Category: Songwriting

In a previous post, we talked about diatonic chords in detail. Diatonic chords are the chords that are inside the key. But sometimes it gets boring writing songs with only diatonic chords, and we need something to make our chord progression more colorful and exciting.

This is when we utilize borrowed chords. Borrowed chords are chords that are not inside the key: we borrow them from another key. One of the borrowed chords often used in songs is the flat 6 chord.

Let’s see what is a flat 6 chord, and how we can use it in our songs.

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Many people believe that rock music is dead because the radio and other mass media don’t play many rock songs anymore. But the reality is that there are millions of people who LOVE rock music all around the world.

Rock music is a genre and there are countless different kinds of rock styles, influenced by a lot of different genres, including folk music, jazz, country, blues, and even Latin music! But now we will go through the very basics to see how you can write a rock song.

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We have a previous blog post to explain how you can create a song in the Lydian mode. While it turns out, there is no such thing as “Lydian chord progression“, there are ways to write a song in the Lydian mode.

Now we will take a look at how we can write a song in the Dorian mode.

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I got another question from one of our readers, she asked “what is a conjunct melody”. I would like to answer this question here so everyone can learn from it. So let’s see the answer to the question: what does a conjunct melody mean in music? Continue Reading

I analyzed this song in more detail in the online course and also here in the blog because I really like the chord progression of this song. It’s an r&b song, and the chord progression is very jazzy, and I even made an experiment on how you can reharmonize it with extended chords.

So let’s see the chords of the song “Thank U Next” by Ariana Grande, and what we can learn from it from the perspective of a songwriter. Continue Reading

If you are a beginner songwriter, it’s the absolute best choice to use diatonic chords for writing a new song. This is because it’s easier to understand the relation between diatonic chords and create chord progressions with them. And generally, it’s easier to create a new song using only these chords.

So let’s take a look at what are diatonic chords. Continue Reading

It’s no doubt that the chorus is the most important part of any song. It’s the part of the song which we want the listeners to remember and sing along.

And the chorus becomes stronger with repetition. So it’s very important to ask the question: how many times a chorus should be repeated?

I have to emphasize that there are no rules in songwriting. You can always experiment with different song structures. But it’s always a good idea to check what successful songwriters are doing, and learn from them.

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I write Cuban style Salsa (timba) songs for my band, and I would say I have a competitive advantage over other genres: it’s probably the most danceable style of music. You cannot think about Cuban salsa music without associating to dance.

We had hundreds of concerts for the past few years, and I can tell you that I have never seen a concert where there wasn’t AT LEAST a few people who were dancing to our music. People can’t stand but to move when they hear Salsa music.

But what makes a song danceable?

It’s not just the genre, because we know a lot of pop songs that are danceable and they have nothing to do with Latin music. Think about the song “Happy” by Pharrell Williams.

So I sat down to figure out the answer to this question, and here is the conclusion.

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It’s obvious that all songwriters want to create a chord progression that is interesting and effective so listeners will be engaged while they listen to the song.

But what if your chord progression is too simple or sounds boring? How can we create a more effective chord progression without overcomplicating the song?

We can use countless songwriting tools to make a chord progression sound more interesting, but I’m going to write down only a few of them here. If you want to learn more, you can go through my course to learn the tools that are used by successful songwriters.

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Sometimes it’s hard to be unbiased with our own song, and it’s hard to decide if it’s good or it may need some fix here and there. One of the examples is when we don’t know if our chorus is long enough and we can’t decide if it’s too long or too short.

I don’t believe that we should follow strict rules and patterns, and there are many different kinds of forms in songwriting. However, it’s always good to have a “benchmark”, or a guideline, something we can compare our songs with. So it’s always good to check out what are the most common forms in highly successful songs.

And don’t forget that there is a reason why certain song forms are very popular in songwriting. There are songwriting tools that are used by many successful songwriters because they are effective. They influence the listener on an emotional level.

So you can always experiment with your music, but keep in mind that the more your song differs from these popular forms, the more risk you take!

I analyzed a huge amount of songs (mostly in popular genres), and here is the result to answer your question: what is the average length of a chorus. In terms of the number of bars, seconds, and lines.

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