It never ceases to amaze me how music can add so much depth and meaning to the words you use. Or sometimes even without words the music itself can strike deep into the emotional core of the listener. A good example of that can be seen in this video… it shows the opening scene of […]
In my most recent blog post, I wrote about forward motion, also called momentum, and how tension and release is a vital way for increasing that momentum within a song. But what if the tension and release aspect of your song is working just fine, but you want the whole thing to sound a bit […]
You’d think that it would occur naturally to us to read lyrics aloud as an important part of the song editing process. For practically every other aspect of songs, we test them out by actually performing them for ourselves: we strum chords, improvise melodies by humming or otherwise singing, try different instrument combinations, and so […]
You can spend a lot of time worrying about the song you’ve just written, wondering if it accidentally sounds like someone else’s song. Unintentional plagiarism does happen. But what’s the best way to deal with it? I’m talking about those times that the song you’ve written is striking you as sounding uncomfortably familiar, whether it’s […]
I’ve always been interested in the tempo of music, and what effect that has on how we “hear” a song. We can measure tempo precisely, usually in bpm (beats per minute), but performers will often slightly alter tempo from one live performance to the next, which might indicate that the need for tempo precision is […]
If you think about melodies that are considered “beautiful”, you’re usually talking about ones that move generously up and down rather than ones that sit mainly around one or two notes. If you were to make a short list of songs that have what everyone seems to think of as beautiful, there’s another aspect you’ll […]
