Good lyrics have a strong sense of focus — of purpose and direction. It might help to make that statement the opposite way: bad lyrics wander about without being overly clear about what’s even being said. To say that a song lyric has focus means that it points toward a specific topic and doesn’t stray needlessly. […]
Chord progressions can be tonally strong or ambiguous. I like to call the ambiguous ones “fragile” for a reason that I’ll describe a little further on. But to illustrate the concept of strong versus fragile, let me use an analogy. Imagine you are looking at a map of your city. You place a dot on your house, […]
Written by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website. For songwriting tips and notification of blog updates, FOLLOW GARY ON TWITTER Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” suite of 6 e-books now. _____________________________________ A strong progression, to put it simply, is one that points to one chord as the tonic (home) chord, and one […]
