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What makes a good melody? It’s a difficult thing to pin down. Easier to define is an effective melody. An effective melody will: Mostly move in step (C to D) with only occasional leaps (C to G) For the 50/90 challenge I’d thought I’d try something different and write a set of lyrics before I composed any music. Usually, I write lyrics and music at the same time, starting of with melody ideas and a mixture of possible lyrics, nonsense verse and random ‘la’ and ‘doo’ sounds. This time I forced myself [...] Here’ s a really interesting video from John Mayer, on a songwriting technique of his. What he does is take a tiny melodic fragment from three well known songs and plays them one after the other in the same key to create a new melody. Is that cheating? No, I don’t think so. After all, he’s only [...] Iron Maiden are one of my favourite bands, and one of the most influential heavy metal bands ever. A great post over at ‘Troll in the Corner’ got me thinking about them, and listening to some of my favourite Maiden songs. Fear of the Dark, the title track from their 1992 album, the last before Bruce [...] I just stumbled across this video, via this post. It’s from this website. First off, let me make clear that I have a very low opinion of sales pages like this one. I know they’ve been shown to work, that they’re ‘good marketing,’ but I really don’t like them. However, don’t take that us an opinion of the [...] This is the opening section of a new Ebook I’m writing ‘How to Harmonise’. What Does Harmonise Mean? The most common subject people search for on www.songwright.co.uk is ‘how to harmonise’. When I talk to people, they seem to mean two slightly different things by this: how to add chords to a melody, or how to add [...] NB.I’ve since written a follow up to this post which can be found here I watched Eurovision 2009 on Saturday. I even drank Bucks Fizz and managed to get through the interminably long scoring section without getting bored and turning over. I’ve watched Eurovision for the last three or four years, and the standard is getting better. [...] There are plenty of good songwriting bloggers out there, so I thought I’d share some of the good writing out there. I’ve been known to complain about songwriting er… writing. My biggest gripe is those posts that confuse songwriting with lyric writing and imply that all you need think about are the words you use. But of course lyrics, while [...] I want to draw your attention to three great posts by a man named Jerry Gates. Melodic Shape 1 Melodic Shape 2 Melodic Shape 3 They’re about three types of melodic shape that Jerry calls ‘Line’, ‘Circle’ and ‘Square’. I’m not sure if I would have picked those particular shapes for his examples, but the principles he’s talking about are [...] Another recomendation: Gary Ewer’s ‘Songwriting Principles’ series on his Essential Secrets of Songwriting blog. Songwriting Principle No. 1: Contrast Makes or Breaks Your Song I particularly like the concept of weak and [...] |
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