Using Bass Lines to Craft a Better Song Melody

Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 E-book Bundle. Become a top-level songwriter, starting now. _________ Recently I wrote about the benefits that come from writing a melody first, and then creating a chord progression to harmonize it. In that post, I mentioned that one of the dangers of chords-first writing is that melodies can get neglected, […]

Letting a Hook Disappear Boosts its Effectiveness

Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-book bundle – You could be writing hit songs! When I hear a song I don’t like, more often than not it’s because I’m bored, not because there’s anything explicitly unlikable about the song. That’s a scary situation for songwriters, because it’s possible to do nothing “wrong”, and end […]

Variations on the Verse-Chorus-Bridge Song Form

Written by Gary Ewer, Senior Instructor, Dalhousie University, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website. • Follow Gary on Twitter • Build Your Audience Base with“The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 e-book bundle – available now at a 50% savings! ________________________________ There’s a good reason why verse-chorus-bridge forms are the most commonly used ones by songwriters. It […]

How Pedal Tones Make Chord Progressions Sound Great

Written by Gary Ewer, Senior Instructor, Dalhousie University, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website. • Follow Gary on Twitter • “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 e-book bundle is available now at a 50% savings! ________________________________ I was a child of the 70s, and loved (and still do) the music of Chicago, Genesis, Yes, Alan Parsons […]

Top 5 Song Intros, And What We Can Learn From Them

Written by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website. Download Gary’s Songwriting E-books here. _____________ A song intro has a fairly simple task: to pull the listener into the song. There are several ways to do this: 1- establishing a melodic hook; 2- setting up a rhythmic/harmonic hook, or 3- establishing a general […]