guitar, pencil and notepad

Honing Your Lyric-Writing Skills

If you find lyrics are the hardest part of songwriting, the best way forward is to try to emulate the greats. Whenever I hear songwriters describing the difficulties they have with lyrics, it’s almost always that they feel that they’re “lame.” In other words, it’s not so much that they don’t know what to write […]

Christina Perri

Writing the Best Bridge For Your Song

A bridge section, sometimes also called the middle eight, is an optional section that usually happens after the chorus’s second appearance in a song, or after the second verse or refrain for songs that don’t use a chorus. Songs With a Chorus Verse – Chorus – Verse – Chorus – Bridge – Final Chorus Repeats or Verse […]

Brian Wilson - Tony Asher

How a Song’s Chorus Makes Use of Musically Strong Elements

When you listen to a song just for entertainment, you’re not usually aware that parts of the song are musically ambiguous in some way, while other parts are clear and strong. Let’s say, for example, that you start your song by writing a verse that uses this short progression: C-Bb-C-Bb-C-Bb… There’s a kind of ambiguity associated […]

Foster the People

Identifying Your Song’s Climactic Moment

Most songs have a moment that can be identified as being its climactic moment. More often than not, it’s somewhere toward the end. Climactic moments are sometimes easy to identify: “Bridge Over Troubled Water” (Paul Simon): You can hear the song constantly building, and, like many songs, is really a series of climactic moments, each […]

Songwriter

Five Tips For Songwriting During Tough Times

One of the most potent strengths of being human is the ability to be creative. There’s a wonderful sense of empowerment that comes from assembling something beautiful out of what seemed to be disorder. Songwriters know this; I’ve heard many describe their songwriting as a kind of therapy for the soul. Finishing a song feels […]

Songwriter - guitarist

An Important Way That Chords-First Songwriting Can Let You Down

There is a lot to be said for the chords-first songwriting process, not the least of which is the fact that when you start vamping on a chord progression, a mood usually becomes quickly obvious. And once you’ve got the mood of the music, a topic will often be easier to settle on. And once […]