Category: Songwriting

When we talk about vocal pitch correction, most people know only the famous-infamous autotune plugin. Autotune (or auto-tune) is an audio processor software introduced in 1997, but the truth is, there are many other similar or even better vocal pitch corrector plugins out there for a long time now. For example, I’m using Melodyne for 10 years now.

While these two plugins have a very similar purpose, Melody is actually a “manual-tune”, because of how we use it.

If you have never used Melodyne before, it can be intimidating to see all the functions, and it can seem complicated. But you just need to learn some of the basics and they are not complicated at all.

Continue Reading

I hear many times that “there is no formula for a hit song”. But I would add the word “YET” at the end of this sentence. After analyzing more than 2000 hit songs, and reading all the books and courses on songwriting, I found many answers to this question. For example, I discovered the hidden rhythmical system behind ALL hit songs, which I call the “Rhythm Code”.

So here are some of my answers to the question: “how to write a hit song”. Keep in mind that this is not a step-by-step instruction, but more like a cross-section of most of the hit songs. You can always experiment and deviate from any of these if you want to write a unique song.

Continue Reading

There are many different ways you can start to write a song, and every songwriter has their own process. Personally, I always follow an order which works best for me, and by the way, this is exactly the same order as John Legend writes his songs.

1. Chord progression
2. Arrangement (including a drumbeat, a bass groove, other rhythms)
3. Melody
4. Lyrics

But there are many other ways you can start a song, so let’s take a look at what other ways you can start to write a song.

Continue Reading

In our last blog post, we were talking about how long should a chorus be in terms of the number of bars, and the number of seconds. We were looking at several different songs to get the answer to that question, so we will take a look at the same songs in comparison.

Continue Reading

It’s important to know that the chord progression is not the best way to identify a music style. Or in other words: you can use literally any kind of chord progression, no matter the genre or the style.

In fact, one of the best ways to make your music more unique is by using totally different chord progressions than other artists in your genre!

However, if you are a beginner songwriter, it’s still good to learn what are the most commonly used chord progressions in successful reggae songs, so you can use them as a starting point.

Continue Reading

Hip hop music is one of the most popular genres on the planet, yet there are only a few sources where people can learn about it. This is probably because highly qualified musicians usually consider this music too simple. I’m not gonna lie, hip hop is not my favorite genre either, however, whenever a young artist contacts me to ask questions, I’m always happy to help, regardless of the genre.

In this article, we will talk about how you can create your own hip hop drum beats without using pre-made loops or samples. I think this is important because using samples will make your song mediocre because it will sound like thousands of other songs from people who are using the same samples. Although, I have another article about how to program realistic drums, I will show you exact drum patterns in this article.

Continue Reading

The phrase “music arrangement” can mean slightly different things, depending on what style of music we are talking about. Traditionally music arrangement meant taking a music composition and allocate the notes in a way that different instruments in an orchestra can play a small part. In this sense, the music arranger needed to find which notes will be played by which instrument.

In modern popular genres, the meaning of music arrangement is slightly different. If there is an acoustic band, arranging is mostly about finding a groove for the bass guitar (rhythm and notation), finding a drum beat, finding a rhythm for the guitar, or even arranging backing vocals or a horn section for the recording.

In EDM or EDM based songs, usually, there is a “producer” who creates a “beat” and there is a “top-liner” who writes a melody on that beat. By “beat”, we mean a drumbeat, a bass line, and a chord progression.

A music composition is nothing more than the combination of a melody AND a chord progression. A music composition can be arranged in many different ways. Think about cover songs where someone performs a song in a totally different genre than the original. For example, here is my salsa version of the Police song “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic“.

The role of the music arranger is to create the final form of the music, whether if it’s for live performance or studio recording.

Sometimes the songwriter and the arranger are not the same people. Nowadays many songwriters hire a music producer, who creates the final form of the song.

Assuming you already have a melody and a chord progression for your song, let’s see what steps you need to make to arrange your music.

Continue Reading