One of the biggest drawbacks to starting your songs by working out a chord progression is that melodies can get a bit neglected. Historically, composers in the Classical realm rarely if ever started compositions with just chords. They’d practically always start with something hummable (a melody), or something otherwise memorable (the lyrics, perhaps). And since […]
As a songwriter, you possess a skill that can make someone’s mood a little brighter, and someone’s day a little better. You could argue that practically everyone, no matter what they do in life, has the same ability. One way or another, we all have the chance to make someone’s day better, even if it’s just […]
Do you find frustration building practically every time you sit down to write a song? Sometimes you find that a song’s first ideas will come to you quickly, but what to do with those ideas… That’s when the frustration kicks in, and everything starts to feel hopeless. One of the most common causes of songwriting frustration […]
Most chord progressions work best in the forward direction, and the longer a progression is, the truer that statement is. For shorter progressions, you’ll still often find that a progression sounds best when played beginning to end, but you’ll notice that playing them backwards isn’t a total wash-out. For example: C Am F G C […]
Most works of art, whether you’re talking about songwriting, poetry, the painting of a landscape, or anything else, really, are comprised of some element that acts as a focus, and then many surrounding, supporting elements. For example, you might photograph a landscape that features a beautiful pine tree as the main element — the object that immediately […]
Let’s say that you’ve been working out a new chord progression, and you’ve found something — a combination of 3 or 4 chords — that really seems to work. The trouble is: you can’t figure out what key that progression is in. How do you identify it? The first question you might ask is this […]
