Today I say, only half-jokingly, that I had better not hear a songwriter, particularly an American one, tell me that they just can’t think of anything to write about. The subject of the day — Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency — may be difficult to handle, but you sure can’t beat it for providing everything a […]
Chords-first songwriting is a bit of a modern invention. For the great master composers (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc.), composing was almost always about the melody, and so the process of writing music would start there. That’s not to say that composing music was strictly a melody-first process for them after which they’d come up with […]
If you’re looking for ways to make your progressions a bit more interesting without being too weird, there’s a simple modification you should consider: simply avoid overusing the I-chord. In a standard I-IV-V-I progression (C-F-G-C) the I-chord is the tonic chord. It’s the one that represents your song’s key. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with its use, […]
We often use the word ego in a negative sense. After a conversation with someone, for example, you might wryly note to yourself, “Well, he has a healthy ego!” And we don’t usually mean it with a positive connotation. In that negative sense of how we usually use the word, we typically mean that the person has an […]
If you’ve written a hook, and most if not all of the following aren’t true, you’ve not really written an effective one: It’s got a short and easy-to-remember melody. It incorporates a catchy rhythm. It uses a relatively simple, short chord progression. It usually appears, disappears, and reappears throughout a song. It’s fun to sing. When […]
“It’s finished, but it just doesn’t sound right, and I can’t tell what’s wrong.“ Is that a familiar feeling? You’re not suffering from writer’s block — it’s more that even though your latest song is finished, it’s just missing something. The energy isn’t there, or the melody sounds scattered, or the chords aren’t working, or… you get […]
