Chords and songwriting

Chord Progressions: Moving From Fragile to Strong

When you listen to songs, you’re likely unaware of the concepts of fragile and strong being played out, but it’s actually a very important aspect of good songwriting. If you’ve written a melody and you want to explore the many ways there are to add chords to it, you need to get “How to Harmonize a […]

The Beatles - Help!

Reversed Versions of Songs… a Writer’s Block Antidote?

Who knew that posting backwards versions of songs on YouTube was a thing? I came across a channel called “The Beatles Reversed”, and listened to a backwards version of “Help!” I’m not sure what the reason would be, and it should be noted that the channel has only 1.7k subscribers, so it doesn’t seem to […]

Microphone in music studio

Tips For Writing Great Song Melodies

Many songwriters feel uncomfortable writing songs by starting with a melody. To them, a melody-first songwriting process means sitting with a digital recorder and mindlessly humming some notes until a usable melody miraculously appears. Then you’ve got the task of adding chords to that new melody, and it all seems daunting. Trying to get a […]

Wilco

“Impossible Germany” (Wilco)- Why It Works

American band Wilco has been around for a good long time now, since 1994. Their lineup has changed over the years, but has remained the same since 2004: Jeff Tweedy (singer), John Stirratt (bass), Glenn Kotche (drums), Mikael Jorgensen (keyboards), Nels Cline (guitar) and Pat Sansone (keyboards, guitar, etc.) If you listen to much Wilco […]

Studio singer

Writing Song Melodies: Be Careful With Melodic Leaps

A song melody is made up of notes that either move by step (i.e. adjacent notes: C-D-E-D-E-F…) or by leap (i.e. skipping a note, or several notes, to get the next note: C-A). It’s probably correct to say that most song melodies use stepwise motion more than leaps. Some songs might use mostly leaps in […]

The Chieftains

It Doesn’t Take Much

Every once in a while I write a blog post that refers to the importance of repetition in music, and how song melodies without repetition are problematic because they’re hard to remember. We already know the power and need for repetition in music when it comes to basic elements like the backing rhythms. Most songs […]