Try taking the chord progression of your favourite song, and writing an entirely new song with it.
__________________
Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 e-book bundle. Become the best songwriter you can be!
__________________
Most of you are probably familiar with “4 Chords“, the rather hilarious tune recorded by Axis of Awesome. That song highlighted the fact that many, many songs have been recorded that all use the same chord progression, specifically I-V-vi-IV. It’s also a good demonstration of why chord progressions are not typically protected by copyright. Chords are simply a harmonic foundation upon which we place melodies, and it’s melodies that are required to be distinctive and unique.
It can be a fun exercise to try your own version of the Axis of Awesome’s trick: take a chord progression from a well-known song and create an entirely new song with it. In a way, you could think of it as musical renovation.
What you’re aiming for in this challenge is to create a new song that doesn’t even remind you of the original one. For example, as demonstrated in the “4 Chords” song, would you have previously thought of The Beatles’ “Let It Be” as being linked to Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi”?
If you want a few progressions to get you started, here are some to play around with. Transpose to any key you wish:
- Stayin’ Alive (The Bee Gees): F#m7 E F#m7 E F#m7 B F#m7
- Rocket Man (Elton John): Gm7 C Gm7 C Eb Bb Cm F Gm7
- Man in the Mirror (Michael Jackson): G D/F# Em D C G
- Smooth (Rob Thomas/Santana): Am F E Am F E Dm Bdim E Am
It’s up to you how long to hold each chord.
And if you do know the original song listed above that used that chord progression, it’s best to try to come up with something that sounds completely different. So you’ll want to try experimenting with tempo and time signature in particular.
Listen to this, and see if you know which of the 4 above use the same chords (transposed).
Feel free to post a link in the comments below if you create a finished product, or even something partially complete.
____________
Follow Gary on Twitter
“The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 e-book bundle will show you how to write great songs, harmonize your melodies, and give you hundreds of chord progressions in the process.
PURCHASE and DOWNLOAD the e-books for your laptop/desktop
Sorry I re-read the article carefully and I now understand a lot better.Thanks again gary.
Hi gary,I like this article a lot because it relates to my question to you.
Say I wanted to create a song and I don’t have many ideas.So I listen to(For example) a Mariah carey song and I wanted to fuse her song with another song artists song by linkin park ?.Does it makes since to do that such as songwriters fusing/sampling songs together ?