Writing music wouldn’t hold a lot of interest for us if everything was completely predictable. We like the fact that we think we’ve written something others will like too, but then we must wait and see what the final impact on an audience is. Over the past number of decades of pop music, there have been […]
We all get something different out of music. For some, music is beautiful sound that gets played quietly on the home stereo, never turned up: musical wallpaper. For others, music defines who they are and takes a central role. It gets turned up loud and listened to. And more than just listening to music because […]
[This article has been edited to reflect a new discount deal available at the Online Store.] I’ve been quietly working on a new eBook for the past while, and it’s finally finished! “Hooks and Riffs: How They Grab Attention, Make Songs Memorable, and Build Your Fan Base” is available now, as part of “The Essential Secrets of […]
In the past ten years or so of pop music, it’s become much more of a thing to write hit songs that are mostly based on one single chord progression. It sounds like it would just result in music that is repetitive and boring. Or perhaps the better way to say that is: the job […]
Stream of consciousness writing means to put down your thoughts as they occur to you – literally a continuous stream of thoughts, ideas, opinions in as close to real time as you can get. One of the most interesting (some might say negative) characteristics of stream of consciousness is the fact that there is no time […]
I did a post recently dealing with categorizing chords to make them easier to use. We know that in any key, the I, IV and V-chords comprise what we call primary chords, and they are the most common ones you’ll find in most pop songs. Beyond those three, the ii, iii, vi and vii-chords are categorized as secondary chords, […]
