It’s not unusual for songwriters to think back to a time when songwriting seemed a lot easier. Certainly if you look at how long it used to take you to write a song, you may be discouraged to know that what used to take you hours now takes you days, or even longer. That’s not […]
If you like starting songs by working with a chord progression, you need to read “Writing a Song From a Chord Progression.” It will give you the pros and cons of this songwriting method, and help you create songs that really work! Many years ago I was a band teacher for a junior high school. […]
It’s hard to write every day if you’re a songwriter, because you find yourself either running out of ideas for songs, or running out of inspiration. What can you do to keep creativity from drying up? Let’s deal with the inspiration part first. There are lots of sources for inspiration, but the kind of inspiration […]
The world of songwriting — in fact, the world of music in general — often rewards dreamers. The hope that you’ll be a big name in the business someday almost seems to be a prerequisite to actually becoming a big name. When you think about it, hoping and wishing is probably an important stage for most […]
Whether you come up with the chords and then create a melody, or have a melody that you want to add chords to, you need to be sure that the chords are properly supporting the melody. When chords and melody work well together, you have the happy circumstance that they both sound better than they […]
Songwriters sure can put a lot of pressure on themselves to be constantly great. Consistent excellence is in fact something I talk a lot about, and through this blog and through online sessions I try to help songwriters to achieve that goal. But success can be measured in many ways. If a song needs to […]
