There are times when songs form themselves in your creative mind rather quickly. It seems that almost within minutes, you’ve got the basic structure working, even if some of the lyrics, melodies and chords haven’t all been worked out. It’s exciting when things happen quickly in the composing of music. On the other hand, a […]
As you write songs, you’re digging into your creative mind to concoct something imaginative — something that the world hasn’t heard before. That level of creativity isn’t easy to maintain. If you’re a daily songwriter (and most of the successful ones write almost every day), there is an unwelcome partner working alongside you: frustration. Frustration is normal […]
An understanding of music theory can help make you a better overall musician, but doesn’t “create” musical abilities within you. To use an analogy, a bad violinist can buy the best multi-million dollar Stradivarius violin, and still sound bad. As a songwriter with certain abilities, and therefore certain successes, you can (and likely will) become a better musician as […]
Most songwriters are well acquainted with the frustration of having a great song idea, but having it fizzle out. You had such high hopes, but now your idea seems to have gone nowhere. To properly address this frustration, we need to look at two aspects of it: Why the idea went nowhere; and What to […]
Predictably, the people who think music theory is a waste of time are the ones who’ve either never studied it, or who’ve learned to hate the study of it. Just as predictably, the ones who feel that music theory is a must for anyone who writes or performs music are the ones who’ve got a […]
If you’ve read this blog for any time at all, you know that I believe that inspiration gets a lot of credit for starting the songwriting process, when in fact that kind of inspiration — the “ooh, that’s a good idea!” kind — is fleeting and rarely results in a solid songwriting process. There’s another kind of […]
