How to Keep Chord Progressions From Sounding Random

Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 E-book Bundle, and kick-start your songwriting career! _________ Typically, chord progressions will be constructed in such a way as to make one particular chord sound like a target. That target chord is the so-called tonic chord. If you’re writing a song in G major, the tonic chord is G. […]

Making a Complex Chord Progression Work

Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 E-book Bundle, and become a top-level songwriter! __________________ If you’re the kind of songwriter that likes to experiment with innovation, you’re probably always looking for ways to integrate abstract elements into your songs. You are probably already playing with complex lyrical metaphors, nonstandard formal design, and melodic/harmonic combinations that […]

Why Some Chord Progressions Sound Aimless

Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 E-book Bundle, and become a top-level songwriter! __________________ Writers of music have known, quite literally for centuries, that some chord progressions will unambiguously point to one note as being the tonic note. Such progressions are the kind that we refer to as strong. Strong progressions leave little doubt regarding […]

Why Using Someone Else’s Chords Isn’t Plagiarism

Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 e-book bundle, and make yourself a top-level songwriter! _______________ As a songwriter, you should know that chord progressions don’t need to be amazing in order to work well. Most of the world’s biggest hits are built on progressions that, by themselves, are rather mundane. Almost by definition, a […]

The Best Way to Use Chord Inversions

For every key there are seven chords that naturally occur. You find these chords by building triads (i.e., 3-note chords that consist of a root, 3rd and 5th) above each note of the scale. So if your song is in A major, the seven naturally-occurring chords are: A, Bm, C#m, D, E, F#m, and G#dim. […]

The 7 Reasons Your Songs Might Be Boring

Get “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-eBook Bundle – Now with a 7th (free) eBook: “From Amateur to Ace: Writing Songs Like a Pro” _____________ Boring songs are hard to fix. That’s because when listeners are bored, they often can’t put their finger on why. There may be nothing obviously wrong, and yet the song […]