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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 [...] Marking students coursework at my school, I came to a song that I gave almost full marks to. One reason for the high marks was the song’s fantastic, subtle playing with songwriting conventions. - The Bridge – The bridge happens after the second chorus, right? Not according to my student. Instead she put it between the 2nd [...] So how was your February? Mine was not nearly as productive as I thought it was goiong to be. I signed up to Febraury Album Writing Month, got all geared up to write, and then what did I achieve? Five songs, one of which wasn’t really new at all. In fact it wasn’t even a song. Seven [...] Is originality possible in songwriting? over the last few months I’ve been having regular songwriting sessions with my sixth form students. They’re a heavy metal band – a genre that has an interesting mix of originality and copycat songwriting. Like any other genre, over time you can see clear innovations – metal has pushed modal and chromatic [...] A little while ago, I was interviewed by Sean McGaughey for his For the Sake of the Song podcast. He asked me why I started Songwright, and why I was blogging about the theory and structures we use in songwriting. Despite this site having been up since last summer, until Sean asked me, I hadn’t really [...] “All the posts about changing key and arranging instruments are useful, but before I start doing that, don’t I need a song to arrange? How do I get things written!” There’s no point worrying about the bassline, the drop chorus or the guitar solo if you haven’t written anything yet. This post should give you a [...] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad-J4aaL_IQ&feature=related] Yesterday I mentioned Outkast’s use of an ‘extra’ 2/4 bar in ‘Hey Ya’. I’d definitely advocate cutting out or putting in extra beats when necessary. A song needs to convey the words, and sometimes you have extra syllables that don’t quite scan in a 4/4 bar. Sometimes it’s possble to stretch or shrink the words to [...] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvIw5ZqC1ms&feature=related] Even the silliest pop song can have an idea worth stealing. In this case I’d like to point out the time signatures at use in this song. Three bars 0f 4/4, one of 2/4, another two of 4/4, looped over and over for the whole song. Adding in the occasional half bar is quite a common [...] Oh dear. I think I’m going to fail FAWM. Well, I’ve written 10 songs I wouldn’t have otherwise, so that’s not exactly failure is it? But I’m not going to hit fourteen and a half, simply because I’m running out of time! Here are the last two songs. I’m particularly proud of ‘Where Once They Had Hearts’. Ideas [...] Last post I mentioned some common chromatic chords. Over the weekend I also got involved in a very silly debate about the comparative ‘cultural significance’ of Radiohead and Aqua. It involved the sort of long pretentious discussion I was thankful to have left behind in my student days, and I should probably be ashamed of myself, [...] |
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