Every song has two stories – one that’s written and one that’s heard.

On a site that’s all about stories, it only makes sense to include the story of the site. Inception, huh.

Here’s how Two Story Melody came to be, and what it’s meant to be about.

Two Story Melody exists because I love songs. I’ve written songs for most of my life, and I’m fascinated by the creative process behind them.

The first “song” I remember writing was called “Just a Guy”. I was eight years old, playing with Legos, and I put about five heads on top of this one little Lego dude and outfitted him with three pairs of legs, then walked him around my Lego town singing, “He’s just a guy, just a guy, just an ordinary guy.” That was the chorus. I added a couple verses, and ended up just feeling really satisfied with myself for writing what I thought was a pretty cool and clever song. I sang those lines for weeks.

I think I was probably a weird kid.

Over the years, I’ve (thankfully) broadened my range of topics and written a bunch of songs. Most of them are mediocre, and I’m only proud of a few of them. But I’ve never lost that sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that I felt when I was eight, the joy that comes with creating music. And, occasionally, I’ve had people tell me that the songs I’ve written have resonated with the stories they’ve lived themselves.

That’s what I love most about music (and, really, about art in general): that you can create something that feels so personal, and have it end up becoming personal to somebody else, too.

I want to understand how that happens. I want to understand how music is created, how arrangements are crafted to convey ideas and emotions, and how poetry in melody can make your heart ache with longing or leap with the need to belt out Taylor Swift and roll down the windows.

So, the reason that Two Story Melody exists is because I want to understand how great artists make great music. My hope is that, by better understanding the stories that artists create, we’ll be able to better understand our own stories.

I hope you enjoy reading.
-Jon