As a songwriter, you do something that many people find difficult: you create new musical ideas and pull them all together into a final product called a song. You may be the kind of writer that finds it easy to do, so perhaps you’re writing a new song or two every week. But you might […]
If you find it hard coming up with great original melodies, you do have an option to consider: using a melody from a public domain song. Public domain refers to the fact that the original copyright of a song has expired. In many countries copyright expires 70 years after the death of the copyright holder. […]
There are lots of tricks that composers have used over the centuries to create new melodies based on already-existing ones. Some ideas: Slowing a known melody down so much that it becomes unrecognizable as the original. Example: The first phrase of Mozart Piano No. 16 in C major served as the main melody for “Hey […]
by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website. __________________ A few days ago I wrote about ways that you can keep a song from getting stale on the listener, changing key (also known as modulating) being one possible way to achieve this. There are many ways to modulate, and depending on the style […]
