"The Essential Secrets of Songwriting" Lessons Gary Ewer has written four e-books that will get you writing the songs you've always wanted to write:
•"The Essential Secrets of Songwriting" shows you how the pros write their songs;
•"Essential Chord Progressions" gives you pages and pages of chord changes you can use;
•"How to Harmonize a Melody" shows you how to add chords to your tunes;
•"The Essential Secrets of Songwriting - LESSONS" gives you lessons and activities that make you a better songwriter. Read more...

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... and you really should take the time to read this important article. It will show you seven basic songwriting errors, and how to avoid them!

LESSON 7

CHOOSING THE RIGHT CHORD

PROGRESSIONS, NOT SUCCESSIONS
Making a chord progression work means understanding the term progression. For struggling writers, the problem is that the series of chords that might be better described as chord successions: the chords just don't seem to relate with each other too well.

For chords to work, you need to more fully understand how one chord likes to move to another. And you need to know what chords will naturally exist in a given particular key. This is a bit involved to describe here in great detail; the best plan right now is to get a copy of "The Essential Secrets of Songwriting" and go right to Chapter 4 - Harmony.

The short version of the chord story is that if you know what key your song is in, write the scale for that key, and then build chords. For example, if your song is in A major, write an A major scale, then write chords above each note of the scale. If you do that, you will get the following chords:

I- A major (the "tonic" chord)
ii- B minor
iii- C# minor
IV- D major (the "subdominant" chord)
V- E major (the "dominant" chord)
vi- F# minor
vii- G# diminished.


WHAT TO DO WITH THOSE CHORDS
Those are the chords that naturally occur in the key of A major, and you would do well to stick to them as  your most common chords. In fact, most songs will work quite nicely by using primarily the I, IV and V chords. Those chords are known as the tonic, subdominant, and dominant chords, respectively.

Here are some chords from major keys, with common substitutions that can add variety to your music:
This chord...
 ...can often be substituted with...
I (A)
  • vi (F#m), if melody note is on 1st or 3rd scale degree.
  • IV (D), if melody note is the tonic note
  • flat VI (F), if melody is the tonic note.
IV (D)
  • ii (Bm), if melody is on 4th or 6th scale degree.
V (E or E7)
  • iii (C#m), if the melody is on 5th or 7th scale degree.


BE CAREFUL WHEN YOU SUBSTITUTE
Substituting one chord for another can be a bit unpredicatable, so you'll want to make sure that it works for you. And substituting chords also strongly impacts on the form of the song, so you'll want to be sure that you make any chord substitution happen at structurally strong places in your song.

Here is an example of chords and some substitutions (Example in A major):


(I IV V I) A - D - E - A.
Substituting the final I-chord with vi gives: A D E F#m
Substituting the D chord with a ii-chord gives: A Bm E A
Both substitutions: A Bm E F#m

Looking for some chord progressions? "Essential Chord Progressions" is now available.

ACTIVITIES for CHORD SUBSTITUTIONS

  1. Take the following chords and make substitutions as indicated in the table above. For each progression substitute one or more chords, and make note of your changes. (For chords with a slash, the letter name before the slash is the chord name; the letter name after the slash is a bass note):
  • A D F#m Bm E A
  • A F#m Bm A/C# D  E A
  • F#m D A Bm E A
  • E7 A D A/C# Bm E7 A
  • A E D A/C# Bm F#m E A
2. Take a song that you've written and go through the chord progression. Try substituting chords one for another, and make note of the effect on your song.

3. Write a short melody of two or four bars. Now harmonize it in as many ways as you can. Some choices won't work as well as others. Make note of all progressions that you find, and rate them from 1 (poorest) to 10 (best).
 

...on to Lesson 8 - MIXING STRONG AND FRAGILE PROGRESSIONS

-Return to The Essential Secrets of Songwriting-

Lesson 1 - Focusing your Lyrics
 Lesson 4 - Writing Melodies that Work
 Lesson 7 - Choosing the Right Chord
Lesson 2 - Writing Creative Lyrics
 Lesson 5 - Structuring Melodies
 Lesson 8 - Mixing Strong and Fragile Progressions
Lesson 3 - Writing "Familiar" Lyrics
 Lesson 6 - Integrating Lyrics with Melodies
 Lesson 9 - Considering Form

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I'd love to hear from you! If you find these lessons useful, or if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to write me (Gary Ewer): gary@pantomimemusic.com
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