There’s a fascinating story about the Baroque composer J.S. Bach (1685-1750), who reportedly walked 450 kilometers (900 kilometers round trip!) to visit a composer that he considered to be one of his strongest influences: Dieterich Buxtehude. Buxtehude lived in the city of Lübeck. In those days, of course, you couldn’t just put a recording on […]
You seen me write about this before: the benefits of keeping several songs on the go at any one time, instead of putting all your energies on just one at a time. But also, don’t discount the value that comes from spreading your creativity around, and working on several kinds of projects at the same time. […]
In my last blog post I wrote about the natural ebb and flow of creativity in all of us, and how we shouldn’t be overly surprised or worried if we find that our musical imagination comes and goes, sometimes within the same songwriting session. But even though there’s something natural about that, you can still […]
Some songwriters seem to be able to come up with something singable practically every time they sit down to write, while for others, it feels more like hard work, and it can take many sessions to finish a song. Both of those scenarios are normal, in the sense that there is no particular “normal”. But […]
You can spend a lot of time worrying about how to get a verse and a chorus to work well together, but don’t forget the other option: consider writing a song that doesn’t use a chorus at all. Sometimes the melody for that kind of song will end with a kind of repeating refrain, like […]
Lyrics and melodies go hand in hand when you’re writing songs. In truth everything needs to partner up well in order for a song to sound great, but that particular partnership between lyrics and melody is perhaps one of the most crucial ones. But how do you ensure that your melody is properly supporting both the […]
