Synthesizer player - Songwriter

Creating Chord Progressions That Work in Practically Any Song

A good chord progression has a sense of direction. It doesn’t just wander about, one nice chord following another nice one. Once a progression starts, it’s usually the case that it targets a particular chord, making that one chord more “important”, so to speak, than the others. You see this targeting of that one important […]

Keyboard - Chord Progressions

Simplicity as a Starting Point

As a songwriter you may be attracted to the notion of writing something complex, something that really gets your audience thinking. Complex chords, intricate harmonies, thoughtful lyrics, melodies that surprise… it’s all part of what makes your 4-minute song something that will stimulate the imagination of your listeners. The problem with complexity in songwriting is […]

Yes - the band

Musical Complexity – the Best Way to Achieve It

Years ago, I became interested in simple computer programming, mostly in BASIC. I didn’t have great aspirations; most of whatever code I wrote was for relatively uncomplicated things. I wrote a program that helped me keep a sensible budget (yeah, that helped), and then one a little more advanced that attempted to interpret Morse code. […]