There’s no way of saying how many songs a good songwriter should be writing. Some are fast writers, and can get a complete song ready in a day or two. Others (and it often depends on your genre of choice) may take weeks or months before they’re finished. Sometimes, though, the slow pace of songwriting might […]
I don’t know if you feel the same way, but I have a somewhat cynical view of the things I see online. I’ve learned (and hopefully you have learned as well) that you have to take much of what you see with a grain of salt, and do a bit of research. But of course […]
You may have heard the word motif before and wondered what it is, and how it might apply to songwriting. It’s a term that’s somewhat similar to hook — and that’s a word you’re probably a lot more familiar with. A hook is a musical idea that repeats throughout a song, though we often associate it chiefly […]
Back on January 11, I wrote a blog post demonstrating how a bass pedal point works. In its simplest terms, it means keeping the same bass note while the chords above it change, regardless of whether that bass note is actually a member of the chord or not. I thought I’d mention its close relation, […]
Apparently Bruce Springsteen used a rhyming dictionary to come up with the lyrics to “Blinded By the Light.” That cleared up a long-held puzzlement for me: I was finding it hard to understand how in the world his musical mind was coming up with those lyrical images: Madman drummers bummers and indians in the summer […]
If, in the end, you get what you want, does it really matter how you got there? If you ask that question in some settings, it’s a loaded one, with intense moral implications: if you were able to get enough money to finally buy that car you’ve always wanted, great. If you got that money […]
