You don’t have to be a great musician to understand how words and music can work together to communicate ideas. Whether you’re a jazz ace or a four-chord country strummer you can improve your song by pairing a key lyric with a chord change that adds emotional value to the lyric. Even in a progression […]
Write a children’s song The toughest audience to crack doesn’t throw rotten tomatoes or beer bottles — they throw tantrums. Children are impatient, immune to cultural trends and unforgivingly honest in their taste for music. Earn their attention with an upbeat tempo, quickly establish that the song is about something they find interesting and hold […]
At the Aug. 1 meeting (7 p.m. at Bloomfield Bridge Tavern, 412-682-8611), the suggested assignment will be to write a song — or play one of your existing songs — and explain your intentions for the chorus and the choices made to achieve those goals: chord progression, separation from the verse, textural rhythmic change, lyrical […]
Play your song and describe in some detail the arrangement you imagine, or bring a recording of your song (and device to play it on) and explain your accompaniment choices. Your song is more than just lyrics with music in the background. It’s a story told through words and music. The arrangement you choose influences […]
Reinvent a familiar song as a distinctive cover. One way to explore your own songwriting is to do it on the back of another songwriter. In reinterpreting a familiar cover song, you stretch your skills at writing lyrics and melodies and reveal to yourself aspects of your perspective and influences. And you’ve added a […]
Write a spoken word song. If you want an audience to stop talking and listen, do a song in spoken word. Structurally different than than the verses that slam poets generally call “spoken word,” songs written in spoken word style are linked to a musical chord structure. Lyrics often rhyme at points where they link […]
The March suggested songwriting assignment is to write a song with an asymmetrical structure. Instead of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-verse-chorus, surprise the listener’s brain by stacking the song differently: verse-verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus-chorus. Something like that. This isn’t an academic exercise or something done by the producer. The goal is to use your song’s structure to help tell the story or […]
