You may not think of tempo as being part of a song that warrants a lot of experimentation. Usually in the songwriting process you’re focusing on chord choice, melody notes, and of course lyrics. But tempo has a huge role to play especially in creating a mood for your song. Moreover, it can allow you […]
The tonic chord, which represents the key of your song (or song section), acts as a kind of tonal anchor: it sounds like “home”, and when you move away from it, your ears automatically listen for its return. You hear that easily in this basic progression: C Am Dm G7 C If you look deeper […]
We tend to think of songwriting and inspiration as going hand-in-hand. Talk to anyone about how they write songs, and “inspiration” is probably going to come up pretty early on in the conversation. Here’s the question: Do you need a good dose of inspiration before songwriting works for you? In other words, are you able […]
If there’s one thing songwriters usually strive for, it’s uniqueness. No one wants to simply write songs that sound like everything else that’s going on out there. That would make it hard to build a fan base of your own. Except… there is something worse than being overly predictable in your writing style (and predictability […]
If you ask any songwriter which process they use, they’ll probably tell you that it differs from song to song. For most, it really depends on which musical fragment makes its first appearance in their musical mind. If it’s a bit of lyric, they’ll most likely to start by filling out that fragment with more […]
If you like any of the melody-first songwriting processes, you know that eventually you need to add chords to that melody. If chord progressions are the part of writing that’s a little out of your comfort zone, here are some tips and ideas that can help : Get a sense of the strong beat-weak beat […]
