To spice up your melody lines don't hesitate to use volume and vibrato, even barely noticeable changes can morph your melody from a decent one to a great one. Use small volumes change on each notes to give your melody a more human feel and use drastic volumes change on key notes. Add vibrato on long notes but stay subtle, if you emphasize everything you may loose the whole point of your melody. Some machines have a glide effect included, use it on transitionnal notes to make things flow in a smoother way. To see how melodies are done don't hesitate to listen to your CDs; especially vocals; and notice the importance of rhythm in a melody and big interval leaps but also the less obvious importance of repetitions, silences and variations. And the golden rule : trust your ears only :) unless you're a talent of nature, music theory can only help you in sounding cheesy and/or overused, especially when it comes to melody lines. Use scales to start your melodies if you have difficulties to find inspiration and then throw away all your theory papers and continue with your ears only. Music theory is of a good help though when you want to accompany your melodies with good chord progressions, but only when the melodies are over ;p - Zk