Got a melody, but don’t know how to add chords to it? “How to Harmonize a Melody” will show you the secrets to finding the chords that work well with your tune. It’s part of the 10-eBook Bundle. If songwriting for you means grabbing your guitar and strumming away until something sounds good, you’re likely […]
The love of music is a natural part of being human. For many, loving music means listening to it, dancing to it, singing or playing it. For others — many readers of this blog would fall into this category — it’s not enough to enjoy someone else’s music; they get enjoyment out of creating their […]
How often does sketching become part of your songwriting process? And what does that term mean to you? In most of the creative art forms, sketching is vital. Whether you’re a novelist creating character sketches, a choreographer sketching out a dance routine, or an artist getting ideas for a new painting, sketching has two main purposes: […]
I’ve written a few articles on this blog about the notion of drawing a line that represents your melody (like this article I wrote a few years ago). It’s not just that it’s kind of neat to see your melody sketched out as a line; there is a real purpose and benefit from seeing your […]
Mozart improvised. Mozart had good days and bad days. In fact, much of Mozart’s compositional process, if you research the topic, looks a lot like the kind of songwriting process we see today: a lot of experimenting, keeping good ideas, throwing out bad ones, and so on. So let’s take a look at some of […]
When it comes to technology that helps us as musicians, we’re living in wonderful times. Using smartphone apps or the internet, we have instant access to tuners, metronomes, mixers and recorders. We’ve got software that can write out our musical scores, then print up the parts, all correctly transposed. We can work out lyrics with […]
