Songwriting Tips by Gary Ewer.
Write better songs and chords by learning The Essential Secrets of Songwriting
- How to Write Lyrics
- Melodies
- Chord Progressions
- A Great Hook and More!
Discover the Fun and the Musical Power of Music Theory!"
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LISTEN TO SOUND SAMPLES FROM "The Essential Secrets of Songwriting" Listen |
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If you think studying music theory is boring, you've never seen it taught this way before. Gary Ewer's Easy Music Theory on CD-ROM Read more |
The Essential Secrets of Songwriting website shows you how great songs work. Read daily articles that explore the fascinating world of songwriting.
If you struggle with writing a great song, and you can't seem to finish any song you start, Gary Ewer has written a set of songwriting ebooks designed to get you doing the thing you love. Let those e-books be your guide. They'll show you how to improve your writing skills by showing you how lyrics, melodies, hooks, chord progressions, and every other aspect of good music works. The books take a look at hit songs from the past, showing how and why they became winners.
Along with tons of chord progressions and formulas you can use, you'll be writing the songs that you always knew you could write! The instructional e-books come with sound samples and a glossary of musical terms, so even if you don't read music, these e-books will clear up the muddle and get you enjoying songwriting again.
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Pop Songs: What Checking the Fossil Record Can Do For Us |
Saturday, February 6, 2010, 1:40 pm AST You might wonder why someone like me, with an interest in how today's pop songs work, finds the music of Brahms or Beethoven (1800s) relevant to today's music. Or even further back: the music of Bach or Handel (1700s). Or yet further: 13th century motets, and yes, even Gregorian Chant (almost 2000 years ago). In a way, I'm just doing what scientists do: checking the fossil record. |
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Make a Chord Progression Longer With Passing Chords |
Thursday, February 4, 2010, 3:03 pm AST On a music forum recently I noticed a comment that went something like, "I don't like the word 'progression' to describe the way chords move in a song.'" For me, I actually like the word, because it implies that chords must progress in a particular direction, not haphazardly. Problems arise when songwriters need to write longer progressions. That's when passing chords really help. |
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Three Ways to Make Your Next Song Better |
Wednesday, February 3, 2010, 12:57 pm AST Becoming better at something is a combination of experience and deliberate planning. If you want to be a better songwriter, you can't keep doing the same old thing. Doing that means that you’ll polish up what you’re doing, but you won’t really be offering anything original. You need to think about what you can do to make your next song stand out. To improve, you need to innovate. |
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Try a Repeating Melodic Shape to Get Songwriting Ideas |
Tuesday, February 2, 2010, 2:57 pm AST Want a great way to generate melodic ideas for your next song? The method I'm going to describe in this article works great because it uses a repeating shape as an integral part of the process. And as you (should) know, listeners love a repeating melodic shape because it acts as a stable anchor as you create new and innovative ideas for the rest of your song. Here's how that works. |
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Writing a Compound Chorus: Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" |
Sunday, January 31, 2010, 11:58 am AST A compound chorus is one which uses two or more distinct melodies and lyrics, each of which include the necessary characteristics of a chorus. Beyoncé's "Single Ladies" is an example. With such a chorus, each melody could exist on its own, though they are usually shorter than most chorus melodies. But be careful: thought needs to be given to how one progresses to the next. |
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If You Have to Beg... |
| Thursday, January 28, 2010, 12:49 pm AST For every singer/songwriter, there are two worlds. The first is that tight group of Die-Hard-Fans made up of family and friends. They love everything you do, and to you, their opinion counts for a lot. Then there is The Real World - made up of everyone else. You need to know: it's not about the Die-Hards. The Real World is the only measuring stick that should matter to you. Read more |
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The Fundamental Relationship Between Melody and Chords |
| Wednesday, January 27, 2010, 1:25 pm AST If you've written a melody, or if you've got melodic ideas you want to work into your next song, your job is to invent harmonies that present that melody in the best possible light. The task may seem daunting, but there are really only two things that most chord progressions need to do: establish key, and harmonize notes. The process is actually not as tricky as you might think. Read more |
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Too Much of a New (or Old) Thing Makes a Song Boring |
| Tuesday, January 26, 2010, 3:42 pm AST As a hit songwriter, your most important goal is to write songs that keep people humming. Without that crucial something that grabs the listener, your song will get ignored quicker than you can say, "Where's my plaid suit?" Boredom is actually an important audience reaction to study, because if you don't know what's boring about your songs, you're doomed to keep writing them. Read more |
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Check Out These 13 Modal Chord Progressions |
Monday, January 25, 2010, 1:14 pm AST A few months back I wrote an article about the differences between minor key and minor mode (see here.) Songs written in a minor mode are actually far more numerous than those written in a minor key, (especially in the pop song world), and it's mainly because the lowered 7th note of the most-used modal scales tends to have more appeal. So what progressions are good ones to try? |
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Top 5 Song Intros, And What We Can Learn From Them |
Friday, January 22, 2010, 11:45 apm AST A song intro has a fairly simple task: to pull the listener into the song. There are several ways to do this: 1- establishing a melodic hook; 2- setting up a rhythmic/harmonic hook, or 3- establishing a general mood. Many intros mix all three ideas. If you simply strum away on a chord waiting for verse 1, your missing opportunities! Here are five songs that have fantastic intros. |
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The Black Eyed Peas |
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| Let's get this much out of the way: The lyrics for I Gotta Feeling are not the reason it's been such a successful chart-topper. But there's got to be a reason why this song has enjoyed so many weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. This song may be simply joining that long list of songs that gets people's attention at a certain point in time without a strong musical reason to explain Read more |
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Imogen Heap |
| Imogen Heap's new album, "Ellipse", features an extraordinary song called "Tidal." Using small melodic cells, Heap constructs the overall formal map in much the same way that the world's greatest classical composers have been doing for centuries. Read more |
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Making a MIDI Orchestra Sound Real |
| MIDI is a way of controlling electronic instruments (usually synthesizers), and allowing those instruments to produce many different kinds of musical timbres. Used well, MIDI can make it sound as if you hired a full symphonic orchestra for your recording. Used poorly, MIDI can make your song sound cheap and amateur! Read more |
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Cobra Starship |
| The tonic note is the key note of your song. If your song is in Am, the note A is the tonic note. And it has a lot of power. But the more you use it, the less influential it is. Cobra Starship, in their hit single "Good Girls Go Bad" use itbarely more than once or twice. Here's why that works so well. Read more |
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Taylor Swift |
| Melody, to be clever, needs to be more than a bunch of notes that simply fit a bunch of chords. Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me" shows how to apply the same kind of compositional technique that composers of classical music do. Read more |
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Gary Ewer is a veteran music teacher, clinician, composer and arranger. He is most well known as the author of the best-selling "Gary Ewer's Easy Music Theory," a CD-ROM based course in music rudiments.
Gary has taught music to students of every age group, from five-year-olds in elementary school, through to university-level musicians. This enormously wide-ranging scope has given him a unique perspective on how people learn. Teaching is his passion.
He is in demand as an adjudicator, clinician, conductor and composer. His music has been commissioned and performed by ensembles from amateur level through to professional, including the world-renowned Elmer Isler Singers, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Symphony Nova Scotia, and others.
Gary is currently an instructor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he teaches music theory, ear training, choral conducting and tonal counterpoint.
"Hey Gary, I love your page and you wouldn't believe how much it has helped me."
-Stephen, California
Gary has taught music to students of every age group, from five-year-olds in elementary school, through to university-level musicians. This enormously wide-ranging scope has given him a unique perspective on how people learn. Teaching is his passion.
He is in demand as an adjudicator, clinician, conductor and composer. His music has been commissioned and performed by ensembles from amateur level through to professional, including the world-renowned Elmer Isler Singers, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Symphony Nova Scotia, and others.
Gary is currently an instructor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he teaches music theory, ear training, choral conducting and tonal counterpoint.
"Hey Gary, I love your page and you wouldn't believe how much it has helped me."
-Stephen, California