A flat-VI chord is a major chord built on the lowered 6th degree of a major scale. In C major, the 6th degree is A. Lowering it gives you Ab, and a major chord built on that note gives you the 3-note chord Ab-C-Eb: the so-called flat-VI. In pop music genres, the flat-VI chord quite […]
No matter what your favourite songwriting process is, all songs start with you getting some sort of musical idea. It might be a fragment of lyric, a catchy chord progression and rhythm, or even just a short bit of melody. Who knows where these ideas come from… often they seem to pop out of thin […]
How much of a connection should a listener hear between the verse and chorus? In other words, except for tempo, key and general feel, can a verse melody set up a chorus well if it bears little to no similarity to that chorus melody? Take the classic hit “Witchy Woman” (Don Henley, Bernie Leadon). Compare […]
Improvisation is an important part of most musician’s songwriting process. You sit at a keyboard, or set up some loops, or start strumming your guitar, and you generate ideas spontaneously. It’s fun to work this way. And I suppose you might say that the stronger your musical imagination, the more likely you’ll hit upon hook-like […]
What role does chance play in the writing of a good song? Since good songwriting is guided by principles and not rules, there’s undoubtedly going to be a certain amount of random good luck. On that particular day, at that particular moment, your imagination created that melodic idea. There’s no way to get around it: good songwriting involves […]
Because most songwriters are also instrumentalists, muscle memory plays a big role in key choice. If you’re a guitarist and you’re noodling around trying to create some ideas for songs, you’ll find your fingers wanting to move to the notes and patterns that you find the easiest to play. “Fix Your Songwriting Problems – NOW!” […]
