Modal Mixture Chords: Subtle Harmonic Shadings

Get FANTASTIC RESULTS! – Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 e-book bundle and START WRITING GREAT SONGS! __________________ If you’re looking for a way to make your chord progressions come alive a bit, you’re probably thinking about some basic chord substitutions. For example, IV-chords (i.e., Bb in the key of F major, for example) can often be […]

4 Ways to Increase Your Songwriting Output

Get FANTASTIC RESULTS! – Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 e-book bundle and START WRITING GREAT SONGS! __________________ Surely we can all agree that quantity is not quality. You can claim to have written 500 songs, but if they don’t amount to much more than garbage, you’ve got 500 useless songs that no one wants to hear. […]

The Circle of Fifths: Never-Fail Chord Progressions

Get FANTASTIC RESULTS! – Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 e-book bundle and START WRITING GREAT SONGS! __________________ Successful hit songs are a balance of predictable and innovative musical ideas. New hit songs will be largely patterned on what the writers already know works. They tend to be mostly predictable, but at least some aspect of them […]

Song Energy is Like the Stock Market – Up and Down

Get FANTASTIC RESULTS! – Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 e-book bundle and START WRITING GREAT SONGS! __________________ Song energy is at once a simple and complex concept. Simple, in the sense that it’s what gets your foot tapping and your body moving. Complex, in the sense that every component of a song, the obvious to the […]

Good Melodies Usually Come With Chords Implied

It may feel natural to some to consider that once you’ve created a melody that you really like, your job is to set about finding chords to harmonize it. But in reality, most good melodies already imply the chords that make that melody work. Another way of saying this is: good melodic structure strongly hints […]

Nice Song, But Where Are the "Hooky Bits?"

Get FANTASTIC RESULTS! – Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 e-book bundle and START WRITING GREAT SONGS! __________________ A discussion on songwriting usually centers on the usual suspects of song structure, melodic shape, chord progression, and getting all those things to work together properly. Lately, however, I’ve found my mind focusing on the part of songwriting that […]