songwriting

Being music-minded when you’re writing lyrics can prevent your lyrics from sounding wordy. Wordy lyrics can negatively affect your melody. For that reason, I want to address how you can write lyrics that can easily be sung in a melody. The Spoken Rhythm The rhythm of a line happens as a result of a pattern […]

It’s important to make your chorus stand out from the rest of your song, since it’s usually your song’s central element. With that in mind, we’re going to look at a few ideas for creating a successful chorus. Musically Generally, the music in your chorus is going to be the catchiest, or hookiest part of […]

When you write a full song, you’ll need to decide on a song structure for that song. Your song structure will help you take the chords you’ve come up with and organize them into sections. There are really only a handful of common song structures used in popular music. So one thing you can do, […]

Most forms of writing, particularly in the arts, require or at least make use of some inspiration.  Some of the greatest songs are emotion-driven works that transform the inspiration of a feeling into heartfelt words that speak to millions.  Many new songwriters are surprised to learn that the words don’t always come easy and sometimes […]

Introduce basic jazz chord voicing ideas. These fundamental ideas are principles you can use to spend a life time of mastering voicing chords.

Once you’ve learned basic chord structure you will begin to enter the realm of chord voicing, which is how to you use chord notes in various combinations and reordered to create a different sound using the same chord or scale notes.

Improvising with scale tones is an extension of what we’ve talked about in creating melodies. Specifically we started with a scale and skipped or sequentially stepped through the notes or tones. Much of what is used in the scale is repeating patterns, so let’s explore what you might do with that scale you have chosen to use over your chord.

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