How do you make people think something with music? It’s amazing that simply hearing the air vibrate can do that, but such is the strength of being a member of the human race. I’ve mentioned on this blog before that some songwriters, like Paul Simon, like to compose music (melody and chords) and then decide […]
Improvising happens in every genre of music you can name, some genres more than others. A jazz concert will likely feature improvisation as a key element in practically every song. In that case, we usually mean a sax player or guitarist that might take a solo. But improvisation, of course, happens in every sub-genre of pop music, […]
In a sense, all students of anything are self-taught. The best teachers are mainly facilitators, presenting their own particular angle on a topic. Certainly, a teacher can offer you facts and figures that you may not have previously known, but offering facts and figures isn’t teaching. And teachers can help you parse the data, make sense of the tricky bits, […]
In a way, it’s hard to speak of “errors” in songwriting, because that implies that there are rules that have been broken. Songwriting isn’t guided by rules in the traditional sense of that word. If rules governed the creative process, writing music would hold little if any interest for us. Instead of rules, we are […]
In pop songwriting, the word hook is often used synonymously with chorus. “I’ve just written a hook” usually means that you’ve got the main part of your chorus done. But in fact, that concept we call the hook is more complex, and overlaps with other elements we typically call riffs, motifs, maybe even loops and other types of repetitive patterns. […]
We know that creating contrast is an important principle in the structure of good songwriting. Contrast is naturally sought by listeners, and they’re not usually aware that they’re seeking it. When melodies are low, we assume they’ll move higher. When music is soft, we expect that something louder is going to happen. If you listen […]
