Bored With Just One Key? Try Two.

•Written by Gary Ewer, Senior Instructor, Dalhousie University, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website. • Follow Gary on Twitter for website updates, songwriting tips and more. • Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” suite of songwriting e-books at a 50% savings, and get “Chord Progression Formulas” free of charge. _____________________ As much as I roll […]

Balancing Your Use of Major and Minor Chords

Finding the chords that could be used to harmonize your song is an easy process: you choose a key based on your melody’s range, write the scale for that key, and build a triad on each note. That gives you seven chords as a starting point. Before you start adding “altered” chords to your palette […]

Stimulating Your Other Senses to Help Cure Writer's Block

by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website; __________ Every songwriter goes through a rough patch, when writing the next tune seems all but impossible. Despite our best efforts, it happens. And even though you may do the things most people – including me – will offer as solutions (setting a regular time […]

Chord Progressions that Change Key

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 […]