Guitar and piano

Revoicing Your Chords to Find Better Melodies

Historically, music was all about melody, not chord progressions. In fact, if you go back in time a few hundred years, let’s say to the 1400s or 1500s, the concept of “harmony” was a bit different from what we have today. In those days, “harmony” was what happened when various melodies were played at the […]

Piano keyboard

A Bit of Chord Inversion (Slash Chord) Theory

Whenever you play a chord, you’re usually playing it in what’s called root position. This means that the root of the chord (the note represented by its letter name) is going to be the lowest-sounding note — the one that the bass is playing. If you want hundreds of chords to experiment with, “The Essential […]

Songwriting and Controversial Topics

Dealing With Controversy in Your Songwriting

Today I say, only half-jokingly, that I had better not hear a songwriter, particularly an American one, tell me that they just can’t think of anything to write about. The subject of the day — Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency — may be difficult to handle, but you sure can’t beat it for providing everything a […]

The Best Way to Use Chord Inversions

For every key there are seven chords that naturally occur. You find these chords by building triads (i.e., 3-note chords that consist of a root, 3rd and 5th) above each note of the scale. So if your song is in A major, the seven naturally-occurring chords are: A, Bm, C#m, D, E, F#m, and G#dim. […]

Chord Progressions That Create a Walking Bass line

Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 e-book bundle, and open your mind! Become the songwriter you’ve always wanted to be! ____________________ A walking bass is simply a bass line that moves primarily by step (tones and semitones), with a few leaps thrown in. Certain genres use a walking bass more than others; it’s most […]