You may have just as many people who hate your music as love it, but that shouldn’t bother you too much. Hoping that everyone loves what you do is unrealistic. Any time you express your thoughts, opinions and feelings in musical form, people will react; sometimes in favour of your art, and sometimes against. The […]
Written for The Essential Secrets of Songwriting Blog by Markus Rill. Here’s age-old songwriting advice: Every now and then you are going to have to abandon or change a line that you really like for the greater good of the song. But here’s the kicker: Every now and then you are going to have to trust […]
It can sometimes be an exciting aspect of music, when the chorus dramatically changes the mood that’s been set up by the verse. A good classic example is The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” which uses a dreamy psychedelic verse, followed by a much stronger, quicker chorus. But those songs are the exception. […]
A bit of songwriter’s theory for today, and it’s an important lesson especially if you’ve created a melody and are at the stage where you’re adding chords. If you listen to Leonard Bernstein’s “America”, from “West Side Story“, you’ll notice that practically all the notes from the melody clearly outline the chord that accompanies it: Melodies […]
Not all songs are about the melody. Since every good song is a partnership of melody, lyrics and chords (and then miscellaneous other bits that get woven in and around those elements), you can wind up with a song that makes a stronger impact through its hook, lyric or rhythmic groove, and leave melody as a less […]
It’s amazing how imaginative you can be using mainly pentatonic scales to create melodies. You might think that limiting yourself to 5 notes per octave means you’ve cut out a lot of possibilities, but that certainly doesn’t have to be the case. If you haven’t done so yet, you might want to give Deerhunter’s new album, […]
