TODAY'S NEWS ARTICLES:

1. The A-major scale is: A B C# D E F# G# A (A major uses 3 sharps, a C#, an F# and a G#).
2. Build a triad above each note of that scale. A triad is a 3-note chord comprised of stacked 3rds. For example, a triad built on A would be A C# E. A triad built on B would be B D F#, and so on.
3. Continue building triads above each note.

I

1. Rihanna: Disturbia
2. David Archuleta: Crush
   
3. Chris Brown: Forever
4. Katy Perry: I Kissed a Girl
5. Coldplay: Viva La Vida
6. M.I.A.: Paper Planes
   
7. Kardinal Offishall Featuring Akon: Dangerous
8. Rihanna: Take a Bow
   
9. Ne-Yo: Closer
10. Taylor Swift: Change
    

1. Taylor Swift: Should've Said No
2. Keith Urban: You Look Good in My Shirt
3. Keith Anderson: I Still Miss You
4. Jimmy Wayne: Do You Believe Me Now
5. Brad Paisley: Waitin' On a Woman
6. Brooks & Dunn: Put a Girl In It
7. Sugarland: All I want to Do
8. Alan Jackson: Good Time
9. George Strait: Troubadour
10. Darius Rucker: Don't Think I Don't Know About It

ccasionally I'm asked about software for songwriters. It’s tricky to  recommend one over the other, because by the time you’ve been using one piece of software for years, other programs become irrelevant to you. It’s best to do your research, read online forums, and gather as many opinions as you can before buying. But that being said, here's a brief description of popular programs, most if not all of which are available for Mac or PC.

• Lyrics need to be "real". Unless your song is a setting of poetry, use real words that you'd use everyday.
• Melodies need some contour. A chorus melody will generally be placed higher in the singer's voice than a verse melody, and in both cases, need a high point. Give it some shape. Also, don't let your melody simply be an outlining of the chords you're using. It will sound stilted and unexpressive. 
• Chords don't require a lot of innovation; they serve as a foundation upon which you build your song. But the mind can turn off if your chords are those basic I - IV -V chords over and over again.

1. Chords and rhythm first. Come up with a progression that demands attention, then construct the rest of the song to fit it. (Caution: This is used a lot, so if you already use this method, try one of the following suggestions.)
2. Melody first (or melody only). Write your melody first, or a melody that implies, but doesn't actually use any chords or accompaniment. It's a refreshing change from what you've probably been doing all along.
3. Song with no introduction. Many songwriters mindlessly strum away on a guitar before they start singing. It's their way of saying, "Hey everyone, my song is about to start." But unless your intro is actually interesting and adds to the song, why not try launching right in? The Beatles did that a lot ("Penny Lane", for example.)
4. Song with untraditional accompaniment. Try getting a music student from a local university to write a string quartet arrangement for your song. Or try redoing that heavy-metal tune with 12-string guitar and flutes in the background. Or... do anything that throws a curve ball at your audience.

1. Rihanna: Disturbia
2. Chris Brown: Forever
3. Katy Perry: I Kissed a Girl
4. Rihanna: Take a Bow
5. M.I.A.: Paper Planes
6. Coldplay: Viva La Vida
7. Kardinal Offishall Featuring Akon: Dangerous
8. Lil Wayne: A Milli
9. Jonas Brothers: Burnin' Up
10. Ne-Yo: Closer

1. Taylor Swift: Should've Said No
2. Keith Urban: You Look Good in My Shirt
3. Sugarland: All I want to Do
4. Keith Anderson: I Still Miss You
5. Brooks & Dunn: Put a Girl In It
6. Alan Jackson: Good Time
7. Brad Paisley: Waitin' On a Woman
8. Jimmy Wayne: Do You Believe Me Now
9. George Strait: Troubadour
10. The Lost Trailers: Holler Back

How to Write a Song That Works

• HOW to change a boring chord progression into something that really works.
• HOW to make your lyrics say what you want to say, and
• HOW to construct your melodies properly.
• HOW to structure your songs into something that really clicks with the listener.
• HOW to get rid of writer's block!
• HOW to protect your music by understanding copyright, mechanical rights, performance rights, and more.
  

I have been teaching music for many years, and many of my students, in addition to their music studies with me, are budding songwriters on the side. But the number of students who describe the anxiety

• Your chord changes feel uninspired or directionless?
• Your melodies don't seem to keep your listeners interested enough to keep listening?
• Your lyrics feel cumbersome or uncreative?

There are lots of books out there that try to tell you how to write music. So if those books are working, why are there still so many frustrated writers? And if those books have what you're looking for, why are you still looking for help?

Those books will tell you to model the success of professional songwriters,  but they don't give the strategies for doing that! And often when you read what professional writers say about what they do, they can't really explain it.

Believe it or not, the best comparison to writing music and getting chords to work is constructing an office building and getting the walls to work. Picture that building in your mind. Any architect will tell you that no building will stand for very long if the load bearing walls aren't considered first. It's an absolute MUST. The other walls - the ones that create many of the hallways and office walls - can only be worked out once the load bearing walls are in place.

Writer’s block is the dreaded scourge of every songwriter’s life. Being unable to come up with a song happens to all writers, and shouldn’t be alarming when it occurs. But when it lasts for an extended period of time, it is the most frustrating thing that can happen to a composer.

The typical symptom of writer’s block is the feeling that once a basic musical idea is created, you just can’t seem to progress beyond that beginning stage. Everything feels like aimless wandering. It can turn what used to be the enjoyable experience of musical creation into a torturous journey, searching for the right notes, the right chords, or the right words.

There are two major culprits in causing writer's block to take hold.

1) An overwhelming fear of failure. Athletes experience this fear frequently, and it has even ended the careers of some very fine and talented people. Songwriters can suffer from this same debilitating fear.

2) Songs that lack musical form. It's not necessarily that you can't come up with ideas. It's more often that the song itself is poorly structured:

• The chords seem out of place;
• the lyrics feel trite;
• the melodies seem random.

FORM is the most important element in writing a song. Be sure to read the next section.

The good news is that there are things that you can do to reduce or even eliminate writer’s block. These ideas will get you feeling creative and successful:

1) Create random phrases of text and write them down in a notepad. For example, “through the moon,” “a breath of sunset”, “the clock cried”, “tomorrow’s sigh,” and so on. These are random thoughts, and may never make their way into a song. But they can cause you to feel creative, without the pressure of putting dozens of thoughts and words together to form a coherent lyric. And you will eventually stumble across a couple of words that will be useful in some future song. Keep every phrase you create.

2) Imagine that you’ve been told to create a five-second piece of music for the end of a TV show. Just a little tag to end a scene. You’ll probably only need one or two chords, and a little four or five note melody, without lyrics. This allows you to be creative without the pressure of creating a three or four-minute song. Play the chords over and over, and improvise a very short melody. Keep changing the melody and/or chords until you come up with something you like.

3) Invent a four-note melody. Hum the melody several times; then start harmonizing the melody with your guitar, or at the piano. See what chords sound good with that melody. Some will sound horrible, but some will sound very interesting. Don't change your melody once you’ve decided what it will be. Write down the chord progressions that sound good. Find four or five progressions that work well, and see if you can string them together somehow to create a short piece of music.

These activities are useful because they require you to be creative. At the same time, they can help you eliminate writer’s block because they are easy to fulfill, and you will feel successful. And feeling successful is one of the biggest weapons you’ll have for defeating writer’s block.

Hopefully those ideas will get you feeling creative and successful. Now, more about the importance of form...

What it comes down to, and why so much music being written fails, is a lack of structure - a lack of form. When you talk about form in music, you really are talking about how all the elements of songs work together - the structure and placement of all the components. For songs that don't work, and for the main cause of writer's block, you can usually place the blame on form.

And this is where people get messed up, because when they look at their songs, the components BY THEMSELVES are often fine. But HOW THEY GO TOGETHER isn't working. A verse may be fine, but it doesn't seem to be begging for the chorus. The chorus may be fine, but the chords don't feel right. An intro may be great, but... not for that song. So it's how things go together that's the problem.

Do you remember playing with Lego^® blocks as a kid? Using the same blocks, one child's building can be spectacular, while another's might fall down. It's not the blocks that are the problem. It's all about how the blocks are put together!

I've been a music teacher now for twenty years, teaching every age group from elementary school through to university and beyond. Over those years I had opportunity to scrutinize the music that my students had been writing. And while some was great, most of the songs were weak, and in need of serious help.

Chord progressions were only one of many weaknesses I observed. I saw how they struggled with melody construction, how verses didn't sound like verses, choruses didn't sound like choruses. And I also saw the frustration of my students as they tried to get their songs to work.

So I decided to do something to help not just my students, but every other struggling songwriter out there. Writing songs does not need to be mysterious. There are essential secrets of songwriting. The good news is that YOU CAN LEARN THEM AND BEGIN APPLYING THEM IN MINUTES!

I began to write an e-book to help my students deal with songwriting from every possible angle. It may seem like writing songs is just dealing with chords and melodies, but it's so much more. Here are some of the secrets my e-book, "The Essential Secrets of Songwriting," reveals:

• How to balance innovationwith predictability. Good songs need predictability. Here's an interesting fact: though the terms innovation and predictability are opposites, too much predictability creates the same effect in a listener as too much innovation: BOREDOM. But balancing the two properly makes a piece that's exciting and memorable - the two characteristics that produce winning songs!

YOU can write songs! I can say that with complete confidence, and I haven't even met you! All psychological studies show us that humans are artistic animals. ALL humans. The ability to do musical things is within all of us, not just some of us.

If you have tried songwriting and it hasn't worked for you, don't despair - the solution is within your grasp and your ability. Bad songwriting comes mostly from basic errors in technique, not some intangible failing of your skill.

SO WHO ARE THE PROFESSIONAL SONGWRITERS?

The principles that I have developed in "The Essential Secrets of Songwriting" are not principles that I invented. In fact, they weren't invented, as such, by anyone. But I can take credit for one thing: I have spent years listening to the music of the world's most successful songwriters, and have thoroughly studied what they do. And the professional songwriters are the ones who had been following the principles I've outlined in my e-book, years before I wrote them down for you.

Great writers like Leonard Cohen, Dave Matthews, Joni Mitchell, Paul McCartney, Raine Maida, John Denver, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Bob Seger, Bob Dylan, Alicia Keys, Leiber & Stoller, Bruce Springsteen, and dozens of others!

LISTENING TO THE PROS

If you want to write like the pros, you need to listen to the pros. Songwriting is an art form. No art is created in a vacuum. Anything with artistic value that we see around us is the natural progression from something that came before.

If you aren't listening to professional songwriters from every genre, you are missing out on one of the key ingredients to improving your skills.

To write "The Essential Secrets of Songwriting", I took years of listening and boiled it down to eleven essential principles. When you read the e-book, you are going to see these eleven principles laid out for you, chapter by chapter. Principles that describe:

• the role of contrast between song elements;
• the controlling of energy as a necessary ingredient to a good song;
• every aspect of chords, including harmonic rhythm;
• how melodies should be shaped; how to use the key note of a song to make your song exciting;
• how to work your text between being reflective and being narrative;
• how to write a hook that keeps your listeners singing your song for the rest of the day.

But talking is one thing, and writing is quite another. I want you to get this e-book, and start writing the songs you always knew you could.

"Essential Chord Progressions" is a book full of chord progressions that you can use right now! Chords that are great for pop, rock, jazz, funk, blues, country and more! If you've been looking for chord progressions, you need this book!

So ORDER NOW! There is no reason to be delaying your advancement as a songwriter.

All the best in all of your musical endeavors!

Gary Ewer

All of the information and tips on this page come from Gary Ewer's downloadable e-book, "The Essential Secrets of Songwriting." It's a book that will help you understand more about the structure of music. It will help you understand not just how to write great chord progressions, melodies and lyrics, but will show you effective ways to weave them together.