Yesterday I wrote about how to take old melodies and make new ones. The end result should be a song that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the original tune, and that’s the intent. That method should allow your own creativity to make something entirely new out of something old. Having said that, unintentional plagiarism is […]
Get “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” Deluxe eBook Bundle, and take your songwriting to a new level of excellence. Includes “Writing a Song From a Chord Progression.” When we say that you can write a song with nothing more than three chords, we’re usually talking about I-IV-V (like “La Bamba”), or perhaps I-ii-V. In C major, […]
You’d be forgiven for thinking that all the good melodies have been taken. Since most songs are tonal (i.e., they exist in a key), that means that the majority of them are comprised of seven different pitches, all arranged in different ways. It makes you wonder, how many melodies can possibly be concocted by using seven pitches? Well, […]
I’ve just published a new songwriting video today, “5 Reasons to Include a Bridge in a Song’s Design“. It’s based on posts I’ve done in the past on this blog about the bridge section, and looks at five situations that arise in a song that can be dealt with by including a bridge. In truth, […]
One of the worst things you might do as a songwriter is to use clichés in your lyrics, but I’d like to make a small defence of this faux-pas, at least in certain situations. You’d think that a cliché is going to get your song sent immediately to the naughty chair called “Worst Songs Ever”, […]
Every once in a while I take a quick glance through a portion of the Rolling Stone Magazine’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time,” and I’m looking for similarities. I’m willing to accept, of course, that the list is highly subjective, but that doesn’t bother me much. There’s no denying that the songs on the list […]
