If you have a reasonable understanding of how chords work, and already know which chords are likely to be useful in a given key, you’ve got an advantage over songwriters who must rely solely on improvising to create progressions. If you want to have just a bit of chord theory to get you started, try […]
In most songs, the chorus is considered to be, musically speaking, more energetic than the verse. There are lots of ways that the higher energy is attained, some of which are the producer’s responsibility: instrumentation, playing style, volume, etc. And some of ways to achieve higher energy are the songwriter’s responsibility: higher emotions in the […]
The tonic note is the one that represents the key of your song, and it has the main quality of feeling like “home”. When a tonic note happens, it sounds as if a musical phrase has, even just temporarily, ended, and the next one can begin. That’s a good reason why the tonic note happens […]
When we talk about a melody-first songwriting process, we assume that we’re talking about writing a song where thinking up the melody, or at least a bit of a melody, is the first step. Then once we’ve got a good chunk of that working and sounding good, we then try to figure out what kind […]
