Singer-songwriter

Finding Your Best Starting Point

If you’re new to the world of songwriting, you may find yourself wondering if there’s a best way to start. If you ask a dozen songwriters that question, you’ll likely get at least half a dozen different answers. And I’d probably say that those answers all have the potential to be correct — if they […]

Guitar and paper for songwriting

How to Know if You Should Keep or Trash a Songwriting Idea

“Use Your Words! Developing a Lyrics-First Songwriting Process” is FREE with your purchase of “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting 10-eBook Bundle. $37 USD. Immediate Download. Every good song starts with a small fragment. From there, you expand on it until you’ve got a completed song. That initial fragment might wind up being a bit of […]

Eagles - Life in the Fast Lane

Avoiding the Problem of Disorganized Song Lyrics

It’s an important principle of all music that the energy we perceive at the end of a song should usually exceed the energy at the beginning. That increase in musical energy keeps audiences listening. But the build in energy is not usually a straight line. It’s an ebb-and-flow quality, and it usually takes the following […]

Musical magnifying glass

Assessing a Song to Find Its Problems

Part of being a songwriter is being able to objectively critique your own songs. That term, objectively critique, means all of the following: You can listen to your own songs as if someone else actually wrote them. You can focus in on exactly where problems may lie. You can make radical changes to your songs if necessary. […]

Rolling Stones

5 Tips For Turning a Bit of a Song Into a Complete Song

Most songwriters start the songwriting process by improvising on ideas. You may have nothing to start with, and so the purpose of that initial improvisation session is to come up with something catchy. Let’s say that you manage to come up with something short but great, something that might serve as an important fragment of […]

Piano - songwriter - theory

Tips and Tricks: When You Want to Change Key in the Middle

Choosing the key for your song usually involves, at least in the first instance, finding the key that suits your vocal range. Most of the time this isn’t specifically a songwriting issue as much as it is a performance issue. But there are other aspects of key choice that amounts to making a songwriting choice. […]