So in my last post, I established that you don’t have to think theory, nor do you have to know theory at all, to write good songs. That said, knowing music theory gives you these huge advantages. Music theory helps you troubleshoot your songs. This I went over in detail in …
I received this question multiple times. The short answer is NO. No, you don’t have to. But here’s a longer caveat: you can think about music theory when you’re writing. And if you do, it’ll help you solve songwriting problems faster and steer your song to a direction that you want …
If you ever have any doubts about the power of impactful songwriting, you should look into the story about how “Let It Go” became the catalyst that created the worldwide phenomenon that is the film Frozen. This was the song that made them totally revise the story (Elsa was going …
In this episode, we’re looking at Nickel Creek’s “This Side” with a focus on learning how to use some exotic chords in your songwriting. Here are the particular techniques we are analyzing: Using G# in the key of E and why that works — it’s because the song temporarily shifts …
Sting’s “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You” features some advanced songwriting techniques in the area of transpositions — changing keys within a song. Now, it’s not a requirement for a song to go through more than one keys for it to be good or impactful, but a key, …