U2- With or Without You

3 Great Song Hook Types, and How to Write Them

“Hooks and Riffs: How They Grab Attention, Make Songs Memorable, and Build Your Fan Base“, is part of “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” Deluxe 10-eBook Bundle. Get the manuals that thousands of songwriters use to improve their songwriting technique. Read more.. When we talk about creating a hook for a song, there’s a tendency to think […]

Feist’s “How Come You Never Go There”: Why It Works

The success of a song comes down to how the various elements connect. ____________ Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-eBook Bundle, and build your audience base. _____________ One of the things that immediately attracted me to the song, “How Come You Never Go There“, by Canadian singer-songwriter Feist, is the sheer simplicity of its structure, […]

How Song Tempo Affects Chord Choice

No song elements act in isolation from others. So it’s no surprise that chords and tempo are closely linked. ____________ Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-eBook Bundle, and build your audience base! _____________ Back in the early days of the existence of chord progressions, composers discovered (or at least instinctively knew) that the tempo of a piece of […]

How to Analyze Hit Songs, and Boost Your Own Songwriting Skills In the Process

Once you know why hit songs are successful, you can apply those successes to your own music. ____________ Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-eBook Bundle, and increase your song’s HIT potential. _____________ Is it possible to analyze music without having strong music theory skills? I strongly advocate the learning of music theory as being hugely beneficial when analyzing […]

Composing Song Melodies: Taking Advantage of Pattern Recognition

Humans innately recognize patterns, and are drawn to them. So why are you writing melodies without patterns? ____________ Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-eBook Bundle, and increase your song’s HIT potential. _____________ For most animals, pattern recognition is a survival tool, an ability to make sense of the surrounding environment. But we humans have an ability that most […]

10 Top Features That Show Up in Most Hit Songs

Learn from history! Here are the ten most common characteristics of hit songs, no matter when they were written. ____________ Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-eBook Bundle, and increase your song’s HIT potential. _____________ If you’re a songwriter and you aren’t listening to music from a decade or more ago, you’re missing out on an amazing opportunity to […]