It’s exciting when a song seems to happen spontaneously and easily; within what seems to be a few minutes, you’ve written something that is, for all intents and purposes, a great song that’s ready for prime time. As you hopefully know, that’s not the norm. It usually takes a lot longer to write songs, anywhere […]
If you’re not sure what’s meant by a phrase, think of it as a part of a sentence up to a comma or a period, where the sentence seems to pause, either temporarily or permanently, like this 2-phrase unit from Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening”: Whose woods these are I […]
Here’s a problem that I noticed in my own writing years ago, and I still battle today: Making sure that my newest songwriting ideas don’t sound the same as everything else I’ve written. I suspect that most songwriters deal with this issue. We all have a kind of artistic “muscle memory” that keeps our fingers […]
Get the eBook bundle that thousands of songwriters are using to polish their songwriting technique. Comes with a free copy of “Creative Chord Progressions” There is a kind of melodic structure called period structure — a two-phrase melody in which the first phrase acts as a kind of “question”, and the second phrase provides an “answer”. A […]
Most of my writing these days is for vocal/choral groups. Sometimes that means writing for piano as an accompanying instrument, and sometimes I’m writing for full orchestra. Some of them are original compositions, and some are arrangements of already-existing songs (public domain folk songs, for example). But in any case, I practically always start by […]
I’ve only very recently discovered the music of Johanna Warren, a singer-songwriter from Portland Oregon. The stunning beauty of her music is addictive; it seems impossible to stop listening once you get started. First, check out her Bandcamp site where you can stream her albums. You won’t be disappointed. The aspect of her songwriting that […]
