A song that we love can seem to have a really enticing chord progression, but when you really dig into the song to find out what they’ve done regarding chords, you often find that they’re very ordinary, and that it’s other things — syncopated rhythms, chord inversions, and melodic shapes above the chords — that […]
If you’re a songwriter, you’ve already dealt with writer’s block. Everyone feels it in its mildest form at least, and most feel it from time to time at a moderate level. For some, writer’s block becomes severe; it digs its heels in and lasts for months or longer, and can be debilitating. It may seem […]
“It’s all about the hook,” you’ll often be told, when it comes to successful pop songwriting. The only problem with that assertion is that it makes it seem as though other song elements aren’t quite as important. A hook grabs attention, to be sure, but doesn’t excuse you from making sure that the overall structure […]
Today’s world of pop music can be a very insular one, in the sense that many “discoveries” pop musicians make about what people like aren’t really new after all. I’ve posted an article from the New Yorker recently, called “The Sound Machine,” about how hits are written today. In that article, Jay Brown (president of Roc Nation) said: “You’ve […]
When you conjure up the first musical bits that will become your next song, those bits are likely going to become part of your song’s chorus. That’s because it’s most likely that you’ll find it easy to think up something like a hook than something like a verse or a bridge. And hooks are going to be the […]
I mentioned in my blog post yesterday that I was just about finished a new short ebook about chords-first songwriting. It’s now finished, all except for a final thorough proofread. It’s part of “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 10-eBook Deluxe Bundle. Read more. Here’s a short excerpt from the 35-page “Writing a Song From a Chord […]
