Lyrics become all the more powerful when they’re properly paired with a good melody. That’s what Chapter 5 is all about in the eBook “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting.” Polish your songwriting technique with the 10-eBook Bundle. If you start your songs by vamping on a short chord progression, the advantage is that you create […]
You may not think of many of the early Beatles songs as using complex or unusual chord progressions, but for their day, they were noticeably creative. Where so many other early- to mid-era rock and roll songs were barely straying beyond the basic I-IV-V-I kinds of progressions, The Beatles were throwing in modal mixtures, secondary […]
If you’re a songwriter, you’re targeting an audience, whether you do it intentionally or inadvertently. You may favour country music, for example, and so if you put your songs out there for others to stream, it’s country music lovers that will be listening to them, whether you purposely target that demographic or not. “Use Your […]
Put the words “songwriting” and “voice” together in a sentence, and you’d think I’m talking about singing. But there’s another aspect of songwriting and voice that comes about when talking about musical honesty. Here’s more about what I mean by that. If, once you’ve written a song, you ask a roomful of people what they […]
As humans, we work best when we have a target to aim for. Imagine a basketball season, for example, that might end with no playoffs, no awards, and no official recognition for anything you’ve done. It would be hard for the players to get excited at all. Songwriting is not much different; we’re supposed to […]
Want to know the best way to use chords as a starting point in your songwriting process? Read “Writing a Song From a Chord Progression.” Get it separately, or as part of “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting 10-eBook Bundle.” A circle of fifths progression is one in which adjacent chords have roots that are a […]
