by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website: Like most songwriters, you’re probably looking for ways to look at melody construction. One aspect of melody-writing that we don’t think that much about is what it sounds like in the opposite mode. Here’s what I mean by that. Let’s say that your melody is […]
by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website: One way to inject some interest into your chord progressions is to experiment with substituting one chord for another. But rather than making it a mindless activity, consider chord categories. The three basic categories that we will consider for this article are thetonic, dominant, and predominant […]
by Gary Ewer All it takes is one glitch with your chord progression, and your song can die the death. And one aspect of harmonizing your song that isn’t considered enough is the song’s tempo. Here’s how that works. In short, here’s the basic rule: the faster your song, the fewer chords it needs. And […]
by Gary Ewer. The ideas in these blog articles are the sorts of ideas you’ll find in Gary Ewer’s Songwriting e-books: A favourite pet peeve of mine is the mindless sort of one-chord intro that gets stuck onto the front end of an otherwise pretty good tune. Your song deserves better. If you’ve got the imagination to create […]
by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website: For most songs, melodies are what we use to convey our lyrics. And it’s important to realize that in general, the kind of melody we write for use as a chorus will not be the same as what we’d write for a verse. There’s psychology that […]
by Gary Ewer, from “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” website: Looking for chords to harmonize your minor-key song? There are actually two different ideas out there for what it means to be “in a minor key.” The one idea is based on traditional harmony, while the other is a more “modal” approach. I’ve put some […]
