The Beatles

The Older Generation Has Much To Teach Us

There’s a fascinating story about the Baroque composer J.S. Bach (1685-1750), who reportedly walked 450 kilometers (900 kilometers round trip!) to visit a composer that he considered to be one of his strongest influences: Dieterich Buxtehude. Buxtehude lived in the city of Lübeck. In those days, of course, you couldn’t just put a recording on […]

Singer-Songwriter

Using Your Own Good Songs as Models For Your Next Good Ones

If you like starting songs by working with a chord progression, you need to read “Writing a Song From a Chord Progression.” It will give you the pros and cons of this songwriting method, and help you create songs that really work! Many years ago I was a band teacher for a junior high school. […]

Headphones

Good Songwriting From a Listener’s Point of View

Great songwriting, from a listener’s point of view, flies under the radar, by which I mean that the best songs are great without making it obvious why they’re great. A song might have a gorgeous melody, but the average listener won’t know exactly why it’s so beautiful. It might have a really captivating sequence of chords, […]

Kate Bush

Why Old Songs Like “Running Up That Hill” Reappear as Hits Today?

It’s exciting to hear a song that was a hit several decades ago make a reappearance on the Billboard Hot 100. The latest example of this is Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” from her 1985 album “Hounds of Love.” It’s exciting because in a funny sort of way it’s like a validation that we […]

Guitarist - Songwriter

There’s No Such Thing as a Killer Chord Progression

The notion of the so-called killer chord progression is a bit of a myth that I used to hear songwriters discuss years ago. It’s a myth, not because chord progressions can’t be powerful and epic, but because songs are nearly always about a partnership of many different elements. Trying to get the chords-first songwriting process […]

Songwriting Excellence

Striving for Songwriting Excellence

If you’re ready to take your songwriting to its highest level possible, you need “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting 10-eBook Bundle.” Get the manuals that thousands of songwriters are using. Excellence is something every keen student of anything strives for, but in creative arts like songwriting, excellence is either difficult or impossible to define. For some […]