Violin section of an orchestra

Changing Instrumentation May Be All the Innovation Your Song Needs

Chapter 5 of “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” shows how melody and lyric need to work together. Learn how to do it right! Get the entire 10-eBook Bundle along with a free copy of “Use Your Words! Developing a Lyrics-First Songwriting Process.” Most songwriters will, from time to time, worry about their songs all sounding […]

Dick Clark - American Bandstand

When Negativity Attacks Your Sense of Creativity

I firmly believe that if The Beatles were a band of our decade trying to get a start in the business, they’d probably not have survived the onslaught of negative opinions and comments that come hand-in-hand with social media. There’s a really interesting video you can watch of young folks in 1967 — in their […]

ROOMFUL OF TEETH

Adding Colours to Your Musical Palette: Roomful of Teeth

Trying to get a handle on writing song lyrics? Discover the benefits of making a lyrics-first method your new go-to process with”Use Your Words! Developing a Lyrics-First Songwriting Process. It’s FREE right now when you purchase the 10-eBook Bundle. Hopefully you don’t need to be convinced, as a songwriter, of the importance of daily listening […]

Singer-Songwriter

Becoming Better at the Language of Music

It’s common to hear people describe music as a kind of language. And it’s not hard to see why the comparison is made. With a language, we learn words and phrases that communicate thoughts and ideas to others. And in a very real sense, that’s what music is. Sometimes, the actual thing we’re communicating may not […]

Pumped Up Audience

Building an Audience For Complex, Innovative Songs

If you like writing songs that are on the cutting edge — innovative, creative and complex — you already know that there’s a problem to solve: building an audience for your music. It can sometimes help to look at other singer-songwriters and bands that have solved this issue. For most, though, the solution was to […]

KISS - Beth

5 Most Common Chord Progression Problems

Innovative, unique chord progressions are tricky, because in most pop songs the chords have an important function: provide a simple way — a musical path or road, so to speak — to move away from the tonic chord and then back again. It really is that simple. “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” eBook bundle includes “Writing a Song […]