As listeners of music, we like to hear contrasting ideas as a song progresses, even if we’re not consciously aware of it. In songwriting, a contrasting idea might mean something like this: one part of a melody that’s harmonized mainly with minor chords, followed by a section harmonized with mostly major ones. Contrast in a […]
If you look at the description of Lennon & McCartney’s “I Saw Her Standing There” in the Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list, you’ll read this: This song had been written by McCartney two years earlier. After penning the first line – “She was just 17” – McCartney wanted to avoid completing […]
How you know that you’ve written a song that really works comes down to one main thing: its ability to make listeners want to hear it over and over again. When a song fails to do that, your job becomes one of analysis: how to figure out why a song just isn’t making the impact on […]
There are some genres that are edgy and energetic by nature. If you like the warm fuzzy feeling you get from a lightly-accompanied ballad, you’re not likely going to be writing heavy metal. But what if you like lightly-accompanied music for the transparency of its sound, but you wish your song had a bit more […]
There is a pattern you’ll notice in most pop songs, which is that as they move along, they alternate between sections that are ambiguous in nature and sections that are much clearer and easy to understand. I like using the terms “fragile” and “strong”: In many songs, that “fragile-strong” labelling is synonymous with “verse-chorus” structure. […]
Like anyone else, songwriters look for ways to improve what they do. How to improve as a songwriter is a topic that gets discussed a lot, and there are many, many opinions. If you want to improve as a geologist, everyone will agree that the best way is to combine studying at a university with in-the-field […]
