I’m not much of a cook, but I’ve certainly eaten enough food to know that once you’ve combined all the ingredients of a recipe in a pot on the stove and turn the burner on, new, wonderful flavours emerge. Flavours that you wouldn’t notice when you consider your ingredients separately. If you really love food, you’ll know […]
I don’t know if you feel the same way, but sometimes I learn the best lessons regarding music by thinking of something completely unmusical. Metaphors speak loudly and meaningfully to me. I like building things out of wood. It’s something I love, even if I’m not doing it at a professional level. But with every […]
One of the main reasons songwriters get stuck in a creative rut is an overused songwriting process. If you find that you’re always approaching songwriting the same old way, and using the same structural design and chords over and over again, just changing how you approach writing can quickly break you out of a creative […]
Check out The Essential Secrets of Songwriting 10-eBook Bundle When it comes to writing melodies, it’s not actually that hard to come up with a chorus that works well with its partnering verse, as long as you follow certain basic principles. But if you’re in a situation where your chorus just doesn’t seem to be […]
Talk about progressions to musicians, and they automatically make the assumption that you’re talking about chords. Of course, that makes sense. The chords in a song aren’t just randomly selected; each chord within a sequence needs to make a kind of musical sense, and that’s in fact why we use the word progression. But in fact, […]
I’ve just uploaded a new songwriting video, “How the Rhythm of a Melody Changes as a Song Progresses.” In it, I take a look at how rhythm plays a role in the emotional connection that a melody can make. In large part, a melody’s rhythm is determined by the actual words of the lyric. But […]
