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Songwriting Tips by Gary Ewer.
Write better songs and chords by learning The Essential Secrets of Songwriting
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10 Quick Tips For Safeguarding Your Songs  |
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| Friday, February 3, 2012, 11:12 am AST |
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Any song you write, and in fact anything you write, is automatically copyright. There is no need to apply for it. Unfortunately, owning the copyright on a song does little for you if someone disputes that you are the author. And it does nothing to protect you or help you if someone takes your song and uses it for their own purposes without your permission. So copyright, as a defence... [READ FULL ARTICLE... ] |
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The Essential Secrets of Songwriting website shows you how great songs work. Read daily articles that explore the fascinating world of songwriting.
If you struggle with writing a great song, and you can't seem to finish any song you start, Gary Ewer has written a set of songwriting ebooks designed to get you doing the thing you love. Let those e-books be your guide. They'll show you how to improve your writing skills by showing you how lyrics, melodies, hooks, chord progressions, and every other aspect of good music works. The books take a look at hit songs from the past, showing how and why they became winners.
Along with tons of chord progressions and formulas you can use, you'll be writing the songs that you always knew you could write! The instructional e-books come with sound samples and a glossary of musical terms, so even if you don't read music, these e-books will clear up the muddle and get you enjoying songwriting again.
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| Previous Songwriting Articles: |
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The Advantage of Sketching a Map For Your Song |
| Thursday, February 2, 2012, 10:49 am AST Most songwriters piece a song together while sitting with an instrument. Little by little, lyrics, melodies and harmonies unite to form a final product. When it works, it's great, and it's fun. But from time to time you notice that something's not working. You feel like you're on the right track, but you can tell that something's not quite right. There are things you can do that will quickly... Read more |
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8 Chord Progression Sequences for Songwriters |
| Wednesday, February 1, 2012, 11:01 am AST You're probably familiar with a sequencer, which is a piece of hardware (or software) that can record and play back music. This article isn't about that. A musical sequence occurs when you take a short bit of melody and play it again, starting on a higher or lower pitch. It used to be a very common way of writing melodies back in the days of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. A great example... Read more |
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5 Ways to Demonstrate the Power of Opposite Ideas |
Tuesday, January 31, 2012, 10:40 am AST A colleague of mine was once asked what music was. His reply was, "Anything written with musical intent." In context, his answer made sense, considering that the conversation the group of us were having was concerning John Cage's 4'33", a piece of music written for any instrument, the main instruction being that the player was not to actually play the instrument at all, for four minutes and... |
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Repetition: the Fix For a Wandering Song Melody |
Monday, January 30, 2012, 10:20 am AST In the last blog post I wrote about one of the most common problems I saw in young songwriters, which was a serious flaw in the sense of structure and form of their music. I mentioned that the main symptom of bad structure is a song that seems to have no climactic moment; no obvious point to where the song energy is building. A badly-written melody can be both a cause... |
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Song Structure: When It's Right, You Don't Notice It |
Thursday, January 26, 2012, 11:12 am AST Back in 2003 I started doing research into pop music in preparation for writing “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting.” At that time, I had a number of students in my theory classes at Dalhousie University who were songwriters. They were keen to show me the songs they were working on, and I was very interested to help them. In fact, my desire to help them improve is what led to me... |
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Why the Hook is Vital in the Writing of Hit Songs |
Wednesday, January 25, 2012, 10:57 am AST Sometimes a song will become a hit to the surprise of the writers, performers and producers. But so-called "sleeper hits" - songs that rise to hit status unexpectedly - are actually not all that common. Suffice it to say, songs are usually greater than the sum of their parts, and so it can be a little bit unpredictable to determine which songs will become hits. But producers usually know... |
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Strong and Fragile: Using Chord Progressions to Their Greatest Effect |
Monday, January 23, 2012, 10:29 am AST If you've been writing songs for a while, you'll notice something about chord progressions: they all tend to point to one particular chord as being the harmonic goal. That harmonic goal is the key of your song. So if your song is in G major, the chord progressions are going to move away from and toward G. It's not unlike all the little walks you take during a normal day: they take you... [Read more] |
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Power-Up Your Chorus by Fiddling With Verse Rhythms |
Friday, January 20, 2012, 11:08 am AST Verses differ from choruses in several ways. It's easy to notice things like melodic range: we know that chorus melodies tend to be higher in pitch than verse melodies. We also know that verse lyrics will tend to be descriptive of people and situations, while choruses tend to allow a more emotional response. The difference also extends to rhythm, particularly as it relates to melody... |
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7 Tips for Changing Key Within a Song |
Thursday, January 19, 2012, 10:17 am AST The key that you choose for your song has more to do with your (or your performer's) vocal range than anything else. That original key choice is a whole topic that requires considerable thought. There's a notion that you should choose a key that allows your voice to reach all melody notes easily. But good performers know that you sometimes want to sing in the highest range possible... |
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5 Ways to Increase the Number of Songs You Write |
| Wednesday, January 18, 2012, 8:47 am AST If you're like most songwriters, you've probably got a ton of musical bits that don't have a home yet. Snippets of melody, a great bit of lyric, a chorus with nothing else... that kind of thing. And it's frustrating, because those fragments of music probably arose from moments of great musical inspiration, and then - nothing. It's important not to obsess about this sort of thing... Read more |
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5 Improvisation Activities That Generate Song Ideas |
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| I applaud the songwriter who spends as much or more time working out small songwriting challenges than they do actually writing songs. So here are some ideas for improvising your way to a great song. Read more |
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