Written by Gary Ewer, Senior Instructor, Dalhousie University, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website. • Follow Gary on Twitter • Good songs sell! Check out “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 e-book bundle – available now at a 50% savings! ________________________________ It might surprise you to know the aspects of songwriting that are not covered by copyright. In […]
by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website: When you look at the history of melody writing, and I mean going back centuries, you might be surprised to know that verylittle has changed in what makes a good melody.Good melodies need certain things to keep them from feeling like aimless wandering. And whether […]
by Gary Ewer, From “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website: Songwriters often go looking for the elusive “killer chord progression”. It doesn’t really exist. Not because there aren’t great chord progressions out there, but more because chords don’t just work on their own. How good a set of changes is depends on what else is […]
A musical element that repeats throughout a song is called a motive, or motif. It’s not really a hook (though a good hook uses a motif.) With a hook, you get a musical figure that continuously repeats throughout a song in an unmodified form, and really gets inside the brain of the listener. With a motif, you […]
by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website: Nothing succeeds like love when it comes to finding a songwriting topic. Songs are successful when they speak to the heart, and it’s likely that everyone over the age of 10 or so can relate to some aspect of love. So there is a huge market […]
What is your songwriting procedure? Do you have a method of writing, or do you write when the feeling hits you? If you don’t have a process for composing, that may be the very reason that you find it difficult to finish songs that you start. Songwriting, like the creation of any other work of art, is […]
