There’s a little trick I use when I’m having one of those days where it seems I’m getting nothing done. It works best at the times in my life when I feel that I have nothing to show for how busy my day seems to be: I put the simplest, easiest tasks into my daily […]
The closer you are to finishing a song, the less likely you are to experiment with radical changes. At the start of your process, you might change chords, try different lyrics, and even change the melody. But as your song nears completion, the changes you might try are usually small ones. The song feels “set”, […]
When we talk about form in songwriting, we might be referring to the various sections of a song: verse, chorus, bridge, etc. Or we might be talking about something like the rhyme scheme of the lyrics: ABAB, for example. Or we might be talking about some aspect of the design of the melody… ascending figures contrasting with […]
In a movement from a classical symphony, the music isn’t divided up into verses and choruses as is typical for pop songs. You’re more likely to see reference to sections called “1st theme”, “2nd theme”, “transition”, “development”, “coda”, and so on. With pop songs, you get a definite feeling that the basic energy of the music changes […]
Even if you don’t have a strong background in music theory, you likely know that some chords just sound right together, while others don’t. For example, in the following chord progression, it’s hard to make any kind of sense out of the F#m chord; it just sounds odd… too odd for most common genres, you […]
We’ve all been there: a new idea for a song pops quickly into your mind, and with great excitement you dig in and hope to have the song finished in a day or so. But somewhere along the line the ideas fizzle. What you’re left with is something that’s got the promise of greatness, but […]
