Last week I received an email from a blog reader, with a question regarding chord progressions. It’s similar to one that I receive a lot, and so I thought perhaps I would post it here, along with my answer [slightly edited in spots for clarity], and hope that it might be helpful for those of […]
If you look at the description of Lennon & McCartney’s “I Saw Her Standing There” in the Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list, you’ll read this: This song had been written by McCartney two years earlier. After penning the first line – “She was just 17” – McCartney wanted to avoid completing […]
It’s an important principle in good songwriting that all elements within any song should act as partners. We know, for example, that the mood of a song can be strongly affected by the tempo we choose, and also by production choices: instrumentation, performance style, and even the key. A lyric can be excellent, but if […]
How you know that you’ve written a song that really works comes down to one main thing: its ability to make listeners want to hear it over and over again. When a song fails to do that, your job becomes one of analysis: how to figure out why a song just isn’t making the impact on […]
There are some genres that are edgy and energetic by nature. If you like the warm fuzzy feeling you get from a lightly-accompanied ballad, you’re not likely going to be writing heavy metal. But what if you like lightly-accompanied music for the transparency of its sound, but you wish your song had a bit more […]
Like anyone else, songwriters look for ways to improve what they do. How to improve as a songwriter is a topic that gets discussed a lot, and there are many, many opinions. If you want to improve as a geologist, everyone will agree that the best way is to combine studying at a university with in-the-field […]
