Some songwriters can’t compose unless they feel inspired to do so. That word inspired refers to a kind of excitement that drives our creative process and motivates us to write. You might think of the word in its less metaphorical form: to inspire, meaning to breathe in. It’s like saying that the excitement to write comes […]
There’s a lot of value that comes from writing songs quickly. Speedwriting requires you to use your musical instinct as a primary part of your process. And most good songs have a noticeably improvisatory sound, as if the singer and players are sort of making it up as they go along (in the best sense […]
I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to the role of spontaneous musical creation and its role in songwriting. I’ve been writing for many years on this blog about how I believe writing quickly is an important skill in typical songwriting. That’s not at all to say that once you’ve created something quickly, you […]
This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, and so I’ll state this up front, and then give you some additional thoughts: Good music is not meant to express emotion; good music IS meant to create emotion. I want to tell you a bit more about this. To say that a good song […]
You may think that a good chord progression is the end result of a random process, but it rarely is. If you spend your time playing one random chord after another, you’ll be looking for a long time before you find something that works. I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t have the […]
All the basic components of a song — especially the chords, melodies, lyrics — act as partners. Nothing happens in isolation. A good melody will sound even better if the chords support it. Lyrics sound better if the melody they’re delivered with matches the rhythm and basic contour of the words. Trying to get a […]
