One of the reasons that you might add a bridge to your song is that it can make it just a bit longer, if all you’ve got is a couple of verses. So if, by the time you’ve reached the end of your second go-through of the chorus, you feel that your song would sound […]
Forward motion is a term that refers to the sense of musical energy in a song. In real terms, forward motion is what makes a listener want to keep listening to a song. In other words, the listener wants to believe that as good as the song is at this moment, it’s going to sound […]
Recently I wrote about the musical power that comes from starting progressions on a chord other than the tonic chord. By avoiding the tonic, the listener subconsciously wants to hear it, and so it creates a very powerful sense of musical energy: the listener is willing to wait to hear the tonic eventually happen. Songwriters […]
Writing the chorus part of a song is usually a very different process than writing the verse part. With choruses, you’re usually coming up with a little package of music — some chords, a backing rhythm, a catchy melodic bit and then some lyrics. That musical package is what we call the chorus hook, and […]
We typically talk about a song’s hook as if there is just one. But in fact, most songs have several hook-like elements, all working to make the song attractive to listeners. While one of those hooks tends to stand out as the main one, songwriting success comes from having several of them on the go, […]
If all you need are some chord progressions to get your songwriting process started, “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting 10-eBook Bundle” contains 2 chord collections plus eBooks on how to create your own chords, and how to add chords to melodies that you’ve written. If you take a major scale and build chords above each […]
