It would be a no-brainer to say that I think Paul McCartney discovered things about songwriting that many other writers just don’t ever get to know. But one aspect of his writing that I think has contributed to his success is his very loose concept of what song form is. Most of the time when […]
If you find yourself always succumbing to writer’s block, you may find yourself thinking that there’s as much frustration in the act of songwriting as there is fun. What can you do to prevent a creative block from constantly showing up at the worst times? One of the best ways I know to keep writer’s […]
No matter what genre you write in, there’s one thing that all songs have in common: they take listeners on a musical journey. That means that for every given moment within a song (assuming it’s well-written), listeners eagerly anticipate what’s going to happen next. In other words, just like a real journey, where you are always […]
Most songwriters know that melodies and lyrics are the two major components of songs that you can’t take from another copyright-protected song to use in your own. The original writer of the melodies and lyrics own the copyright — even if they never registered that copyright — unless that copyright has expired. Songwriters are very […]
Some songwriters can’t compose unless they feel inspired to do so. That word inspired refers to a kind of excitement that drives our creative process and motivates us to write. You might think of the word in its less metaphorical form: to inspire, meaning to breathe in. It’s like saying that the excitement to write comes […]
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 […]
