Whether you mean to or not, you’ll almost inevitably work in a particular key when writing a song. You might decide “right, this will be in C minor,” or you might just string together a seemingly ...

Often when discussing songwriting, we divide it into its two main elements, words and music. But just as lyrics contain a multitude of sub-categories and considerations, so does music. It contains the ...

Creating suspense in music can be achieved in a number of different ways, but for instant suspense gratification, there's ...

The presence of a well-crafted and performed chord progression can often be the glue that gels the song together. If executed well, it should support your melody and lyric, while grabbing listeners on ...

It's very simple to join one chord to the next in the context of a chord progression, and one of the tools in your armoury for achieving a polished musical effect is to use what we call, 'inverted ...

To celebrate the 30th anniversary issue of American Songwriter (Jan/Feb 2015), “Measure for Measure” served up a smorgasbord of 30 handpicked, solid gold chord progressions. This e-book supplements ...