Forward Motion, and 5 Ways to Create It

Forward motion grabs listeners, and keeps them listening. Here are some ideas for how to create it. ____________ Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-eBook Bundle, and discover how the world’s best songs can help you improve! _____________ There are several words and terms relating to songwriting that get used almost interchangeably: forward motion, momentum, energy, power, […]

Put a Magnifying Glass On Your Songs With This Checklist

The Songwriter’s Checklist is a great way to focus in on why your songs might be missing the mark. ____________ Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-eBook Bundle, and discover how the world’s best songs can help you improve! _____________ Every once in a while I publish my “Songwriter’s Checklist”, a way for you to really focus […]

Writing a Song Backwards: Yes, It Works

By writing from end to start, you do something crucial: You identify goals first. ____________ Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-eBook Bundle, and discover how the world’s best songs can help you improve! _____________ If you want a good analogy for what many go through when they write a song, it’s a bit like this: stand […]

My Guest Blog Post on UJAM

Last year at some point I became acquainted with UJAM, the site that allows pretty much anybody to create music easily using their free online software. In addition to being a way to write songs, I really believe UJAM is the kind of program that can be a great compositional tool for songwriters. It takes […]

Practicing Verse and Chorus Melody Writing

This simple exercise will help solidify your understanding of verse and chorus melodic construction. __________ A couple of posts ago I wrote about why choruses sound like choruses. In that article, I mentioned important features of choruses such as strong (versus fragile) progressions, the predominance of the tonic note and chord, the higher placement of […]

Why Getting a Songwriting Partner is Usually a Good Idea

Some fear partnering with another songwriter will weaken your music, but the opposite is usually the case. ____________ Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-eBook Bundle, and discover how the world’s best songs can help you improve! _____________ Writing music is a very personal activity. We usually have to dig down into our very souls to find […]