Audience entertainment

Balancing Message With Entertainment Value

“The Essential Secrets of Songwriting 10-eBook Bundle” covers every aspect of good songwriting. It’s being used by thousands of songwriters to improve their technique. Start writing the best songs of your life, now! Every song is, to some degree, entertainment. If you aren’t entertaining your target audience, you’re missing the mark. That’s not to say […]

Songwriter

Don’t Give Up So Easily

Once you’ve written a song, you like to think of it as your baby, something that had a gestation period, and now — here it is! Except… you’re not very happy with it. The song’s done, but it just sounds lame to you. The first step in dealing with a song that doesn’t work very […]

Imogen Heap

Grabbing Attention In Pop Songwriting

When songs are boring to audiences, don’t expect them to be able to say exactly why they’re bored. Most people can say what they like about a good song, but are less able to say specifically what isn’t working about a bad one. When a song sounds boring, it simply means that little or nothing […]

Songwriter

Choosing Chords to Make Your Lyrics More Powerful

It’s an important principle in good songwriting that all elements within any song should act as partners. We know, for example, that the mood of a song can be strongly affected by the tempo we choose, and also by production choices: instrumentation, performance style, and even the key. A lyric can be excellent, but if […]

Computer - Music Studio

The Similarities Between a Building’s Structure and a Song’s Structure

What exactly is song structure, and how important is it to the success of a song? When we talk about structure with regard to, let’s say, a house you’re building, we can generate a good number of analogies, all of which, it could be argued, apply metaphorically to songwriting: A house has walls, beams and other […]

Creating a Hierarchy of Songwriting Elements: What’s Most Important?

For every song you ever hear, it’s possible to compile a short list of elements that go together that make the song. For most, that list will include lyrics, melody, chords, rhythm (groove), instrumentation, and so on. Because every song is a musical journey, and every journey must be to some degree unique, the priority a […]