In my most recent blog post, I wrote about forward motion, also called momentum, and how tension and release is a vital way for increasing that momentum within a song. But what if the tension and release aspect of your song is working just fine, but you want the whole thing to sound a bit […]
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 […]
Music, apart from the lyrics that might be going on, tends to convey meaning to us. In other words, you can listen to an instrumental and usually find yourself feeling something, even if you’re not sure what that something is, or what the song is supposed to be about. Obviously, we use lyrics to know what […]
Psychologists will tell you that pattern recognition is a bit of an area of expertise for most humans. Our brains just seem to be wired to seek out any and all occurrences of patterns. We get a kind of pleasure from seeing and experiencing patterns. So many songs in the pop genres succeed or fail […]
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! There’s a benefit that comes from being the sole songwriter on a project: […]
I’m occasionally contacted by songwriters with questions surrounding the issue of copyright. Probably the most common question I’m asked is if there is any way to use part of another pre-existing song as a starting point for a new one. If you’re interested in using a bit of recognizable lyric or a short snippet of […]
