The Good and the Bad of Formula Writing

Written by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website. FOLLOW GARY ON TWITTER Clean up your songwriting technique. Purchase “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” bundle and get a free e-book. _________________ A song with no repeating elements will usually be a song that fails. Repetition is a crucial part of a song’s success. […]

Can't Choose Between Two Melodies? Use Them Both

Written by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website. FOLLOW GARY ON TWITTER Clean up your songwriting technique. Purchase “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” bundle and get a free e-book. _________________ One way to compose a new song is to come up with a chord progression, improvise a melody above it, and then apply […]

The Tension-Release Principle of Songwriting

Written by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website. Clean up your songwriting technique. Purchase “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” bundle and get a free e-book. _________________ What keeps a listener listening? If you can’t answer that question, your songs may be relegated to the dust-heap of music history, along with all the […]

Replicating a Melodic Idea Throughout Your Song

Written by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website. Gary Ewer is the author of “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” suite of e-books. Download them today, and discover how to turn your songs into hits. _______________________ Everyone knows that the more familiar someone is with a song, the more they tend to like […]

Balancing Your Use of Major and Minor Chords

Finding the chords that could be used to harmonize your song is an easy process: you choose a key based on your melody’s range, write the scale for that key, and build a triad on each note. That gives you seven chords as a starting point. Before you start adding “altered” chords to your palette […]

Comparing Verse and Chorus Structure

Written by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website. FOLLOW GARY ON TWITTER Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” e-book bundle, and learn to write great songs. _____________________________ We usually use the word “progression” when we talk about the process of one chord moving to another. But songwriters would be well advised to consider […]