One of the worst things you might do as a songwriter is to use clichés in your lyrics, but I’d like to make a small defence of this faux-pas, at least in certain situations. You’d think that a cliché is going to get your song sent immediately to the naughty chair called “Worst Songs Ever”, […]
For those of you who find setting lyrics to be the easy part, you can more or less ignore this post and go on with your regularly scheduled life. But if you find the whole issue of setting lyrics to music — especially with regard to rhythm and timing — to be one of the trickiest parts […]
When you conjure up the first musical bits that will become your next song, those bits are likely going to become part of your song’s chorus. That’s because it’s most likely that you’ll find it easy to think up something like a hook than something like a verse or a bridge. And hooks are going to be the […]
If you have a friend who’s going through tough times, you might say to them, “Everything’s going to be all right.” You hope your words will show your care and concern that friend. But sing those words to them, and you’ve got a much better chance of getting through. That’s the nature of music, and everyone seems […]
Let’s face it, it’s not that hard to come up with chord progressions, because when all else fails, you can simply grab a book of progressions and steal them, guilt free. But if you’re the kind of songwriter that wants to make their mark on the music world, simply taking a progression sitting in a […]
A number of years ago I wrote a blog article called “Pop Songs: What Checking the Fossil Record Can Do For Us“. In that post, I made a comparison between how Gregorian Chant (the music of the early Christian church of about A.D. 500) bore certain similarities to the way melodies are written today. You may […]
