Given the few notes within an octave and the millions of songs that have been written using them, accidental plagiarism is a constant companion for most songwriters. Every time you come up with a great songwriting idea — especially something that you really like — you’re immediately wondering if you’ve stolen the idea from an […]
As a songwriter, when the song you’re working on seems to be going nowhere, it’s a source of great discouragement. You find yourself facing a day of reckoning: Do you keep going with it, or do you declare it a dud and toss it? There is another option: put it aside, and revisit it at some […]
You might assume that a verse should have some connection to the chorus that follows it — something that makes the verse and chorus sound like musical partners. Creating musical partners of various sorts is usually a goal in good songwriting. But (with the possible exception of the lyrics) it is possible to write a verse and […]
Songs are short. Most of them, anyway. And by short, I mean usually less than four minutes. That may seem like an insignificant detail that’s hardly worth mentioning, but the shortness of songs is a kind of musical challenge: in a very short period of time, you need to offer the audience a complete musical […]
It’s a stereotypical notion that major keys sound happy and minor keys sound sad. In reality, it takes a lot more than simply choosing major or minor. You can have sad songs in major keys (“Someone Like You” – Adele, Dan Wilson), and you can have happy songs in minor keys (“Happy ‘Cause I’m Going […]
You may be familiar with the term relative major — that’s the major key that uses the same key signature as a particular minor key. It’s a very common key relationship in pop songs, because if you’ve written a song that uses a minor key verse, and you decide to switch to major for the chorus, […]
