Finding the Story From a Line of Lyric

Do you ever find that you randomly come up with a killer line of lyric, something that’s clever, poetic, rhythmic and imaginative all rolled up in one great phrase… but nothing else happens? And try as you might, you just can’t come up with more lyric to add to it? Starting June 22, 2018, “Creative Chord […]

Nickelback

Five Songwriting Ponderables

Do you ever find that when you’re talking to other musicians about music in general, there’s a list of “the things you’re most likely to say” guiding your conversations? Everyone has their big issues in music. Their pet peeves. Their guiding principles. Their “why do people think this way!?” kind of rants. There are many […]

Songwriter working out the next song

Songwriting, and Knowing Where to Start

If you’re a bit new to songwriting, there’s probably at least three things you’ve noticed already: Your first few songs may have come together quickly, and this is exciting. Your next few songs took hard work, and this is discouraging. Today, you don’t even know where to start. And because you don’t know where to start, […]

Copying Professional Songwriters as a Songwriting Technique

I’ve frequently written about the value of writing music that sounds like your songwriting hero, but it begs an important question: Aren’t you just running the risk of plagiarizing something they’ve written? And it begs a second more important question: Why is that even good advice? Why would you write to purposely sound like someone […]

John Mayer

Improvising Lyrics As Part of Your Songwriting Process

Thousands of songwriters are using the eBooks in “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” bundle to improve their technique and solve their problems. Time to take your songwriting to a new level of excellence. Get a copy of “Use Your Words! Developing a Lyrics-First Songwriting Process” FREE. A few days ago I wrote a post that […]

Sigrid - Don't Kill My Vibe

Using Melodic Range to Create Musical Energy

If you’re not sure what’s meant by a phrase, think of it as a part of a sentence up to a comma or a period, where the sentence seems to pause, either temporarily or permanently, like this 2-phrase unit from Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening”: Whose woods these are I […]