Songwriters are correct to think a lot about how to start the songwriting process. How you start often has a strong influence on where things end up. But songwriters typically worry, not so much that they’re starting the wrong way, but more that they’re possibly missing out on a better way. You need to look […]
Every once in a while I take a quick glance through a portion of the Rolling Stone Magazine’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time,” and I’m looking for similarities. I’m willing to accept, of course, that the list is highly subjective, but that doesn’t bother me much. There’s no denying that the songs on the list […]
“It’s all about the hook,” you’ll often be told, when it comes to successful pop songwriting. The only problem with that assertion is that it makes it seem as though other song elements aren’t quite as important. A hook grabs attention, to be sure, but doesn’t excuse you from making sure that the overall structure […]
When you conjure up the first musical bits that will become your next song, those bits are likely going to become part of your song’s chorus. That’s because it’s most likely that you’ll find it easy to think up something like a hook than something like a verse or a bridge. And hooks are going to be the […]
It’s easy to see songwriting as a kind of problem-solving activity. The problem? Well, coming up with a finished song of course. And every decision you make – in a sense, every problem you solve – moves you closer to the end product: a completed song. But this kind of activity differs from most other problem-solving activities in the sense […]
A number of years ago I wrote a blog article called “Pop Songs: What Checking the Fossil Record Can Do For Us“. In that post, I made a comparison between how Gregorian Chant (the music of the early Christian church of about A.D. 500) bore certain similarities to the way melodies are written today. You may […]
