Neil Young

Simplicity in Good Songwriting is a Feature, Not a Bug

If you spend any amount of time listening to today’s pop offerings, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that mainstream pop music is steadily dumbing itself down. Lyrics often fail to inspire, melodies are less than inventive, and chords are usually simple and repetitive. Getting melodies and chords working well together is vital knowledge for any […]

Jonathan Groff

Telling People What You’re Feeling Is Tricky in Songwriting

To say it the way Barry Gibb of Bee Gees fame has said it: “Songs are about feelings.” If you aren’t causing your listeners to feel something when they hear your song, you’ve probably missed the main point of what good songwriting is all about. But there are many ways to deal with feelings in […]

Singer - songwriter

Strengthening the Structure of Your Songs

If you look closely at the way Classical composers wrote their music, you’ll find some very sophisticated characteristics that leave you wondering: Did they actually think people would notice? Here’s a bit of what I mean. Musicologists will tell you that Bach had an interesting way of structuring his music: he would write a short […]

Keyboard lessons

Using Familiarity and Innovation Within the Same Song

All songs are a mixture of things that we find familiar and predictable, with a touch of innovation and newness tossed in. The familiar things, as far as a listener is concerned, start with the very sound of the music: the sound is often what gives the genre away. “Use Your Words! Developing a Lyrics-First Songwriting […]

Music of the future

The Songs of the Future — What Will They Sound Like?

I had a professor once who, while commenting on what the music of the future would sound like, said, “Well, if we knew that, we’d be writing it now.” That’s very likely not true. What’s more likely is something like that scene from “Back to the Future”, when Marty plays “Johnny B. Goode”, which morphs into […]

Creating Musical Ideas

How Your Song’s Chorus Should Differ From Your Verse

Don’t be surprised if most of the time you start your songwriting process by working on getting the chorus happening first. For most of your listeners, your song will be defined by what’s happening in the chorus; it’s the chorus that really needs to shine. Songwriters are very familiar with the chorus hook, but there are […]