Check out Gary’s book, “Beating Songwriter’s Block – Jump-Start Your Words and Music”, published by Backbeat Books (Hal Leonard). Here’s an interesting thought that Yuri, a reader of this blog, suggested to me. Is it possible to have a song hook that’s comprised of motifs? The answer is yes, and it provides a song that’s got […]
If you’re a chords-first songwriter, it means that you come up with a chord progression, and then try to design a melody that goes with it. What you may not know is that if you’re a melody-first writer, you’re probably also working out the chords at the same time. That’s because our musical brains have […]
If you’re including a bridge in your song, it’s a great spot to move the focus away from the original key into other key areas. Sometimes that means changing key entirely, but in fact that doesn’t often happen. What rather happens is that the focus changes from the original tonic chord to a different chord. Here’s what […]
Take a look at “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” eBook Bundle packages, available at the online store. You may think that burnout is a simple matter of being busy, but that’s not usually true. Most people in the arts suffer from burnout from time to time, and describing it as being overly busy doesn’t really come […]
It’s a common error to think that imaginative music comes from musical complexity. The thought is that if you write music that uses intricate chord progressions, elaborately entangled melodies, all partnered with bewildering lyrics, you’ve got something that should stimulate the imagination of the listener. But usually, that kind of music just ends up confusing the listener, boring them, and […]
These days, so-called “demos” tend to sound almost like finished products. You only have to go back one generation to find that demos used to be pretty rough around the edges, meant to give a general sense of the possibilities. The performers, along with a smart producer, could turn that mess into gold. I try to […]
