Why Pentatonic Melodies Are So Easy To Harmonize

Pentatonic scales have a variety of reasons why they work so well in pop music. __________________ Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 e-book bundle. Write smarter – Tap into your creative mind. __________________ Recently I wrote a post that offered ten basic tips for writing melodies that are easily remembered by listeners. Just to finish up that […]

Creating Good Progressions: It’s All About Chord Function

Considering a chord’s function makes it easy to create tons of progressions, almost instantly __________________ Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 10 e-book bundle. Write smarter – Tap into your creative mind. __________________ Go on almost any forum that answers music questions, and you’ll find an enormous number of questions relating to chord progressions and how they work: What […]

Getting Creative with Chord Progressions: Adding Altered Chords

It’s practically impossible to create progressions that haven’t been used before. But altered chords will help. ____________ Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-eBook Bundle, and increase your song’s HIT potential. _____________ An altered chord is one that doesn’t naturally exist in the key of your song. The chords that naturally exist are the ones that you build on […]

Song Structure Idea: Starting With the Chorus

Verse-chorus designs are the most common, but there’s nothing to say that you have to start with the verse all the time. ____________ Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-eBook Bundle, and get back to the basics of why hit songs sell. _____________ It may seem strange to start a song with the chorus if you consider that […]

Turnarounds: How They Work, and 10 Examples

Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 E-book Bundle. Kick-start your songwriting career, starting now. _________ A turnaround progression is a series of chords whose most important characteristic is to circle back to the starting point, allowing the music to continue on rather seamlessly. These kinds of progressions are quite common, having been in use for centuries, […]

Chord Progressions: Changing the Starting Point

Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 E-book Bundle. Become a top-level songwriter, starting now. _________ There are lots of ways to breathe new life into an old chord progression. We know, for example, that inverting a chord (i.e., putting a chord tone other than the letter name of the chord in the bass) can give an […]