Singer - Songwriter

Pushing Past the Plateau

Do you feel that your songwriting has plateaued? Are you worried that you’ve reached a level of ability that you’ll never surpass? And if the answer to those questions is ‘yes’, it begs a third question: What can you do to take things to a new and better level? Stagnation in songwriting — and in fact in any of the […]

What You Need to Know Before Writing Your Next Melody

Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-book bundle, and learn to write better songs! We usually think of good melodies as having a distinctive shape and a climactic high point. It may surprise you to know, however, that it’s possible to have melodies that use very few notes, almost no distinctive contour, and seem to […]

Creating a Melody Using "Plateau Pitches"

By Gary Ewer, Senior Instructor, Dalhousie University, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website. • Follow Gary on Twitter • Make songwriting enjoyable again! Check out “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 e-book bundle – available now at a 50% savings! ________________________________ I use the term “plateau pitches” to describe a way of constructing melodies where the notes dwell on one […]

Melodies Without Shape: Doomed to Be Failures

•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. _____________________________________ To the untrained ear, a melody may […]

Using Plateau Pitches to Organize the Structure of Your Melody

Written by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website Follow Gary on Twitter Jason Aldean’s latest hit on the Country charts, “Big Green Tractor,” demonstrates a great technique for building melodies that work: plateau pitches. It’s a way of structuring a melody to ensure that you get a controlled build through your song that […]