Avoiding the 7 Most Common Songwriting Problems

• Your songs missing something? Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 e-book bundle, and get back to writing great songs! Believe me, there’s much that can go wrong in the creating of music. But over my years of studying and analyzing music by both professionals and students, I noticed that the same errors and […]

What Else "Progresses" Besides Chords?

• Your songs missing something? Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 e-book bundle, and get back to writing great songs! _______________________ When you add chords to a melody, you’re really doing two things: 1) you are assigning chords that properly harmonize a small group of melody notes before moving on to the next small […]

Time to Check the Songwriters' Checklist Again

Your songs missing something? Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 e-book bundle, and get back to writing great songs! _______________________ It’s important to remember that successful songs don’t usually achieve that status by accident. There are reasons why songs work, and there’s usually a logic behind those reasons. When your songs are floundering, it’s […]

Dealing With Emotion in a Lyric is Tricky

Ultimately, what causes the connection between a song and a listener is the emotional response of the listener. The listener needs to hear something that makes them go, “I’ve been there before..”, or “I can imagine that happening to me..” That kind of empathy is important; if the audience isn’t putting themselves in the shoes […]

How Important are Lyrics to the Success of a Song?

Taking a look at the lyrics of the current top hits in North America, it’s easy to conclude that lyrical quality just isn’t that important. “You think I’m pretty/ Without any make-up on/ You think I’m funny/ When I tell the punch line wrong…” are the opening lines of “Teenage Dream.” Or how about this rumination? “You know […]

Discovering and Cultivating Your Songwriting Talent

Most songwriting books and manuals make the assumption, quite understandably, that the reader is already a songwriter, and simply wants a bit of advice. But there are many people who feel that they’ve got the ideas for a song inside them, but have never known how to go about getting those ideas organized into a […]