The Beatles

Songwriting: How to Avoid Moving In a Bad Direction

If you look at the description of Lennon & McCartney’s “I Saw Her Standing There” in the Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list, you’ll read this: This song had been written by McCartney two years earlier. After penning the first line  – “She was just 17” – McCartney wanted to avoid completing […]

Music Theory - Songwriting

5 Reasons Good Songwriters Benefit From Music Theory

An understanding of music theory can help make you a better overall musician, but doesn’t “create” musical abilities within you. To use an analogy, a bad violinist can buy the best multi-million dollar Stradivarius violin, and still sound bad. As a songwriter with certain abilities, and therefore certain successes, you can (and likely will) become a better musician as […]

Songwriting - Piano and guitar

Make Improvisation a Smarter Part of Your Songwriting Process

Improvisation is an important part artistic creation. Who knows where those very first ideas come from — the ones that pop into your mind as you’re walking down the street or sitting on a bus. But almost everything that follows, at least for most songwriters, happens through improvisation. In that context, improvisation means using your […]

How to Reverse Engineer a Song, and Why You’d Do That

If you want to be the best, it sometimes requires you to pull the best songs apart to see the parts separately. That’s reverse engineering. ______________  Looking for good songwriting content for your iPad, Kindle, laptop, desktop, or other PDF-reading device? Gary Ewer’s eBook Bundle, “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting”, will show you why good […]

Writing a Hook and Making it Work

Get FANTASTIC RESULTS! – Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 e-book bundle and START WRITING GREAT SONGS! ____________________________ Hooks are many things to many songwriters. For some, the hook is that neat little rhythmic/melodic idea that gets stated at the beginning of a song, and then keeps on keeping on. Think “Smoke on the […]

“The Essential Secrets of Songwriting”: Learning to be Creative

Written by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website. FOLLOW GARY ON TWITTER The second edition of “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” is out! See the video here. ___________________________________ The second edition of “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” was released last week, and I’ve gotten great some comments from many musicians. One question, […]