Keyboard - Chord Progressions

Working Backwards to Create Better Chord Progressions

Chord progressions offer an important sense of direction. It’s why they’re called progressions and not successions. And of course, most elements within a song come with a similarly important sense of direction. Melodies and lyrics typically work in a forward direction, but when performed backwards, they don’t usually work at all. “Chord Progression Formulas” shows you how […]

Songwriter - lyrics

Organizing Words and Phrases Into a Complete Lyric

Improvisation plays an important role in pop songwriting. And we love that feeling of quickly coming up with musical ideas and having them sound great right from the start. Hopefully you know, however, that most songs, even the ones that seem to spill deliciously out of our musical minds within minutes, require some working and […]

songwriting technique

What is Songwriting Technique, and How Do You Improve It?

Every time you create something, whether writing a song, painting a landscape, or writing a novel, you are pulling two vital aspects of artistic creation together: your technical abilities and knowledge, and your creative imagination. In songwriting, we refer to technical abilities by using the word technique, and we summarize the phrase creative imagination by simply referring […]

5 tips for Silencing, then Awakening, Your Inner Critic

Being critical of what you’re writing is an essential step in perfecting your craft. Anyone who wants to improve at anything needs to be able to objectively critique what they do. To not have this kind of honest reckoning with yourself as an artist means limiting how much you can improve. The problem with being […]

Keyboard player - songwriter - chord inversions

The Secret to a Good Two-Chord Song

Because most songwriters want to stand out from the crowd, at least just a bit, it’s common to go looking for chord progressions that are unique, or at least somewhat inventive. I love a creative chord progression, and so I think looking for chords that sound fresh and not overly-used by others is a worthwhile […]

Singer-Songwriter

Making Others Care About Your Songs

Everyone has their own motivation for becoming a songwriter. For most, and likely for you, it’s a variation on the need for self-expression. With every song, you have a thought, a feeling or an opinion that you want to express. Who knows how many possible problems or errors that can be committed when writing a […]