If you like studying the chord progressions used in your favourite songs, you’ll know that a minor key verse leading to a major key chorus is pretty common. But most of the time, that minor key will be what’s called the relative minor of the major key that follows. Trying to get a handle on writing […]
You encounter the word vision a lot in the creative arts. Actually, you encounter it in lots of other areas, too. Who can forget former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s cringy support of “developers”, who are the ones who flesh-out corporate or industry ideas, giving consumers a product that is the result of someone’s initial vision? […]
After all these years, love songs still work. You’d think songwriters would have run out of original things to say about the topic. If you expand the category a little more and consider the songs that are more generally about relationships, the majority of the songs on the Billboard Hot 100 at any given time […]
These days you might be listening to Handel’s “Messiah,” and even if you don’t know that work, you no doubt know his “Hallelujah Chorus” which ends the second part of the oratorio. “Messiah” is a lengthy work consisting of fifty-three movements, and listening to the entire piece will take you more than two hours. (Most […]
The best lyrics are the ones that sound conversational when you read them. By sounding conversational, the ideas you’re conveying are going to have the best chance for touching the heart of the listener. Conversational lyrics touch the heart because they’re more likely to use simple, everyday words, the kind that are usually the most […]
If you like starting the songwriting process by figuring out a good chord progression, you probably like how chords very quickly convey a mood. And once you’ve got that mood, you find that other things fall into place quickly, especially a song topic, tempo, rhythmic treatment, and so on. But there are some potential problems […]
