Happy New Year 2023

Happy New Year 2023!

I want to take a moment to wish you all a very happy new year, and to thank you for being readers of this blog. I’m not a fan of making new year’s resolutions, only because if there’s something I should be resolving to do, I should start doing it now rather than wait for an […]

Piano and guitar

When Your Songs Don’t Fit the Verse-Chorus Format

Progressive rock isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Most prog rock tunes are longer than the standard 3-4 minute length you expect with typical pop songwriting, and that alone will turn some listeners off. Also, it’s not unusual for prog rock songs also to use complex chords and lyrics. In other words, most music that would […]

songwriter waiting for inspiration

Stop Waiting For Inspiration to Hit

Inspiration is whatever excites you enough to start writing. The stereotypical image is something like a waterfall — something that takes your breath away, invades your creative mind, and prompts you to pick up your guitar and a pad of paper to try to set feelings to music. The problem with that kind of inspiration […]

Finding meaning in music

Does Your Song Still Have Meaning If You Remove the Lyric?

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 […]

singer-songwriter

5 Tips for Writing a Verse-Only Song

You can spend a lot of time worrying about how to get a verse and a chorus to work well together, but don’t forget the other option: consider writing a song that doesn’t use a chorus at all. Sometimes the melody for that kind of song will end with a kind of repeating refrain, like […]

Christmas Candles and Choir

Writing a Christmas Tune That Everyone Will Enjoy

If you’ve been planning to write a Christmas tune, you should be working on it now — Christmas is less than a month from now. In a way, there’s not really a lot of difference between a good holiday song and the ones you’d normally write. But if you’re looking to write something that everyone, […]