It looks interesting, but the first glance gives me a headache. Music theory is not my strong point. Improvising melodies, I am well above average. Lyric writing, I rate myself average and improving. I would be most interested how any of the songwriters on Chiff digest this material.
Through the magic of math, we are going to transform our original chords into all the possible melodic words we can extract out of them.
The quote above,from the website, is just so wrong that it belies belief.
If somebody needs advice like this to write songs they should think about taking up another hobby.
It just ain’t on 
Slan,
D.
Just keep taking the stairs!
I don’t think this is for hobbyists. Isn’t ALL pop music written by machines?
Sure sounds like it…
Roger
Yes it does. Some of the “contemporary” songs we do at our church are so formulaic it drives me nuts.
I I IV V
I IV V I
I IV I V
IV V I I
Feel free to occassionally insert a vi. If you’re really daring, you can transpose it to a minor key.
Rinse.
Repeat.
Yay music. 
rebel…
I can’t remember the name of it now, but I saw a news item on a software program that came out of Spain. It maps all common musical themes in popular music against the hit status of the tunes. This analysis turned up what is most popular, i.e. most likely to be a hit. Several commercial song writers as well as music publishers are now using this service. You submit your tunes, and they tell you what parts of your tune are in the right areas and which parts are off and need to be reworked (for a fee, of course). Scary stuff when you consider the above remarks on similarity of tunes.
djm
I consider it just a place to start, to get the juices flowing. I, unlike many on this forum, don’t have much intuition in this regard. 
Sooooo, I look for ANY way to jump start my abilities. 
A more important question is: Since this is MY thread, why have I not received any emails indicating there have been responses??? harumph! 
There are a couple of exercises that I can suggest. Most people are stronger at lyrics or melody. A person can start with an existing melody and write new lyrics, or find lyrics and improvise a melody.
For sight readers, an interesting exercise is to take a one minute look at an unfamiliar piece of music and then try and play it without referring back to the dots. For ear learners same thing, give an unfamiliar tune a once thru or twice thru and then try to play it from memory. If a person has any kind of improvisation in his/her bones, he/she will render a tune out that resembles the original, but will be different enough to be unique.
For writing lyrics, there are very few substitutes to putting in time, keeping notes, notebooks, recordings and keeping at it. It has done wonders for my lyric writing and many other aspiring songwriters.
In my opinion, once a person knows the basics of song structure, actually writing is more useful than more study about how to do. Reading about it, can be like reading a book to learn how to play tennis, interesting, but in the end, of limited value.