Keyboardist songwriter

Making a Song Immediately Appealing

In the pop song genres, the short length of a complete tune (when compared to, let’s say, the classical genres), is an interesting challenge to deal with. Interesting, because the inexperienced songwriter might be fooled into thinking that a short song means you can put it all together quickly. But in fact, a short song […]

Songwriting relaxation ideas

What’s the Difference Between a Rule and a Principle in Songwriting?

You’ll hear lots of songwriters say that there are no rules in songwriting. But while that may be the case, every one of us has written a song that we think really works well, and other songs that we have to admit are real turkeys, and we toss them aside. So if something can be […]

Bruce Springsteen

Ideas For Changing How Loud Your Song Sounds

If you’re a player in a band, you’ve got lots of options for controlling the dynamics (loudness) of your music. Other than, of course, simply turning things up, you can add instruments to the mix to get the louder sounds you’re looking for, and/or subtract them to make your music more transparent. Trying to get […]

songwriter - guitarist

Why It’s Taking You So Long to Finish Writing a Song

It’s not unusual for songwriters to think back to a time when songwriting seemed a lot easier. Certainly if you look at how long it used to take you to write a song, you may be discouraged to know that what used to take you hours now takes you days, or even longer. That’s not […]

Writing song lyrics

Creating an Instrumental Plan For Your Songs

Most of the time, the decisions you make regarding the instruments you choose for your song come down to decisions made at the production stage. In other words, as you write a song you’ll think about the structure of your song, the melodies, lyrics and chords, without giving particular attention to the instruments. And for […]

Songwriter - Synth

Choruses Will Sound Better When Verses Sound Better

I watched a video of a song producer a while ago (I can’t remember who it was) but something he said got me thinking. To paraphrase: “If a song has a great chorus hook, I don’t care what the verse sounds like. Nobody remembers verses anyway.” That’s a surprising observation, and I wondered if it […]