In a recent blog post (“Moving from Minor to Major in a Pleasantly Abrupt Way: Valdy’s ‘Simple Life’“) I mentioned the common occurrence in songwriting of writing a minor verse that then moves to a major chorus. Juxtaposing minor and major is a really good way of creating that all-important aspect of contrast in songs. […]
It may surprise you to know that if you go back enough in time — the Medieval era, for example — most music was all about the melody, and that harmony definitely played a secondary role: harmonies were incidentally created as several melodies were played together. While today, most music is a melody with chords […]
It’s not unusual for songs to start in a minor key and then change key (“modulate”) to a major key. When you think of how songwriting has changed over the decades, that one aspect — the minor-to-major key change — has remained relatively common. The change from minor to major has a brightening affect, as […]
Most songwriters know that melodies and lyrics are the two major components of songs that you can’t take from another copyright-protected song to use in your own. The original writer of the melodies and lyrics own the copyright — even if they never registered that copyright — unless that copyright has expired. Songwriters are very […]
Most songwriters dislike the word “formula” as it pertains to songwriting, because that word implies that there’s something about their music that’s predictable, something that’s been done so often before that we’ve been able to come up with a set of steps — a formula — that can guide you to the finished product. Thousands […]
Writing a good song means creating an enticing musical journey for your listeners. Like most “real” journeys, it involves a place of rest and repose (often the end of a chorus), a journey outward (the verse and optional pre-chorus), and then the journey back home (the main chorus). It might also involve little side trips […]
