Category: Songwriting

In the ever-evolving landscape of music production, the journey from a raw musical idea to a polished, professional track has undergone significant transformations. Technological advancements and the democratization of music-making tools have empowered musicians like never before, blurring the lines between amateurs and professionals. In this dynamic environment, the role of a music producer has become a subject of both curiosity and contention.

The Evolving Landscape of Music Production

Music production is no longer confined to elite recording studios with high-end equipment and seasoned producers. Today, anyone with a laptop and some creativity can create music from the comfort of their own space. Digital audio workstations (DAWs), virtual instruments, and online collaboration tools have opened new avenues for artists to craft and share their work.

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In this blog post, I’m going to write about what chord progressions work today. And if you have read any articles or seen any videos on this topic, you will be surprised to see that what most people teach is completely wrong.

What everyone is teaching about pop music, is completely false. I see it all the time, people saying that the “Axis chord progression” is the most typical chord progression in pop music and that’s a chord progression you can use to write a hit song.

But they are wrong.

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About three weeks ago, Miley Cyrus published a new song called “Flowers,” which you probably already heard. If you haven’t, here’s the music video:

When I first heard it, I didn’t like it, particularly the chorus. At first, I didn’t care much about it and thought it was just another song I didn’t like.

With the promotion of the song, which probably included paying big influencers to promote it on TikTok, I heard the chorus in more and more videos, particularly on TikTok.

At one point, when I heard the song again, I switched on my conscious mind to figure out the melody notes and the chords and I realized why I didn’t like the chorus. Continue Reading

You might think you know how to use a metronome, but chances are, you don’t. After working with hundreds of professional musicians for the past 20 years, I have found that almost all musicians don’t know how to use a metronome – even though they think they do.

If you have read my book, you already know what I’m talking about… but I still feel like I can share more thoughts on this topic. Continue Reading

In the past few weeks, many AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools have been published, and they have become extremely popular. One of the first tools was DALL-E, an AI image generator, which flooded social media sites within the first 24 hours after it was published. Chat GPT, an AI language model, became even more popular – more than 1 million people registered on the site in only 5 days.

It’s not a question that AI is the future, and we just have to learn to use these tools – the sooner the better. The question is, how can musicians use AI tools to make their lives easier? I have spent some time experimenting with these tools, so here are some ideas.

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Many people sent me a message or commented on my posts: “so where is YOUR hit song?” – or something like this.

I know that these people are not asking an honest question, they don’t really want an answer. And I almost always ignore them. The only purpose of these comments is to “attack” and argue. New ideas like The Rhythm Code can cause serious cognitive dissonance, which means, people have a hard time adopting something new. Continue Reading

Technology is really cool. It’s cool because it allows you to read this blog post, and it’s also cool because thanks to the internet, people bought my book from 70 countries around the world.

But it’s not “cool” to use technology in song lyrics. Let me explain.

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There are countless tools we can use when we construct a song. And word painting is one of the tools in a songwriter’s toolbox. It’s one of the ways to connect the text with the music itself. Word painting is the technique of creating lyrics that describe the underlying music literally, or vice versa. But it’s actually not a very new concept, it has been used by many composers in the past. Word painting developed especially in the late 16th century among Italian and English composers, for example, George Frideric Handel. Now, let’s see some examples of word painting in today’s pop songs.

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Most songs are written in 4/4 time. And in fact, if you are aiming for writing a hit song, you should probably use a 4/4 time signature. There is a reason why almost all songwriters write their songs in 4/4 today. It’s what people prefer the most. In this article, we will discuss songs from artists like Sting, Peter Gabriel, Radiohead, The Beatles, Foo Fighters. They all created songs in 7/4 time. But take a look at the most popular songs of these artists. (Go to Youtube, search the artist name, and sort the videos by view count.) You can see that none of these 7/4 songs are amongst the most popular ones. Their most popular songs are all in 4/4. But of course, if you want to write something unique, you should try writing a song in 7/4. So let’s take a look at how successful songwriters doing it.

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