Songwriter - Pianist

Moving Your Musical Imagination in Different Directions

Lyrics become all the more powerful when they’re properly paired with a good melody. That’s what Chapter 5 is all about in the eBook “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting.” Polish your songwriting technique with the 10-eBook Bundle. Comes with a Study Guide How creative are you feeling today? Is this a day where you can […]

guitar - keyboard - headphones

Looking Past Myths to Improve Your Songwriting Skills

I don’t know if you feel the same way, but I have a somewhat cynical view of the things I see online. I’ve learned (and hopefully you have learned as well) that you have to take much of what you see with a grain of salt, and do a bit of research. But of course […]

Alan Parsons Project

Using Musical Motifs as a Kind of “Signature”

You may have heard the word motif before and wondered what it is, and how it might apply to songwriting. It’s a term that’s somewhat similar to hook — and that’s a word you’re probably a lot more familiar with. A hook is a musical idea that repeats throughout a song, though we often associate it chiefly […]

Steve Hackett - Genesis

How to Use an Inverted Pedal Point

Back on January 11, I wrote a blog post demonstrating how a bass pedal point works. In its simplest terms, it means keeping the same bass note while the chords above it change, regardless of whether that bass note is actually a member of the chord or not. I thought I’d mention its close relation, […]

Songwriter - lyrics

Forced Rhymes: the Ever-Present Danger of Rhyming Dictionaries

Apparently Bruce Springsteen used a rhyming dictionary to come up with the lyrics to “Blinded By the Light.” That cleared up a long-held puzzlement for me: I was finding it hard to understand how in the world his musical mind was coming up with those lyrical images: Madman drummers bummers and indians in the summer […]