Songwriter and piano

Dealing With Musical Muscle Memory

Writing songs is not always easy. Some would argue that it’s never easy, but you get such a great feeling from completing one that it makes the task worth it, and you want to do it again. That makes sense, because when something gives you a challenge, and you finally succeed, you get what might […]

piano keyboard

Preventing Your Songs From All Sounding the Same

It’s not unusual to notice similarities when you take a close look at the songs you’ve written over the years. You want your songs to be unique, of course, but you should be expecting those similarities. It’s all part of developing a writing style. And it’s always been that way in the writing of music, even […]

Pet Shop Boys

Making Dramatic Changes to Song Mood With Tempo

Songwriting tends to happen in two stages. First, you spend a certain amount of time creating ideas, and second, you experiment with, pull together and reshape those ideas until you get the song into its final form. Some songwriters find the first stage relatively easy, but get frustrated trying to make a finished song. They get […]

Recording Studio - Producer

8 Tips For When All You’ve Got Is One Good Song Idea

How often does this happen to you: You sit down with your guitar, and within moments you’ve got something nice. A great little hook, a riff, or some other kind of musical idea. You play it over and over and it sounds great. And then you draw a blank. And it doesn’t seem to matter […]

Keyboardist songwriter

Creating a Good Chord Progression For a Pre-Chorus

A pre-chorus is not a mandatory section of a song. In fact, most songs don’t use them. But in some circumstances, a pre-chorus can be a vital addition to the structure of a song. “Chord Progression Formulas” shows you a quick and easy way to create dozens of progressions within moments, using tried & true […]

Joni Mitchell

Theme and Variations as a Songwriting Technique

A common musical form that classical composers have loved for centuries is theme and variations; a melody is repeated, changed in some way, but still similar enough to the original that it’s recognizable. It was a measure of a composer’s musical imagination, and fun for an audience to hear what might happen next with the […]