Hello all – I hope you’re all doing well as I write this short message from the beautiful Dartmoor region of the south-west U.K. I am currently on holiday here, which explains why you haven’t been seeing any updates to my blog. I’ll be here in the U.K. for the next bit-more-than-a week, returning on […]
I’ve made the point many times on this blog that the one aspect of your songwriting that will contribute most to the power and longevity of your songs is your ability to write great lyrics. It’s not easy to be unique in songwriting, and it’s definitely hard to come up with unique chord progressions. What’s […]
Lyrics become all the more powerful when they’re properly paired with a good melody. That’s what Chapter 5 is all about in the eBook “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting.” Polish your songwriting technique with the 10-eBook Bundle. This blog post is a kind of “part 2” for the previous article on this blog, “Moving Melodies […]
It sometimes happens that both the verse and chorus in a song use the same melody — or at least a very similar one. The kids’ song, “Puff, the Magic Dragon“, is a good example. It seems to fly in the face of the otherwise important principle that chorus melodies are typically higher, generating more […]
If you look closely at the way Classical composers wrote their music, you’ll find some very sophisticated characteristics that leave you wondering: Did they actually think people would notice? Here’s a bit of what I mean. Musicologists will tell you that Bach had an interesting way of structuring his music: he would write a short […]
It might alarm you, as you work on your next song, to discover that your mind is wandering and you feel — quite frankly — bored. Surely, if you’re bored as you work out your next tune, your audience is going to be bored as well. Actually, boredom and being generally distracted while writing songs, […]
