How Chord Progressions, Roman Numerals and Songwriting Intersect

Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 E-book Bundle. Become a top-level songwriter, starting now. _________ Through the history of music, particularly in the so-called western world, not much has changed with regard to how chord progressions work. In most popular music genres, the kinds of progressions used are very similar to, or at least related […]

Harmonic Rhythm, and Dealing With That Panicky Feeling

Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 E-book Bundle. Become a top-level songwriter, starting NOW! _________ Harmonic rhythm sounds like a term that would refer to the rhythms you use when you play chords. But that’s not quite it: harmonic rhythm is a term we use to describe the frequency of chord changes in a progression. […]

How to Keep Chord Progressions From Sounding Random

Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 E-book Bundle, and kick-start your songwriting career! _________ Typically, chord progressions will be constructed in such a way as to make one particular chord sound like a target. That target chord is the so-called tonic chord. If you’re writing a song in G major, the tonic chord is G. […]

Why Some Chord Progressions Sound Aimless

Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 E-book Bundle, and become a top-level songwriter! __________________ Writers of music have known, quite literally for centuries, that some chord progressions will unambiguously point to one note as being the tonic note. Such progressions are the kind that we refer to as strong. Strong progressions leave little doubt regarding […]

A Quick Key Change Extends a Chord Progression’s Life

Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-ebook bundle. Over 390 pages of songwriting instruction, covering every aspect of how great songs are written! _____________ I really do believe that most songwriters worry too much about the possible banality of their chord progressions. It’s OK for a progression to be boring and predictable. In fact, in […]

“For the First Time”, and the Inverted Tonic Pedal

Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-ebook bundle, and kick-start your songwriting career! _____________ The Script’s hit single, “For the First Time,” has an interesting anomaly that’s worth studying. It involves the tonic note (i.e., the note representing the key of the song), and the fact that it almost never seems to disappear. The song […]