was extremely hard because it took something that came out of just the love of making the thing, and you don't realize at the time that that's what's happening—you're just making it out of the love of doing it—and turned it into something where you're trying to satisfy someone else's taste with something that's just your love of doing it, which is really hard. But I also learned a lot in that process, as far as understanding why the songs weren't resonating. I arguably learned many of the gifts that I'm able to give to other people through that experience.

We just kept doing the band thing and kept making stuff. Eventually, we were able to put out music, but not with the label. We basically got shelved. In 2017, we moved to LA and kept doing our thing. Then, during the pandemic, we put out some music. It didn't reach people in the way we expected it to. Sometimes you put something out with little effort behind it, and it just reaches people. We decided to adjust what we were doing and take a break from the band to see what else was out there. We’d always been in a band since college, and now we started to do our own stuff.

I started working on my dad's music and producing those songs to actually release them since they'd never been released. Skyler was doing his own music, and I started making social media videos talking about the things I understood when it came to music. I wanted to help people and really try to provide value to others. In a world where people try to get attention online through their music, it’s a lot easier to just say, "I’m going to offer value directly," because when people are showing their music, it can be a lot of "look at me, look at me, look at me."

Not that this applies to everyone, but if you change the frame and say, "I’m going to help you with the things I know," it’s very easy to get people's attention. It's super simple that way because it can’t be denied. There's a lot of music that comes out, and so I just focused my energy on that. Using my ability to make videos, I reached people and eventually built a business around it.

Ultimately, what I'm working towards—my mission—is to help people with their songwriting and make their songs a lot stronger through melody. I believe that if your melodies are really strong, they are a universal language that transcends even words. When people hear a melody, they’ll listen to the words that come with it. People can understand songs through any language, any tempo, or any time signature.

And especially with AI, which can already write songs stronger than most human-written ones, I think human-written songs are something we need to preserve. I think AI will be a very cool way to take a human-written song and extract infinite versions out of it. My mission is to teach people to write stronger songs that can be theoretically exploited with AI in a really cool way. A song is an idea, and a recording is a singular version of it.

The concept of records is only around for the past 140 years, but songs have existed for way longer. As I always say, records are history, but songs are forever. Songs are finite ideas that can be interpreted in infinite ways—by infinite singers, with infinite productions, faster, slower, higher, lower. That's what a song is. A song is an idea, and a recording is just one version of it.

Humanity has gotten very much stuck in the "me, me, me" mindset of "listen to my music, only me." But I think music has a much more powerful opportunity to reach more people if we can experience the same song in our own way. You can have the same song, but with a different person singing it, or hear it in a different style. Those things are changeable, but a song is just a song, right? A melody is basically a relationship of not even notes—it's about how you relate to the words. I like to look at it in terms of colors.

That’s what I like to point out to people because it’s something that's not talked about. There’s a huge missed opportunity when it comes to teaching music and transforming the way people write. I don’t see it discussed much on the internet. I know who the popular people are in this space, and I see what's being talked about. There’s a simplicity and elegance to making music that is the true magic humanity loves but doesn’t even know why it loves it. People just love harmony and melody.

Injecting that into more people’s music is a way to immediately make it resonate with more people and attract them to what you're doing and listening to what you actually have to say.

And that’s my blurb.

Michael: Holy cow, dude, you have an incredible story, and there's a lot of good stuff to unpack there. I mean, I love that you're focused on not running away from some of these tools, like AI and music in particular. I know there's a lot of fear and concern around what this is going to mean for humanity. So, I think your mindset of, "this is just a tool," and it's important to preserve the humanity and actually use this to facilitate creative expression, is really needed right now.

Also, when you're sharing the idea of people hearing the same song but expressed in different modalities, I thought it was great. With AI, it’d be really easy to—well, maybe not easy, but I feel like this is happening right now, or it’s possible—you can actually have the same song and create a different version of it for every genre, same song. Here's the version in every genre. It's almost like translating something into a different language. There's a certain idea or course that, if you speak only one language, it's not accessible to 99% of people. But if you make it translatable, now everyone who speaks all those different languages can understand it. I feel like there's something there with AI and music that's going to be so wild. People can express themselves and connect with others through these different languages of genres.

Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack there. And before we go further, I just want to say that I know this was a long time ago, but I’m sorry to hear about your dad. It’s something I think is really special—just hearing how you're able to keep his music alive and how, in many ways, who he is and his music, his artwork, is kind of a channel through you. Both through your DNA and who you are, but also through the music. So, I think it's pretty remarkable that you've been able to carry things on like that.

Logan: Thanks, dude. Yeah, it’s sort of a discovery process without me intending to do that. You know, this robot drawing that I was showing was something I just grew up with, and it’s what my logo, the ViB3 MACHiNE, is based on. That was not actually, back in 2019, when I was working on creating a plugin. It was a way you could basically take a melody and then listen to it in different formats, kind of like the way that MIDI works, but with great composition. That’s what led me to this idea of interactive songs. Honestly, it was like my buddy came up with the name, “Oh, you should call it ViB3 MACHiNE,” and I thought, “Oh, that’s cool.” Then I realized, what I’m really creating is the idea of my dad's dream, which was just helping bring his music to life. And I’m like, okay, so that’s sort of what I’m doing—creating that using technology to amplify it.

Which is really bizarre and was not intentional, but such a beautiful, magical thing to be a part of. It’s so fun. What I want is there to be more music that speaks to me out in the world. Through all my years of producing songs, being in the studio, and doing all kinds of stuff, the thing I learned is that I love songs, and I don’t need a recording of them to enjoy them. I can listen to a song in my mind, and so can other people. If you get the melody right, the recording does a lot of the heavy lifting of the mix, production, everything.

That’s the main thing I took away after years of doing this work: It’s the composition that makes something great. And I love listening to music that speaks to me in that way. The more people that can make that kind of music, the happier I am, and I think the happier everyone is. It’s such a fun experience to create something that connects with others.

Michael: Absolutely. Yeah, and I love that idea, too—the understanding of the power of the song and how the idea is the foundation. The recordings are kind of like extensions or instances of it, but really starting at the core, starting at the roots of the song, is such an important thing to do. So, with that in mind, obviously you’ve learned a lot from both being an artist and growing up surrounded by music. Now, you have a platform where you've worked with many artists, teaching them how to be creative and let that creativity channel through them.

So, I'm curious, what are some of the biggest challenges or issues you see people struggling with when it comes to expressing themselves authentically and writing songs that resonate?

Logan: Okay, so we’re talking specifically about making music that resonates with others?

Michael: Yeah, maybe that, and just, in general, the process of songwriting and... yeah, a good place to focus. Resonating both with them and with others.

Logan: Wow, what a question. Well, I can’t help but always focus it in towards what I was mentioning before—what a melody is. It’s a relationship of ideas, right? We call those notes, but it’s not really the notes. Because, if I sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" in my mind, it will be out of key.

Michael: Unless you have perfect pitch.

Logan: Which is like, "Who?" Yeah, not me. My pitch sucks, honestly. But I can love music in my mind, and I can sing ideas in my mind. I could sing them out using my mouth to shape the air and blast vibrations off of walls. And then you go, "Oh, you're singing," or you're doing this thing, but what is the organization of these ideas in your mind? What is that? I'm not talking about lyrics because you could listen to a Beatles song that's in, like, whatever language, and I will still know what that melody is. Or, if you're at a concert and there's a hundred thousand people there and the band starts playing and they play the first couple notes of a song, and nobody has started singing yet, you know exactly what it is. Everybody knows exactly what it is, and they start screaming and singing along, but there are no words. It's just an instrument playing. What is that? This is, fundamentally, to me, the most important thing to get right because people have created songs that have insane lyrics that are absurd, and thousands of people will sing them live without even paying attention to what they're saying. And if you watch somebody go to a karaoke bar, do they show them the notes on the screen? They do not. They show them the words because people have a much harder time remembering words than they do melodies. And in the context of the ownership of music publishing, of the ownership of the composition, it is not the chord progression—maybe if it's a crazy specific chord progression—but it's the melody and the words. Okay, it's the melody and the words. So we're talking the notes and then the words associated with it. And so, to me, again, it always comes back down to melody being the absolute core and the only way that somebody will even get a gateway into what you're saying. It's not that lyrics don't matter. Lyrics matter immensely. However, lyrics can be written on paper, and people can experience what you're doing that way. The reason it's a song is because we're going to experience melody and lyric together, with music supporting it, harmonizing it, and bringing it to life so that we can appreciate that. You don't sing chord progressions; you sing melodies. And sometimes you don't even sing the right lyrics, but you'll sing the melodies. I do a lot of work when it comes to talking about songs that millions of people love and explaining why the melodies work. Oftentimes, I'm a drummer, and so I come from the drumming brand. If you think of a drummer on stage, right? If you think of a drummer playing, uh, a beat—Bootsy Katza, Bootsy Katza, Bootsy Katza, Bootsy Katza, Bootsy Katza—

Michael: Buh, buh, buh.

Logan: Ticka-ta, ticka-ta. Yeah, you basically, as a drummer, if you play a bunch of stuff, you're getting kicked out of the band. This happens, like... the bass player is a little bit more lenient with this, but if you're a drummer and you start playing all over, you're out. You have to hold it down because you're creating structure and foundation for everybody else to be able to play with you. And so you're doing a little crazy hi-hat pattern—maybe if you're playing with Michael Jackson on stage and they're playing Thriller, and you're playing the live, you know, 20 BPM faster version of it, you can go crazy with it. But, generally speaking, on a recording, it's a matter of fitting in and being consistent. What happens is, oftentimes in songwriting, individuals prioritize what they are saying over the melody structure. This is, fundamentally, the number one issue people have when it comes to their music resonating with others: they're basically forcing people to not be able to sing along with their song because they're prioritizing what they're saying over the melody. And you can hear this very clearly. Music is all around us. You can hear it. It's an awareness thing; it's just tapping in. I like to look at music on the computer using a software called Hooktheory, which is really powerful because it shows you the notes with colors and the patterns.

So, when individuals are writing songs, they're prioritizing: "I want to say this," and they will say something, and they will shift what the melody is rhythmically because melodies are fundamentally rhythms with notes associated with them, longer or shorter. What they'll do is alter the melody and the patterns, and they won't repeat certain melodies. Therefore, people can't sing along with them. When they do this, it makes it really hard to sing along, and then people just sort of tap out. If you have a melody, that's, you know, if you think of the most popular music in the world, like, whatever Billie Eilish's Birds of a Feather or something, the melody pattern is the same pattern the entire song. It's an AAAB, what I call a tri-loop twist. You sing the melody once, sing the melody twice, sing the melody thrice, and then break it on the fourth one. That gives just enough expectation and breaking of expectation, then shifting, you know, uh, intervals between sections and changing what those patterns are. Then, basically utilizing the chord progression to reharmonize what is being done.

If you take a single melody and you sing it over and over and over again and you just simply change the chords under it, it is naturally very beautiful, and it's naturally extremely harmonious. For every note that you're singing, the note that's below that in the chord progression is changing the way that the next note feels. It's very simple. It's so surprisingly almost dumb, but so insanely powerful and awesome-sounding. When you sing simple melodies, you can have the lyrics change, and you can have the production change. You're going to do all these things, but if you allow melodies to be sung more than once, you basically solidify it in somebody's brain. This is very intuitive for many songwriters to do. They don't realize they're doing it. More so, a producer's mindset might be one understanding when, hey, you're altering the lyric, and it's making the melody not be symmetrical with this melody. It just takes people out of the thing. Rules are made to be broken, but oftentimes songwriters don't use any rules. And because they're not using any rules, they are consistently making things that are not easy to remember. That's fundamentally the biggest issue that I notice when it comes to people writing music that doesn't hit. I have many, many people—thousands of people—reach out to me for feedback on their music. I give feedback to people on their music, and this is across the board the same thing every single time. It's the first thing I call out, and you can simply hear it. Just listen to a song and measure the melody. Ask yourself, "Do they sing that melody again or not?" No, people just don't pay attention to that stuff, but when it's done, it's absolutely... at least in a pop sense, which I don't even like that word. But I love music where the melody is strong and memorable. I like unforgettable songs.

This doesn't necessarily apply to if you're someone that's just rapping, where it's not melodic and it's more about what you're saying and the flow of it. Though, I would argue that much music nowadays, a lot of hip hop that's more melodic, does this actually far more than other things. So, that kind of... repetition is very, very powerful because what's repeated is remembered.

Michael: Mm. Super smart. Yeah. So it sounds like what you're saying is that really fundamentally the song and the music—what resonates with people—is the melody. Having a melody that people can sing along to, that they can remember even beyond the words, is really important. But yeah, I've also heard a lot of songs that have lyrics.
 I'm like, "What the heck does that mean?" But the song is amazing because it has that melody. As you were sharing that part at the end, too, since we started the podcast, I've had that hook stuck.

Logan: Okay. Do that. Sing that melody. And all I want you to do is change the chords and keep singing that melody over and over again. Without even knowing it, I know it'll sound great without even hearing it. If you just sing that and you just change chords.

Michael: And then the last one, yeah, that's the one that you're talking about to change—isn't it? Don't put it up.

Logan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Michael: Boop-a-doop-a-dum, bum-bum, ba-dum, ba-dum. Boop-a-doop-a-dum, bum-bum, ba-dum, ba-dum. Boop-a-doop-a-dum, bum-ba-dum. Boop-a-dum, bum-bum, ba-dum, ba-dum. You know, that was just a goofy little thing that we...

Logan: I love that! That sounds awesome though. That's what I'm saying. That's the sauce. And if you—I mean, anyone that's watched Star Wars, or any movie with a great theme, you know that John Williams uses melody and different instruments, recurring themes to represent characters and interactions between individuals.
 Because we remember the melodies and the way they make us feel.
 Whatever tuba, I don't care what it is. Those again, the melodies. It's all about the melodies. And when I hear harmony, I've always loved harmony. I used to sing Hanson songs in my friend's parents' side room when I was in high school, just because we were trying to hit the harmonies. We were totally off, but the satisfaction of harmony is a profound experience that humans get to have.

And the word isn't even really used that much. And it's like, I'm not talking about harmonies of just voices harmonizing. I'm talking about the way you're taking a melody and bringing it to life through relationships of the notes around it. It's the best thing ever.

Michael: It's so true. Yeah. You brought up the word "relationships" a lot in terms of how the melodies kind of interact with the song. And I think that that's a powerful concept in general. When you talk about relationships and the foundation of life itself, it seems like it's just a bunch of relationships.
 We don't exist except in relation to others, and harmony, as you're describing it, is really like the relationship between the melody and the two different tonalities that come together to form that harmony. So, it's interesting, you know, to think about it that way.

Logan: Absolutely. Yeah.

Michael: Well, hey Logan, one question I'd love to hear from you: based on that being the number one thing you've experienced from all these audits you've done, listening to people's songs, and also hearing that you've broken down lots of popular songs—songs that have resonated with billions of people—and you've noticed that the melodies, and knowing how to create repetition in a meaningful way, and then break expectation...

For an artist who's watching this right now and they want to learn how to write better melodies, or to be able to master this specific topic, and overcome the challenge of not knowing what the melody should be, what do you recommend for them? What's the practice? How do they actually get better at this?

Logan: Well, I have a checklist that talks about this.

Michael: Man, if you have the checklist, that's the perfect resource. So, yeah. Could you share a little bit more about it?

Michael: Mm, super smart. Yeah, so it sounds like what you're saying is that, fundamentally, the song and the music—what resonates with people—is the melody. Having a melody that people can sing along to, that they can remember even beyond the words, is really important. But yeah, I've also heard a lot of songs that have lyrics, and I'm like, "What the heck does that mean?" But the song is amazing because it has that melody. As you were sharing that part at the end, too, since we started the podcast, I've had that hook stuck.

Logan: Okay. Do that. Sing that melody. And all I want you to do is change the chords and keep singing that melody over and over again. Without even knowing it, I know it'll sound great, even without hearing it. If you just sing that and change the chords.

Michael: And then the last one, yeah, that's the one you're talking about—change it, don't put it up.

Logan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Michael: Boop-a-doop-a-dum-bum-bum-ba-dum-ba-dum, boop-a-doop-a-dum-bum-bum-ba-dum-ba-dum, boop-a-doop-a-dum-bum-ba-dum, boop-a-dum-bum-bum-ba-dum-ba-dum. You know, that was just a goofy little thing that we...

Logan: I love that. That sounds awesome, though. That's what I'm saying. That's the sauce. If you've watched any movie with a great theme, like Star Wars, or any John Williams composition, you know that dude is using melody and different instruments, recurring themes to represent characters and interactions. We remember the melodies and how they make us feel. Whatever tuba, I don't care what it is—it's the melodies. When I hear harmony, I've always loved harmony. I used to sing Hanson songs in my friend's parents' side room in high school, just because we were trying to hit the harmonies. We were totally off, but the satisfaction of harmony is a profound experience that humans get to have. The word "harmony" isn't even used that much. I'm not just talking about harmonies of voices; I'm talking about how you're taking a melody and bringing it to life through the relationships of the notes around it. It's the best thing ever.

Michael: It's so true. Yeah. You brought up the word "relationships" a lot in terms of how the melodies interact with the song. I think that's a powerful concept in general. When you talk about relationships and the foundation of life itself, it seems like it’s just a bunch of relationships. We don’t exist except in relation to others, and harmony, as you're describing it, is really the relationship between the melody and the different tonalities that come together to form that harmony. So it's interesting to think about it that way.

Logan: Absolutely.

Michael: Well, hey, Logan, one question I'd love to hear from you, based on that being the number one thing you've noticed from all these audits you've done and listening to people's songs—and also hearing, you know, you've broken down lots of popular songs, songs that have resonated with billions of people. You’ve noticed that the melodies, and the way they create repetition in a meaningful way, are key. For an artist who's watching this right now and they want to learn how to write better melodies, or master this specific topic—how do they overcome the challenge of not knowing what the melody should be? What do you recommend for them? What's the practice, or how do they actually get better at it?

Logan: Well, I have a checklist that talks about this.

Michael: Man, if you have the checklist, I mean, that’s the perfect resource. So yeah, could you share a little more about it?

Logan: You go to thesongwritingchecklist.com. There's a checklist that I have, free to try out. It takes you through 27 different concepts that you can become more aware of in your songwriting. It's really about awareness. I think the easiest way is to take what you love—the music you love—and become more aware of what's going on with it. I recommend trying to pay attention, singing along to things that you love, and noticing. A big one is just noticing how many times a melody is used within something, and being okay with doing that in your own music. Like you were just doing, when you were singing that little melody, I thought that sounded awesome. You're singing a little melody with the piano. Sure, it's got that little vibe—that's just the sound you're using, right? There's no words, but the way that it is, you're comfortable just singing it over and over again. That's a great way to experience the simplicity of what music really is.

I would also say, focus on having your melodies be clear. One thing I say to individuals is to write songs but don't record them too quickly. A lot of times, because we have technology to record very fast, we overly commit an idea. Once it's committed to the computer or tape, whatever it is, we sort of say, "Hey, this is solid. This is good." And when we listen back, you may have a turd that you're just accepting as the final idea. If you want to test the strength of an idea, sit with a friend, write a song, and record it onto your phone. Come back in a couple of weeks, sit in that room, and say, "Can we sing the entire thing through without listening to the recording?" And you'll know how much you can remember that song. You’ll use your brain recorder. You’ll have an iPhone recording you can refer to if you need it, but this applies to both lyrics and melody. Focus on the song, not on the production of it. If you can sit in a room with a friend you're comfortable with, someone you enjoy hanging out with—even if you don't make music with them—that’s a powerful thing to do because there's no pressure around it. Some people, especially in the professional songwriting world in LA where I live, feel a lot of pressure to output. But the more you can have relationships where you trust each other and trust in creating something really enjoyable for both of you, then testing it on your "brain computer" is a great way to see, "Oh yeah, we remember all of this stuff." If you can remember it, other people will remember it as well. It's a simple thing to do. Simplify the melodies and the lyrics. Be specific, and you'll remember it much more easily. And you can test it. Anyone can do that.

Michael: Fantastic. I love that exercise. So yeah, if you can't remember it after dropping it off and coming back, you can pretty much guarantee that someone else, who didn’t write it, isn’t going to remember it as well.

Logan: You can sing along to a lot of songs if you're hearing them for the first time. Especially a lot of modern songs—you can listen to them and predict where they’ll go. You're like, "That melody’s definitely happening again here." You can predict where the melody’s going if they're following the rules. Quote-unquote rules, of course, but being aware of the patterns used strategically to make people gravitate toward songs with the biggest scale. And by "biggest scale," I mean songs with billions of streams. If you notice this, you don’t have to be a robot and inject that into your song. It'll be in the back of your awareness and make its way through.

Michael: Good stuff. That came up as you were describing it. In order to break expectations, you have to start by doing something that kind of falls within the expectations. You have to do something that feels familiar, and that grabs the initial attention. But then you break it. You can't break the rules if you didn’t have the rules to start with. So, good stuff. And that’s awesome that you’ve created this checklist with 27 exercises or ways to help artists grow.

Logan, thank you for taking the time to hop on here and share a little bit about your story and about some tools that artists can use to express themselves in a way that resonates—not only with them but with a wider audience. For anyone watching or listening to this right now who’s interested in checking out the checklist and more resources you’ve created, what’s the best place for them to go to dive deeper?

Logan: thesongwritingchecklist.com.

Michael: Dude, nice website. Songwritingchecklist.com. Boom. Awesome. And, I know you also have an active social media account, right? Would you say your most active is Instagram or YouTube?

Logan: Yeah, I'm working on building my YouTube. Instagram and TikTok are where I’m most active.

Michael: Okay, and what’s your handle so people can follow you?

Logan: It's ViB3 MACHiNE, with a three instead of an E. So, V-I-B, the number three, dot machine.

Michael: Super vibey. Cool. Well, Logan, thanks again for hopping on the podcast. I look forward to talking again soon.

Logan: Thanks, Michael.

Michael: YEAAAH!