The New Lead Sheet: Plotnik can be as wordy as he feels like.

The Great Plotnik has gotten way behind in drawing up lead sheets for his better songs. A lead sheet contains the melody line, the chords and the lyrics to a song: the most basic pieces that singers or instrumentalists use to play along in a rehearsal or recording session.

But lead sheets don't just spurt from the songwriter's left ear. Drawing them up is a process Plotnik has always disliked, not only because it takes a long time, but also because it forces him to define the melody accurately, which is not always possible, or even desirable. Many times Plotnik has sat in a recording session as a singer was (to Plotnik's ears) brutalizing his melody, only to realize after some time had passed that the way they sang it was the way they heard it, and it was every bit as good as what Plot had written.

(Or not. Rule 2 for a singer seems to be: If I Can Make a Five Note Interval Into A Three Note Interval, I Will.)

(Rule 2-A is If The Writer Doesn't Like It, Fuck Him.)

(Rule 1 is: I Am Far Too Cool to Carry My Own Microphone, but that's another story.)

To Plottie's great pleasure, technology has caught up to the lead sheet process. Two days ago he downloaded Finale's most basic product, called Note Pad. It's free. All you have to do is enter the notes and time values to your melody, using the mouse, and when the melody's done you press different buttons and add lyrics and chords.

Wonderfully, the measures get bigger to handle the size of the words in the lyrics (always a bugaboo in the old days -- you drew out the melody and then your too-wordy lyric wouldn't fit under the notes and you'd have to erase and redraw them. No longer).

It looks ten times better than Plot could have drawn out by hand. This picture does not do Note Pad justice. Wow. That was almost fun. Two songs down, fifteen or so to go.