Good songwriting means creating a strong partnership between all the various elements of your song. You know you’ve got a good song when your lyrics, melodies, chords, rhythms, instrumentation/production and formal design all support each other. It’s not easy to troubleshoot a song that has problems. You can tell just by listening that something’s not […]
Starting the songwriting process by working out chords makes a certain amount of sense, mainly for the reason that chords can provide a strong sense of mood. The theory is that if you can get some good chords working, and then pair them up with a rhythmic groove, you’ve got the makings of the feel […]
Chords-first songwriting is a bit of a modern invention. For the great master composers (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc.), composing was almost always about the melody, and so the process of writing music would start there. That’s not to say that composing music was strictly a melody-first process for them after which they’d come up with […]
If you ask someone what they like about a song melody that they love, they’ll usually mention one or more of the following: It’s got a nice contour that explores a large range, from low to high. It’s got a moment (the so-called climactic moment) that acts as a point of focus for the entire tune. […]
Here’s a tip for you, especially if you’re a chords-first songwriter who works out songs on a guitar. And it may seem like a simple, no-brainer type of tip, but it’s an important one: revoice your chords. Each time you play through a chord progression, you’ll find that your ear gets drawn to the highest notes […]
These days, many or most songs that are produced for broad commercial appeal (i.e., hit songs in the pop genres) use melodies written by “topliners.” A typical scenario might be that a producer sends out a pre-made instrumental track to musicians who can create melodies over these tracks. Someone comes up with melodies and lyrics to […]
