Most songs consist of several sections that are all woven together to produce one coherent piece of music. The trick is to get all those sections to move seamlessly one to the next. Seamlessly, in this context, doesn’t mean that you move from section to section without realizing it, of course. In that sense, it’s […]
If you were to ask me to describe what makes a good song melody, I’d probably tell you this: On the whole, when you look at songs that have made their mark and have been held up as iconic representations of their genre, the following is usually true: They move in a mainly stepwise way. […]
A bit of songwriter’s theory for today, and it’s an important lesson especially if you’ve created a melody and are at the stage where you’re adding chords. If you listen to Leonard Bernstein’s “America”, from “West Side Story“, you’ll notice that practically all the notes from the melody clearly outline the chord that accompanies it: Melodies […]
Not all songs are about the melody. Since every good song is a partnership of melody, lyrics and chords (and then miscellaneous other bits that get woven in and around those elements), you can wind up with a song that makes a stronger impact through its hook, lyric or rhythmic groove, and leave melody as a less […]
It’s amazing how imaginative you can be using mainly pentatonic scales to create melodies. You might think that limiting yourself to 5 notes per octave means you’ve cut out a lot of possibilities, but that certainly doesn’t have to be the case. If you haven’t done so yet, you might want to give Deerhunter’s new album, […]
Do you like starting the songwriting process by coming up with a chord progression first? Every songwriter has done that — even writers that focus on lyrics as their strongest suit will occasionally resort to playing a chord progression, even if just to get in the composing mood. But here’s a problem you’ll often notice […]
