When a song is working well, it means that all its separate components don’t just sound good on their own, but they also partner up well with all (or most) of the song’s other components. In that sense, a good song is typically better than the sum of its parts. Some songwriters find chords to […]
As you know, you can strum a chord for quite a number of bars, and the melody that you sing over that chord will usually feature a lot of different notes. Sometimes, the various notes of a melody might actually come from the chord itself. For example, “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” (Norman Whitfield, Barrett […]
You can spend a lot of time worrying about the song you’ve just written, wondering if it accidentally sounds like someone else’s song. Unintentional plagiarism does happen. But what’s the best way to deal with it? I’m talking about those times that the song you’ve written is striking you as sounding uncomfortably familiar, whether it’s […]
When you listen to songs, you’re likely unaware of the concepts of fragile and strong being played out, but it’s actually a very important aspect of good songwriting. If you’ve written a melody and you want to explore the many ways there are to add chords to it, you need to get “How to Harmonize a […]
A few days ago I wrote a post in which I talked about the chords-first method of songwriting (“Giving Your Melodies Some Shape in the Chords-First Songwriting Process“), and warning of the main pitfall of this process: the ignored and uninteresting melody that might result. As in all things in songwriting, you can find exceptions […]
Because most of my formal training in music and musical composition has been in classical music, I like thinking of ways in which pop songs have borrowed ideas from the classical masters. Chords are one way. Whether it’s a Mozart symphony, a Bach Cantata, or a Brahms sonata, the way progressions work — the way […]
