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I’ve just stumbled across a new (to me) songwriting blog called Songwritingscene.com and a fun little post with a great songwriting idea: ‘The Random Song Generator’ Our assignment was based on a “Random Song Generator” — basically three columns of words…the first is the person, the second is the place and the third is the action. Choose one [...] 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 [...] A riff is a short, repeating musical phrase that forms a structural basis or hook for your song. Sometimes they’re used as a main hook, sometimes as the basis to a verse, sometimes both. Rock songs often use riff ideas for the verse and chordal patterns for the chorus. I’ve put together a short and not at [...] 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 freebie for you: part one of ‘Songwriting Improvisation’, a little PDF I’ve put together. Get your copy here: songwriting_improvisation_part_one.pdf What’s it for? Well, the fact is a lot of our best songwriting ideas come to us during improvisation. But I find it’s easy to run out of things to try. You can [...] The Plagal cadence I mentioned a few posts ago is a way of ending a progression that you often hear in christian music – Chords IV to I, eg. F to C. This is often extended with a couple of passing chords to F C/E G/D C (or IV Ib Vc I). You can hear it in [...] I’m collecting songwriting clichés, for my own amusement. Here’s the list so far: - The ‘tone-up’ key change for the final chorus Have you got any others I [...] 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 [...] Following on from my previous post about bass lines, here’s a bonus idea: The Pedal Note My chords are in C, and there’s a C note in every chord. So I’ve written a simple bass line using only C notes. Pedal Note Bass Line |
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